**Hybrid Mail** Healthcare
Case Study | East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust
NHS Trust uses hybrid mail serviceto improve patient communicationand drive up productivity
The East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust has replaced a time-costly and labour-intensive letter production and posting operation witha Ricoh Hybrid Mail Service. It has sped upand improved communication with patients, increased staff productivity and made outbound mail more efficient and fully auditable.
Name
East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust
Location
Stevenage, Hertfordshire
Size
5,000 staff
Activity
Healthcare
Challenges
Expand use of digital technology to transform service delivery
Slow, manual mail process costing timeand money
Multiple inefficient and uncontrolled mailroom silos
Some clinicians manually processing and posting mail
Solution
Ricoh Business Process Service
Hybrid Mail
Benefits
Helps clinical staff focus on patient care
Increases admin staff and departmental productivity
Cuts time to issue patient letters from 3 days to same day
Reduces mailroom costs and demand on admin resources
Delivers a transparent, trackable and audited mail service
The East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust comprises four hospitals – including the renown Mount Vernon Cancer Centre – and several community-based clinics and GP surgeries. Its 5,000 staff offer a range of healthcare services to a community of 600,000 people.
The Trust is using digital technology to transform service delivery, communication and administration. It is part of its five-point strategic change programme to ensure systems and processes provide a consistently simple and quick experience for patients and staff.
One area that needed attention was outbound patient mail. Although there was an automatic mail system in place it was not being used very well. It had not been promoted to staff and there was a lack of training and support.
As a result, there were multiple print and mailroom silos that were costly, inefficient and uncontrolled. Staff in each department relied on the traditional and manual process of printing letters on local printers, putting them in envelopes, adding relevant information and sending them to the post room. This consumed a lot of valuable administration resources, but critically also clinical time because in some departments clinical staff had to produce and process their own letters.
To improve its outbound mail operation, the Trust handed the challenge to its centralise facilities management department. It issued a formal tender to several leading mailroom service providers.
The Trust chose Ricoh because it met all the requirements and produced a very professional bid. But what convinced us about Ricoh were the extras like providing someone onsite to handhold staff and innovations like the option to email as well as post letters.
As part of its Business Process Services, Ricoh is providing the Trust with an outsourced Hybrid Mail service which simplifies and automates outbound mail production and processes for all departments and locations.
The solution comprises a web-based printer driver and back-end automated workflow. Letters are still produced by each department but are then automatically sent to a Ricoh regional print centre where they are printed, enveloped, inserts added and then posted.
The service handles outbound mail from all locations across the Trust. Mail typically comprises patient letters about appointments, referrals and treatments they receive. As well as the main document, a letter can include around seven additional items of information such as leaflets about diseases and related healthcare treatments. Other mail items handled by the service include standard administration letters about finance, HR and running the Trust. The service is used by over 330 staff across 13 departments and is processing around 10,000 items every week.
A key part of the service is an onsite Ricoh technician who travels around Trust locations providing hands-on support and training to staff, as well as promoting and explaining the benefits and advantages of the service. Ricoh and the Trust are surveying users about how the service is being use and how it can be refined and improved.
The Trust is reviewing the opportunity to extend the service to GP surgeries in the area and is running a trial with five surgeries. Currently, letters produced by GPs are collected by the Trust’s Non-clinical Transport courier service.
Clinicians have been freed from time-costly, manual mailing to focus more on patient care. Administration staff are more productive because a large amount of time has been saved.
Now they can get letters out to patients much faster – down from two to three days to same day. It also improves communication with patients since they are getting healthcare-related information quicker.
As well as automating mail production and processes, other features of the service that help efficiency and productivity are pre-prepared letter templates depending on type of letter. Dynamic and interactive previews allow users to see what their letter and its contents look like before posting. Users can also track letters throughout the entire process so they can see what has been sent out and when.
Automating outbound mail helps reduce human error such as multiple letters sent to the same person and missed or incorrect information inserted into letters. It also improves address accuracy. Full reporting and auditing capabilities give the Trust a clear and accurate view of its entire outbound mailing operation.
Ricoh Solution/Products
Ricoh Hybrid Mail Service
Ricoh-managed onsite support
The service helps the Trust reduce costs by removing the need for localised print and mail resources and having to hold and manage stocks of headed paper and information inserts. Expensive pre-printed stock is replaced with on demand digital stationary. The Trust also gains from reduced postage costs Ricoh commands with the courier and postal services it uses. It also reduces the need for and workload on multiple mailroom operations at different Trust locations.
One element of the Ricoh service that has made a significant impact is the Ricoh specialist located at the Trust. The individual has won praise from staff for the help and support they provide as well as making the service and its benefits accessible to staff.
During the COVID-19 pandemic the Trusthas used its hybrid mail service to get appointment and treatment cancellation information out to patients quickly and efficiently. Patients got fast, clear communication while Trust staff and resources were concentrated on fighting the virus.
Ricoh’s Hybrid Mail Service is hugely important to the Trust in terms of service improvement for staff, the time it saves and getting letters out efficiently. Critically, it is helping to give time back to patient-related tasks especially for clinical staff who need to manage their own administration. Outbound mailing across the Trust is much more environmentally friendly and it saves money.
Ricoh is empowering digital workplaces using innovative technologies and services enabling individuals to work smarter. For more than 80 years, Ricoh has been driving innovation and is a leading provider of document management solutions, IT services, communication services, commercial and industrial printing, digital cameras, and industrial systems.
Headquartered in Tokyo, Ricoh Group operates in approximately 200 countries and regions. In the financial year ended March 2020, Ricoh Group had worldwide sales of 19.06 billion USD.
For further information, please visit www.ricoh.co.uk
