North Cumbria NHS Trust in Carlisle, England

North Cumbria NHS Trust in Carlisle, England

How Lean process improvement at Carlisle & District PCT, North Cumbria UK, improved patient care.

“I was sure GE would recommend an expensive call management system. Instead, they helped us get much more from our existing technology and we greatly improved our service without additional resources."

Gordon Hendley, Senior Commissioner (Elective Care), North Cumbria PCTs

Customer background:

  • Public NHS body based within Primary Care
  • Primary Care Trust has a 2 star rating
  • 241 employees
  • New government reform allows patients to elect their service provider in the date and time of their appointment so PCTs establish local booking centres to allow patients utilise services at the acute hospital or at independent providers within secondary care


Customer objectives:

  • Implement rapid process & telephony improvement at the call centre
  • Optimise resources by liberating capacity tied up in non value-added tasks
  • Increase the number of calls taken
  • Reduce inventory of voicemail call-backs
  • Optimise current telephony infrastructure


Project focus:

  • Improve call centre processes
  • Improve patient satisfaction
  • Improve staff satisfaction


What we found:

  • 20 to 40% of Patient Care Advisors (PCAs) spent on non value-added tasks such as administration duties
  • 21% of PCAs spent on voicemail inventory call-backs
  • 49% of calls are answered
  • Roles among the organisation were not clearly defined
  • No performance metrics for feedback and control
  • Noisy environment


Implemented solutions:

  • Separate front office core functions from back office administrative roles to liberate capacity
  • Create administrative teams
  • Redesign layouts and process workflow for better efficiency
  • Reconfigure telephony to have better routed calls and install key performance indicators


Customer benefits:

  • 86% of calls are answered
  • Inventory voicemail reduced by 98.5%
  • Call abandon arte reduced by 90.5%
  • Key performance indicators produced and measured