The Hippo Recaller is a tool built by the team at Hippo Labs to help practices with proactive care for patients.
Most practices already proactively care for their patients under target schemes such as QOF or through their own internal public health procedures, but this can often be time-consuming and inefficient.
The Hippo Recaller is designed to help make proactive care processes more efficient and effective through automation, thoughtful analytics and some help from you!
š” Proactive care is the process of reaching out to patients to improve their health before they become unwell. This could be through screenings, improved long-term condition management and advice, or public health campaigns (e.g. vaccinations, cervical smears).
š¤ What does it do?
The Hippo Recaller takes the recall process that practices are used to and automates almost every step. Thereās a lot to this but weāve summarised the key steps in our processes below:
1ļøā£ Read, digest and consolidate target schemes
1ļøā£ Read, digest and consolidate target schemes
We read all the target scheme documents and best practice guides. Once weāve done that, we summarise and consolidate the targets and best practices in a clear, consistent and comprehensible way so theyāre easy for everyone to understand.
2ļøā£ Identify patients needing care
2ļøā£ Identify patients needing care
We connect to your EPR directly so we can see which patients need care. This replaces any need to run āPopulation Searchesā in your EPR as we run our searches automatically on a daily basis, so weāre always up to date.
Weāre able to deduplicate care requirements and identify when certain āsub-actionsā have been done so we only call patients in for what is needed.
E.g. for patient Josephine Bloggs, we can instantly identify (without using Searches) that as a diabetic she needs an annual diabetic review and a flu jab. If she has already had her foot-check part of the annual diabetic review, we reduce the time needed for that diabetic check-up appointment as this does not need to be repeated.
3ļøā£ Work out how to efficiently give that care
3ļøā£ Work out how to efficiently give that care
Once we know what care patients need, we then figure out the most efficient way to give this care. We create a list of all healthcare professionals in your practice and use a series of rules and a personalised competency framework to work out the most efficient set of appointments for each patient to sort out all their proactive care needs.
E.g. for patient Josephine Bloggs, we calculate that she needs a double HCA appointment to do the basic physical health check and the flu jab, followed by a nurse appointment to finish the review once the blood test results are back.
4ļøā£ Automatically message patients
4ļøā£ Automatically message patients
Now we know who needs what and how we can carry that out, we need to get them booked in. The first way we do this is through booking links that we send as automated emails, texts, WhatsApp or NHS App messages. This is convenient for patients and saves your practice time in making manual recalls. We can also automatically translate these messages to the patient's first language.
E.g. for patient Josephine Bloggs, we send her an email with links to Patient Access to book in. If she doesnāt have an email address, then we send a text instead.
āļø Practice Super Users can control the settings of how many messages we send in the Recall Campaigns tab at the top of the Recaller
5ļøā£ Display remaining patients for manual recall
5ļøā£ Display remaining patients for manual recall
Despite the high levels of success from our automated recalls, some patients may not be able to receive/respond to these communications, or they may just prefer to communicate via phone call.
For this, we pool all the remaining patients into the āRecall Listā tab of the Recaller. This tab enables practice admin teams to read all the relevant information about the patient and then submit the recall outcome. With this consolidated patient view, all the required actions are in one place, so you only need to access the patient's information once.
E.g. for patient Josephine Bloggs, if she didnāt respond to our emails/texts, we would show her in your practice āPatient Listā so you can see what she needs/what appointments we recommend
6ļøā£ Make sure the care is actually carried out
6ļøā£ Make sure the care is actually carried out
Now the Hippo Recaller has done all the groundwork, itās time for your practice clinical teams to do the next steps in looking after this patient and fulfilling all their proactive care needs.
If youāre not sure what this patient is in front of you for, or if you have a patient booked in for any other reason, you can always search their NHS number in the Recall List to see what care actions are outstanding. Once you have made the call, you will be able to choose from a number of options in the Action Patient button (such as Booked Appointment or Action Completed elsewhere).
If for some reason the patient doesnāt attend or the actions arenāt completed, the system will start again from Step 2 above and invite them back in to receive their care.
š How does this help us?
For patients, practices and the wider NHS system, the Hippo Recaller should be a significant improvement in a number of ways:
š Benefits for Practices
š Benefits for Practices
šÆ Improved target outcomes with lower effort. Targets are often used as a measure of how well a practice is caring for patients and this will usually result in increased income.
š°ļø Time savings for admin teams in understanding and managing target schemes, running searches, generating lists, and keeping them up to date.
āļø Much less time is spent by Reception teams in making recalls to patients who can easily book in online.
š§āāļø Clinical team time also saved through having consolidated appointments and maximising the use of allied healthcare professionals.
ā¤ļøā𩹠By proactively caring for patients, fewer patients present to the practice acutely unwell.
š§ With all the time now being saved on carrying out the steps above, practices can focus their attention on other aspects of day-to-day care for patients.
š§ā𦳠Benefits for Patients
š§ā𦳠Benefits for Patients
šŖ Overall better health outcomes for patients! If theyāre being cared for proactively, theyāre much more likely to stay healthy.
š§āš» Better experience in making bookings for digitally able patients - they are able to book in at a time that suits them, and not be interrupted by unexpected phone calls.
š By minimising calls to digitally able patients, you are able to provide a better experience for digitally excluded patients as there will be more time for Reception teams to focus on their needs.
š Less time spent coming to the GP because weāre booking patients in for fewer, more productive appointments.
ā Lower waiting time for everyone as proactive care should reduce the overall acute burden on the practice
