Company: Consultant Connect
Managing Director: Katrin James
Website: https://www.consultantconnect.org.uk/
About Consultant Connect
Consultant Connect was founded in 2015 by Jonathan Patrick, Scott Welpton and Roger Tweedale. It uses technology to connect clinicians directly with consultants and help patients access the right care faster. This encourages clinicians to get “Advice & Guidance” (A&G) from consultants on the best treatment to give patients where the next steps might not be immediately obvious.
What began as a project to improve communication between clinicians and consultants is now used by half the NHS, covering over 45 million patients across the UK, and has helped over 1.5 million patients avoid unnecessary hospital trips, getting faster and more appropriate care as a result.
Kat James, Managing Director, joined the business after a decade in corporate management, eager to “roll up her sleeves” and work on the frontlines. She’s risen through the ranks, and became joint MD, along with Lucy Sammons earlier this year.
Transforming communication across the NHS has never been straightforward. In a system defined by complexity, legacy IT, and tight budgets, even the best technology must prove its worth in the real world. Consultant Connect has succeeded by working hand in hand with local NHS teams, helping to streamline their local pathways and processes rather than forcing change from the top down.
Consultant Connect has redefined what Advice & Guidance (A&G) and digital triage can achieve. Its platform allows NHS consultants to provide real-time support to primary care colleagues. As a result 100,000 patients avoided an unnecessary trip to hospital last year.
For example, paramedics use it in Scotland to seek advice before admitting a patient to A&E. In the last 12 months, SAS paramedics used the app to make over 22,500 calls to consultants. Calls were answered in 12 seconds on average, and 9,600 patients avoided unnecessary admissions to A&E as a result.
In addition to A&G, Consultant Connect also facilitates the remote triaging of existing waiting lists from consultants on its National Consultant Network (NCN). This team of consultants review referrals, and can either take patients off the waiting list that don’t need to be there and provide them with comprehensive treatment plans, or move patients further up the waiting list that need urgent care.. The NCN can also be switched on in just 72 hours providing support for local areas during peak demands when local specialists are unavailable.
This has been incredibly impactful. These projects have triaged over 80,000 patients across the UK, safely taking over 31,000 patients off waiting lists, while moving 9,600 patients needing urgent care up the list. In one hospital neurology department, a consultant on the NCN slashed the waiting list in half in under two months.
Consultant Connect is proving that the most impactful innovations in the NHS are simple and easy to replicate. As Kat says: “The NHS doesn’t need more pilots or more plans. It needs scalable models that already work – and that’s exactly what we’ve built.”
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