Appointment letters for Outpatients at Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (WWL) are to become more accessible thanks to the roll out of a new ‘Digital Letters’ service.
WWL have partnered with Dr Doctor, a digital health company accredited to the highest standards set by the NHS for protecting healthcare information in the UK, and Synertec, a company focused on patient document control, facilitating the ability to work with DrDoctor to offer this service to patients.
Synertec also provide the ability to achieve accessible information standard (AIS) compliance, allowing formats in EasyRead, Braille, large font, and more for our patients in both physical and digital format. This allows patients to have greater accessibility to their documents.
Digital Letters will help to improve patient experience by introducing quick access to appointment information via a secure, online patient portal which can be viewed and downloaded on your mobile, tablet and desktop computer. Once signed up, patients will receive text messages or emails about their appointments.
Following a successful trial across three specialties; Dermatology, Gastroenterology & Colorectal Surgery, Digital Letters will help to provide a faster and more efficient delivery of appointment letters and offer patients the ability to manage all of their appointments in one place, where they will also be stored for future reference.
WWL rolled Digital Letters out to a further eight specialties on 5th March; Cardiology, Endocrinology/Diabetic Medicine, Ear, Nose & Throat, General Surgery, Oral Surgery, Plastic Surgery, Thoracic Medicine, and Vascular Surgery.
The introduction of Digital Letters will also help the Trust to reduce emissions used when printing physical copies of letters, saving woodland, as well as helping towards saving the NHS £100million each year.
Speaking about the launch of the new service, Director of Strategic Transformation at WWL, Karlyn Forrest said:
“We are delighted to be able to offer Digital Letters to our patients across the Trust and Dr Doctor have provided us with an innovative and efficient way of contacting our patients safely and securely.
“The feedback we received from the successful trial period shows us that using Digital Letters helps to improve patient experience by giving people better access to their personal information.
“As a result, we will be able to deliver correspondence at a much faster rate, and in turn, by going paperless we will be able to reduce our carbon footprint and our costs across the Trust.
“Our new service also has the potential to reduce the number of cancelled or missed appointments, creating further savings for the Trust.
“We appreciate that some patients will still prefer to receive paper letters in the post, and we would like to reassure the public that this option will remain available.”
Patients can log into their Digital Letters account at any time by visiting www.nhs.my/WWL. It is important to make sure we have the right contact details for all patients; this can be done through the www.nhs.my/WWL web address, or at reception on your next visit to the hospital.
For more details about Digital Letters, you can visit the dedicated section on our website.
Additional information about Synertec is available at synertec.co.uk, with more on DrDoctor available at drdoctor.co.uk