Driving Patient Engagement: Improving Digital Letter Accessibility

3rd October 2024

by John Clarke

We understand the challenges NHS Trusts and Boards face in ensuring that important letters are read by patients in a timely manner. This requires not only a high rate of digital uptake, but also for the letter read rates to also be high.

At Netcall, we’re committed to constantly improving and listening to the feedback of our healthcare customers to ensure better outcomes and experiences. After working with numerous customers, we saw that letter read rates were not on a par with the overall digital uptake in our online patient engagement portal, Patient Hub.

Our response rate for patients overall was tracking at 70%. But letters were not being read in the patient portal at the same rate. We identified two main issues – the lack of cost savings (as unread letters were still having to be printed and sent out) and the risk associated with safety information not being consumed by patients who needed to attend appointments.

Committed to improving the accessibility to digital letters, we made significant improvements to Patient Hub, based on customer feedback.

• We revamped the naming convention of the PDFs and implemented an inline viewer so that patients could easily read the letters without having to download them.
• We introduced indicators to show when there was an unread letter, making it easier for patients to know when they needed to check for important information.

Thanks to these changes, the average read rate has increased from 51% to 65%. We aim continue making improvements until we reach 70%, to equal the uptake rate.

Already, these improvements have resulted in a 29% increase in letter read rates, with 57,000 more letters being read each month across our NHS customer base!

“We’ve seen the impact of these improvements on both new and mature customers, with more patients opening their letters and acting as needed. We are proud to have a community of active users who provide valuable feedback, and we will continue to listen and improve our products to ensure that our customers get the best value for your investment. Working in true partnership with our NHS customers, we can achieve better outcomes for all.” 

John Clarke

Head of Client Solutions – Health, Netcall