Reception staff in GP practices perform a critical function, often beyond their job description. There are 6,813 GP practices in England with 300 million consultations taking place each year, with the majority still booked via telephone.
Reception staff are the most visible and the most accessible of all health workers and due to their position at the point of entry to the healthcare system and they face the brunt of patients’ expectations and frustrations. The physical isolation of the front desk means that many of their colleagues remain unaware of the complex reality of their job - to navigate patients safely to the most appropriate care setting.
The solution will use a Natural Language Processor (NLP) / Machine Learning (ML) agent that can understand recorded or real-time conversations between patients and reception staff over the phone and determine the nature of the patient’s enquiry and the response or action taken by the receptionist. All of this will be fully anonymised and compliant with GDPR. Common themes and resulting actions can then be transformed to serve as learning content for reception staff.
This approach will contextualise information and enable targeted bite-sized training to be delivered that is based on the unique needs of the local patient population. It will account for demographic and ethnic variations and enable front-line staff to manage patient requests more effectively and address variations in quality of care.