PKB has partnered with hybrid mail companies to give patients access to their clinical letters. The ability to send correspondence digitally to patients enables them to access hospital letters whenever needed. Through a read receipt, trusts can be confident that digital letters have been received and read in PKB, with the ability to fall back on postal communication if patients haven't read their letter digitally.
Post issues
Historically, trusts have relied on posting physical correspondence to patients to notify them about their latest appointments, clinic outcome summaries and discharge letters. Postal letters have a high financial and environmental cost for trusts and they don't know if the correspondence has been received or read.
Benefits of Hybrid Mail
Patients have instant access to letters that they can use alongside other relevant data in their PKB record such as upcoming appointments and recent blood results
Cost saving to the Trust - if a letter is read digitally, it does not need to be posted
Carbon reduction to the Trust - by sending letters digitally and avoiding post, over 110g of carbon per letter is saved
Letters get posted if the patient doesn't read it in PKB
Hospitals know if letters have been sent and read
Patients increasingly expect to have access to information digitally and immediately
Outcomes/Impact
>2,100,000 letters sent digitally rather than in the post via PKB, with an environmental saving of >292tCO2e
328,829 letters sent digitally rather than in the post between 1st April 2023 - 30th June 2023, making an environmental saving of 45tCO2e, as well as the associated financial savings, with some highlights including:
University Hospitals of Derby & Burton sent 59,450 letters digitally during this time, with 90% of their digital letters read before they would have gotten them in the post.
Hull University Teaching Hospitals sent 53,894 letters digitally during this time, with 85% of their digital letters read before their postal date.
East Sussex Healthcare sent 44,348 letters digitally during this time, with 86% of their digital letters read before their postal date.
How
A mail (postal company) partner will process documents received from a customer and send these digitally to PKB using an MDM T02. The partner can check the registration status of the patient on PKB and, if eligible, may invite the patient to sign up to PKB using tokens generated. If documents sent digitally to PKB are not read, then the mail partner has the option to send them in the post by querying the read status of the document in PKB using the read receipt query.
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Hospitals decide the rules as to when documents should be posted - for example, for an appointment ten days away, the customer implements a rule that if the letter is unread within 72 hours, a postal copy is sent. The configuration of these rules are done with the support of PKB Integrations and the Hybrid Mail partner.
Who
PKB works with hybrid mail partners, including Synertec and Xerox, at multiple Trusts across the UK.
NHS priorities
The workflows below show how hybrid mail and PKB partnerships are used to support NHS priorities such as eMeet and Greet - allowing hospitals to advise patients that they have been added to a waiting list and a team. Patients receiving their appointment letter on PKB will see information about shared decision tools and waiting list validation questionnaire.
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If you would like to discuss working with a hybrid mail partner in this way, please contact your PKB Success Project Manager or Account Manager.