Synertec’s partnership with
East Suffolk and North Essex Foundation Trust
“Synertec are responsive and keen to understand our processes to ensure that the solution addresses the issue.”
Key Takeaways
- Prism's seamless integration with Evolve and Lorenzo to deliver clinical and appointment correspondence for the Trust.
- The significant reduction in the administrative duties at ESNEFT, by automating the processing and distribution of thousands of appointment and clinical letters, freed up time for staff to work on more productive tasks.
- Patient communications can be sent in various accessible formats to patients to meet their needs.
Synertec has been working with East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust (ESNEFT) for over 20 years. With our Prism solution installed across multiple sites, ESNEFT has been able to take advantage of the ease with which our solution accepts data from any host system, to process appointment letters from their patient administration systems, including Lorenzo and Careflow, and clinical letters from electronic medical record system, Evolve.
Through the application of rules, defined in partnership with ESNEFT, our solution enables multiple copies of the same letter to be sent out to the patient, GP and consultant, for example. This new automated way of sending letters, has had a tangible positive impact, freeing up administrative and secretarial staff time for more productive activity.
Prior to working with Synertec, printing and posting of letters was very labour intensive, with the Administrative Support teams printing, manually folding and inserting all letters into envelopes and posting. “Our admin support assistance would print all of those clinic letters and manually fold them and put them in envelopes and send them out. That was around 80 to 90% of their job roles.” Hayley Berry, Operational Co-ordinator.
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Our admin support assistance would print all of the clinic letters and manually fold them and put them in envelopes and send them out. That was around 80 to 90% of their job roles.
-Hayley Berry, Operational Co-ordinator.
Synertec's Role
From the point of commencement of our work with ESNEFT and throughout our continued engagement, our consultative approach has enabled us to develop an understanding of their unique needs and challenges, ensuring these are met and future requirements are anticipated.
After conducting an initial requirements survey, Prism was installed on ESNEFT’s local server and configured to ensure automation of processing to meet their requirements. Our work with ESNEFT started with the processing of appointment letters for the outpatient department. Prism now captures data from Lorenzo and Careflow, applies rules defined in partnership with ESNEFT and sends these letters in the required format, including braille, large font, ClearRead, EasyRead and MP3 audio files, ensuring compliance with Accessible Information Standards.
The remit extended to processing of clinical correspondence, for which Prism is now configured to receive and process data from ESNEFT’s electronic medical record system, Evolve. When consultants see a patient in clinic, they dictate a letter which then is added to Evolve. We worked very closely with Kainos, who own and develop the Evolve software. This resulted in the user being able to choose which recipients should receive a letter by checking boxes in Evolve. Prism is configured to send a letter to the GP and patient as well as an additional copy to other healthcare professionals to whom the patient is being referred.
Our collaborative ways of working have enabled us to be responsive to ESNEFT’s needs, for example enabling a seamless transition when a local Community Trust joined ESNEFT, ensuring there was no delay in processing letters from that organisation.
“Synertec are responsive and keen to understand our processes to ensure that the solution addresses the issue. All team members are friendly and knowledgeable.” Amanda Smith, Clinical Application Specialist.
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The daily reports are extremely useful as it can help identify if there is an issue with Evolve or users. They can also identify any user knowledge gaps or understanding of the process where education/training could be given to stop these occurring again.
-Amanda Smith, Clinical Application Specialist
What were the results?
Over the last 3 years of the contract we have:
• Processed and dispatched over 3.2 Million Letters across over 30 different departments and specialties for the Trust
• Provided the Trust with over £430,000 in postal discounts
• Enabled the Trust to process 94% of all appointment correspondence through Prism
How has it affected them and their productivity?
The work we have done with ESNEFT and use of our Prism solution has freed up time for the administrative team, enabling them to better spend their time booking appointments and providing support to the secretarial team. This has increased productivity, taken pressure off the medical secretaries and provided the administrative team with far more interesting and varied roles.
In addition, our reporting functionality and monthly review of management information has enabled the Trust to monitor what they are sending and to ensure maximum reduction in costs is achieved. “The daily reports are extremely useful as it can help identify if there is an issue with Evolve or users. The audit emails where we are notified of errors or failures, also enable us to verify if there are updates to our systems that are required in order for the documents to be successfully processed by Synertec. But not only that, they identify any user knowledge gaps or understanding of the process where education/training could be given to stop these occurring again.” Amanda Smith, Clinical Application Specialist.
Synertec have worked with ESNEFT to provide an automated approach to producing and sending patient communications, providing a significant saving in time and money for the Trust. In addition, there has been an improvement in patient safety through automation of processes and elimination of human error.
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