Why invest in understanding the people who use your products?
“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have asked for a faster horse.”
This famous quote is often attributed to Model T car inventor, Henry Ford. Whether he actually said this or not, it highlights the importance of research and consumer understanding when building a product, which is more than just asking your customers what they want or need. To build something with impact, Ford needed to understand the world around his customers; their challenges, what they believed in, what blockers existed. This includes how much money his customers might be willing to spend on getting from A to B, the condition of the roads in their local area, the problems with owning a horse… the list goes on.
At Accurx, we need to understand healthcare, the people who work in it and the people who access it. We need to understand on which tasks a GP receptionist spends most of their time, why it’s difficult to get something printed on a hospital ward, what patients fear about using a digital tool vs. telephoning their local surgery. It’s a mammoth task. We have spent thousands of hours with healthcare professionals over the last (almost) 8 years, experiencing the way they work and gathering their insights at a local level. But sometimes we need to gather feedback at scale, and to do this, we commit to an annual user survey.
Gathering feedback at scale
User surveys are a simple way to understand the impact that your products are having on your users. The ability to gather a larger volume of data points can help your teams to double down on what is working, and begin addressing what isn’t. And in the case of companies like Accurx, they also help to demonstrate the true value of implementing our products.
In the autumn of 2023, we pulled together a cross-functional team to uncover exactly what we needed to understand, and how we might gather enough feedback to understand our users across the different sectors of the NHS. We set out to get more responses than ever before to ensure we had a valid data set that best represented the views of our users and the impact our products are having on their day-to-day roles. This data has been invaluable to us over the last few months, and so we want to share our learnings with you.
What did we learn?
Almost 10,000 healthcare professionals responded across our two surveys. Their answers helped us to understand the value that Accurx delivers to the NHS and identify three key themes to this effect.
Efficiency
In primary care, administrative and clinical staff reported that Accurx helped them to save over 30 minutes every day (36 and 32 minutes respectively). This was mirrored by staff in acute trusts, 87% of whom agreed that Accurx saved them time in their day. By reducing many of the manual processes involved in communicating with and about patients, NHS staff can spend more time on the tasks that matter – like spending time with their patients.
“The product has really revolutionised my work! I find the product to be a fast and secure way of communicating with GPs and patients. Up to now I sent letters and made phone calls… which was costly and time consuming” – Anya Jadhakhan, Birmingham & Solihull
Improving efficiency in the NHS doesn’t just have an impact on time savings – it can also significantly impact cost savings too. Pulling together our data on average time savings, including a reduction in ‘Did Not Attend’ rates (DNAs), alongside minimum administrative and clinical salaries in England, we estimate an average saving of £7.05 per patient, per year.
Patient access
Enhancing patient access to care is vital for the NHS. We want to help create a digital front door for patients that enables a more personalised and equitable experience when managing their health. And it looks like we’re doing just that. 83% of practices who use our online consultation tool, Patient Triage, agree that Accurx significantly increases the number of patients their practice can manage each day, whilst 77% of our total survey respondents agreed that Accurx helps their practice to engage with harder-to-reach patients.
“[Accurx] is now an integral part of our working life. Patients like the fact that we communicate with them on a personal level and, where appropriate, they can communicate back in a way which suits them. I cannot envisage a time without Accurx!” – Andrea Fray, Practice Manager, Black Country
Of the practices using Patient Triage 84% agreed that Accurx makes it easier to redirect their patients to self-care or other local care services. Features like Patient Triage, Self-Book and appointment reminders all help patients to access the care they need, when they need it. Based on self-reported data from clinical staff in primary care, our survey findings estimate that 2,160 unnecessary appointments are saved per practice every year. That’s 14 million appointments saved per year in England alone! We also saw this feedback reflected by staff in NHS trusts:
“It [Accurx] reduced DNA rates for monitoring blood tests I needed… it has reduced the number of rebooked appointments and wasted clinic time. Also reduces the need to wait on hold for GP Practice or having to search to find GP email addresses as there is an instant contact link via Accurx.” – Fiona French, North East London
Morale
Low morale has been a concerning theme across the NHS in recent years, which is something the team at Accurx are passionate about changing. Our mission is to make patients healthier and healthcare staff happier, through seamless communication. Our annual user survey helps us to gauge if we’re achieving this goal, by measuring the positive impact that our software is having on NHS staff.
Our survey found that:
- 73% of respondents say they are happier in their day-to-day job since using Accurx;
- 87% of respondents say their workload is more manageable since using Accurx;
- 79% of respondents would recommend Accurx to other healthcare professionals (rating a 9 or 10 on Net Promoter Score).
We can’t revolutionise the NHS with technology alone, but these findings demonstrate how simple technology can have a positive, real-world impact on the wellbeing of our NHS workforce – just by making their lives a little easier each day. And that’s a mission worth believing in!
What next?
The results we have gathered help our team to feel confident that the products we’re building are solving the right problems – but this doesn’t mean we have achieved our mission. This survey also demonstrated how we can continue to improve and where we need to shift focus with hundreds of ideas, suggestions (and niggles) from our users. It’s this feedback that keeps us moving forward, and keeps us busy. We’ll continue to evolve and iterate our products to ensure we can meet, and exceed, the needs of modern-day healthcare professionals. And we’ll also keep doing our best to research, learn and understand them from the inside out.
“Keep up the good work. We really appreciate how much you have helped us save time and improve patient care and safety.”
– Rajive Mitra, GP Partner, South East London