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
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Why
Reduce postage costs: Automatically avoid sending physical letters to patients who have already read them digitally in PKB.
Ensure inclusivity: Continue posting letters to patients who have not yet accessed the digital version, ensuring no one misses important information.
Focus on real-time behaviour: Adjust delivery methods based on patient's interaction with each letter.
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Outcomes
Over 2,100,000 letters were sent digitally rather than in the post via PKB, with an environmental saving of >292tCO2eover 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 and 86% of their digital letters them were read before their postal date.
What
PKB tracks each letter, whether the patient has read it before the health care provider has to post the letter.
PKB provides this tracking information to the healthcare provider’s letter-posting system (hybrid mail). The letter-posting system only posts letters the patient has not read digitally in PKB.
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The health care provider saves money from the avoided postage without risking missed appointments from patients who never got to read the letter.
PKB tracks avoided costs and reduced carbon footprint in the statistics dashboard, providing customers with actionable insights to monitor their savings and confidently report outcomes to their boards or support case studies.
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How
A mail (postal company) partner will process documents received from a customer and send these digitally to PKB using an MDM T02HL7 message. The partner can check the registration status of the patient on PKB and, if eligible, may can invite the patient to sign up to PKB using generated tokens generated. If
Suppose documents sent digitally to PKB are not read , then within a decided-upon timeframe. In that case, the mail partner has the option to can send them in the post by querying the read status of the document in PKB using the read receipt query.Many different letter types can be sent into PKB, including appointment letters, discharge summaries, clinic letters.
The patient
The patient receives a notification that they have is notified that a new document is in their record - they . They click the hyperlink to open the message and view the document as a PDF . If the patient has difficulty opening the document, they can report the issue and receive a postal copy of the letter(see screenshots below), or download it to a device if needed.
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Hospitals decide the rules as to when documents should be posted - for . 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 These rules are done configured with the support of PKB Integrations and the Hybrid Mail partner.
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Letter types
In and outpatient appointment letters: confirmations, reminders, reschedules, referral acknowledgement letters or missed appointment letters.
Treatment letters: admission, discharge letters and summaries, operative reports, clinician review summaries, pre-assessments including patient leaflets and advice, Multidisciplinary team meeting notes, health screening reports or follow-up instructions letters.
Test letters: test results or requests for further tests.
Referral letters: updates, outcomes, or next steps.
Health monitoring: check-up invitations or chronic condition updates.
Administrative letters: consent forms or service access details.
Informational letters: health advice, health promotion, birth reports, support documents, signposting or care summaries.
Urgent letters: emergency scheduling or recalls.
Integration partners
PKB works with hybrid mail partners, including Synertec and Xerox, at multiple Trusts Organisations across the UK.
NHS
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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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. These partnerships allow hospitals to send referral letters and subsequent appointment letters to patients via their PKB record.
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If you would like to discuss working with a hybrid mail partner in this way or want to reduce the number of letters sent to the patients in the post, please contact get in touch with your PKB Success Project Manager or Account Manager.