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 over 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, and 86% of 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. 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 HL7 message. The partner can check the registration status of the patient on PKB and, if eligible, can invite the patient to sign up to PKB using generated tokens.

Suppose documents sent digitally to PKB are not read within a decided-upon timeframe. In that case, the mail partner can send them in the post by querying the read status of the document in PKB using the read receipt query.

The patient

The patient is notified that a new document is in their record. They click the hyperlink to open the message and view the document as a PDF (see screenshots below), or download it to a device if needed.

Hospitals decide 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. These rules are configured with the support of PKB Integrations and the Hybrid Mail partner. 

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 Organisations across the UK.

NHS Priorities 

The workflows below show how hybrid mail and PKB partnerships support NHS priorities such as eMeet and Greet. These partnerships allow hospitals to send referral letters and subsequent appointment letters to patients via their PKB record.

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 get in touch with your PKB Success Project Manager.

Further information

• How the PKB FHIR APIs can support a hybrid mail workstream FHIR APIs deploy page Hybrid mail partner example

• Hybrid Mail could spell the end for old fashioned hospital appointment letters case study