Overview
Operating from the Willow Tree Healthy Living Centre in Salford, Greater Manchester, Mocha Parade Medical Centre serves just over 2,000 patients. With two GP partners, a practice nurse and a small admin team, the practice prides itself on a friendly, patient-centred approach. Many of their patients are elderly or vulnerable, relying on the telephone as their primary contact method.
The challenge
While functional, the practice’s previous BT Cloud telephony system was not designed for primary care. Essential features such as patient callback were missing, making it challenging for vulnerable and elderly patients to reliably get through to the practice during busy times.
The solution
After hearing positive feedback from local practices, the practice chose Surgery Connect and identified Personalised Call Routing as a feature that would make a significant difference for their patients. Within hours of the practice providing a list of patients, the X-on Health team configured call flows to prioritise these patients, ensuring they bypassed queues and reached a member of staff quickly.
Early results & impact
The practice set up a ‘vulnerable patient’ group, starting with palliative care patients and caregivers, later extending to those with dementia, mental health needs and other high-priority groups. The benefits were immediate:
I assumed such a valuable tool would be hard to implement but the process was extremely easy and quick due to thorough support from X-on Health. Within the first day of implementation, we could see our vulnerable patients were getting through without having to wait in a queue. The beauty of the system is we can choose who needs to have this feature.
Patrick, Practice Manager
Feedback from patients was highly positive, with vulnerable patients able to reliably contact the surgery multiple times over several days without delay. Importantly, no additional training was needed for the team, making the transition seamless.
Looking ahead
Mocha Parade Medical Practice has shared their success across their Primary Care Network (PCN). Following their positive experience, Personalised Call Routing has been added to their PCN’s wider access plan, with more practices set to adopt the feature to help meet NHS England access targets.
Summary
By implementing Personalised Call Routing within Surgery Connect, Mocha Parade Medical Practice has transformed access for its most vulnerable patients. The collaborative setup combined with immediate improvements in patient experience highlights how digital-first solutions can be tailored to deliver safer, more responsive care.