Helping the NHS deliver digital transformation

DrDoctor wanted to enable doctors and clinics to reach their patients via SMS or Voice calls. Using MessageBird Flow Builder, the no-code-required tool for building customer call flows, NHS hospitals reach hundreds of thousands of patients each month, enabling to conveniently reschedule their own appointments – saving hospitals millions.

In the UK, the NHS estimates that eight million outpatient hospital appointments are missed each year, costing hospitals over £1 billion. Beyond the financial blow, no-shows also lead to longer waiting times, a lack of available appointment slots, and underutilized staff and resources – all of which fuels patient dissatisfaction and frustration. Perhaps most concerning is that missed appointments delay important follow-up care, which can lead to unnecessary health complications.

Modernizing patient communication

DrDoctor wanted to enable doctors and clinics to reach their patients via SMS or Voice calls. Using MessageBird Flow Builder, the no-code-required tool for building customer call flows, NHS hospitals reach hundreds of thousands of patients each month, enabling to conveniently reschedule their own appointments – saving hospitals millions.

DrDoctor has also incorporated Flow Builder into its Personal HealthRecords offering. This enables patients to manage all their care through their smartphones, including upcoming appointments, letters from the hospital, and preference settings. By allowing patients to choose how they receive updates, hospitals are able to seamlessly meet patients where they are, via the channels they prefer now – and those they will use in the future.

Eliminating inefficiencies and slashing costs

DrDoctor has increased the profitability and efficiency of each hospital it works with, saving NHS clients £1-3 million per year. On top of the economic advantages, updating patient communication processes frees up time and resources for staff to focus on what’s really important: taking care of their patients. With Flow Builder, DrDoctor has enabled hospitals across the UK to improve patient satisfaction, reduce referral to treatment time, increase appointment attendance by over 15%, reduce non-attendance by 30%, reduce routine admin, and move to paperless patient experiences.

Revolutionizing the patient experience

Patients’ busy lives require agile mobile solutions that are accessible and affordable for providers, easy to implement, and flexible enough to adjust to their changing, and often urgent, medical needs. Via DrDoctor and MessageBird’s Flow Builder, patients can deal with scheduling issues the moment they think of them, wherever they happen to be – benefitting both patient well-being and hospitals’ bottom lines.

"Flow Builder has alleviated the need for us to spend time and resources on maintaining and expanding our communications offering as we grow, so we can concentrate on what we do best: improving patient experiences. We wouldn't have been able to scale so quickly without MessageBird."

‍Cofounder and CTO, Perran Pengelly