Progress with Outpatient Waiting List at Galway University Hospitals Continues

Last year one of the top priorities for Galway University Hospitals was to reduce the outpatient waiting list to meet the national target that no patient should wait longer than 12 months for an appointment.
 
In order to ensure that patients continue to get appointments within the national targets the hospital regularly validates the waiting list and in the last week the hospital has written to all patients who have been on the waiting list between 3 months and one year. This is necessary to ensure that the hospital has the most up to date contact details – people may have moved in the past year – and to check if the patient still needs the appointment.
 
In order to make it easier for patients to respond, the hospital also used text messages to contact patients.
 
Sue Hennessy, Waiting List Manager for the hospital explains, “For the first time we have used a text message to contact patients on a waiting list. We sent a text to all the patients who had given us their mobile number or whose GP had provided their mobile number when requesting an appointment.
 
“We sent 12,071 texts of which 10,708 were delivered and we received 9,406 replies. This was a very high response rate and made the validation process easier for patients as they just need to respond by text rather than calling our call centre.
 
“As this was the first time we used texts for checking patient contact details, we also sent a letter to all the patients on the waiting list as we know that some patients prefer letters. In addition we increased the staff in our appointments call centre to make it quicker and easier for patients to contact us to confirm their details if they didn’t do so by text.
 
“The feedback from patients on the new text system has been very positive and more importantly has allowed us to update our waiting list very quickly.
 
“We are also sending text reminders to patients to help reduce the number of patients who do not show up for their outpatient appointment. Last year 36,668 patients did not attend their appointment, even though they had confirmed they would attend.
 
“Patients now receive a text reminder 7 working days and 3 working days before their planned outpatient appointment. If the patients reply to the text to say that they no longer need their appointment, we will send a text to the next patient on the waiting list offering them the appointment instead. Our aim is to reduce the number of “no shows” and to make sure we use all appointment slots which will reduce the waiting lists and provide a better service to our patients.
 
“We made huge improvements to the length of time patients waited for Outpatient appointments last year and we are focused on ensuring that we continue to shorten the length of time that people must wait for an appointment. The co-operation of our patients is essential and appreciated and we would urge all patients to respond to texts received from us”.