Bermondsey Spa Medical Practice

Maintaining Patient Contact

July 2022

Bermondsey Spa Medical Practice services 12,000 patients in the Bermondsey area, providing a variety of clinics such as Pharmacy, Community Physiotherapy, Community Nursing, Community Mental Health, Dietetics, Chiropody, Dental Services, Radiology and a range of consultant clinics. A Patient Participation Group gives patients a chance to be part of future changes in the Practice.

July 2022

The Challenge

Robert Nsiiro, Operations Manager at Bermondsey Spa Medical Practice needed to address the difficulties faced by practitioners and staff having to function from home during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. The practice also wanted to able to record calls as part of their effort to deal effectively with customer complaints: "we needed the phone calls to be recorded because patients were complaining and we were not able to track what was said or what was not said.

"Also, we needed to have a queueing system which we didn't have at the time."

The Solution

Softphone

Surgery Connect provided immediate relief to the practice's need to be able to work remotely with the introduction of the softphone at the beginning of the pandemic. Robert recalls that during "the pandemic, when we all had to work remotely, that's when the softphone came along, it came at the right time. And if it weren't for that, then I don't know how the practice would've run because we had to evacuate our building for literally three months. Without Surgery Connect, I don't know how we would've communicated with patients."

Surgery Connect's sophisticated queueing system keeps patients informed while directing them to the right department. Patient callback also provides the option for the patient to be called back rather than wait in the queue.

Patient Data

Robert cites members of staff being able to log in individually "as an important change for them. You can sign in anywhere, no matter where you are. You can sign on your phone, on your laptop, your computer, even if you're in The Bahamas." Additionally the comprehensive call statistics have proved useful for practice management when deploying resources, but also with the "patient participation group where we share this data with them, advising them how much we've done within a month. It does really help with complaints and compliments as well. Definitely."

Ease of Use

Surgery Connect has been honed with years of feedback from our customers making it the most GP practice friendly cloud telephony system in UK healthcare. "It's just straightforward. Everything is more or less tabbed. Nothing's hard to find. And there's always a manual guide or support guide on whatever page you go to."

Communication

Along with support which is accessed via a dedicated portal, X-on provides customers with a Client Relationship Manager who can be called at any time. "X-on communications is 5/5 all round. I would like to give a big thank you to our Account Manager Carla."

Cost savings

"We've made a lot of cost savings, especially when it comes to making outgoing calls and also sending posts. And our telephone bill is cheaper than we were paying with the original service we had."

Wallboard

The Surgery Connect wallboard has proven to be one of the practice's favourite features: "The wallboard's definitely something really good that we use, because we can keep track of who's online, who's on call, what's coming in, what's going out."

Account Management

Robert visited a Healthcare event where he met Account Manager Mark Ayriss: "He just upsold it very well. We told him all the problems we were facing with the current provider and he told us all the features that Surgery Connect can do to improve our calling system. The sales pitch was really good to be honest." After installation, Mark "helped us, monitored us for a few months to make sure that everything was functioning right."

Support

"After going live the support is still great. When I raise tickets on the support desk, I always get someone responding. And sometimes, I even just get a call. And everything seems to get dealt with. Yeah, definitely on the ball."