BackgroundAiredale NHS Trust is based at Airedale General Hospital near Keighley,West Yorkshire.

The SituationUntil 1994, when Airedale joined OTM, the Trust printed and enveloped all their Outpatient Appointment letters in-house. This was a laborious, expensive and time-consuming job for an already busy office. Alan Kolin, Director of Organisational Development and Training, decided to outsource the work, as a complete redesign of the outpatient appointment letters was required to meet National Audit Office Good Practice Guidelines. It also followed a review of Outpatient Services, which found that one in every eight outpatients was failing to turn up for their appointments, at an estimated cost of around £100 per patient.

The review indicated that the way the Trust was communicating with outpatients was one of the causes of this problem.

OTM was chosen above other suppliers to improve Airedale’s patient communications as they had a proven track record and offered both the technical capability and a cost-effective solution to the Trust’s requirements.

The RequirementAiredale wanted a company who could print and despatch up to 1000 outpatient letters every working day. By outsourcing their work, Airedale could provide patients with specific information sheets detailing the clinic they were to attend. OTM could also offer Airedale the opportunity to provide Outpatient information booklets to their patients as a selective insert. In particular, outsourcing this work to OTM meant these processes could be achieved automatically where previously they would have to be undertaken manually.

The SolutionOTM worked with the Trust’s IT Department to translate specific data and clinic codings. Additionally the Trust wished to achieve data transfer electronically, direct from the Trust to OTM thus reducing the risk of manual error. Today, the Outpatients Department transmits the patient’s data to OTM via an electronic link, all at the click of a button. Within an hour of it being sent the letters are printed and are in the post.

The Trust uses a Look Up Table system whereby a series of clinic codes identifies which letter/information sheet the patient is to receive.  Variable data, for example the patient’s name, address and appointment date/time is sent in the data with the code, then run against the Look Up Table to create the letter. The daily file splits into three streams; 1st and 2nd class and a ‘Return to HQ’ file which is sent back to Airedale. The letters are then printed onto plain, A4, cut-sheet stationery with the Trust logo scanned on in highlight colour.  The letters/information sheets are enveloped with the booklet, if applicable, into C5 envelopes, which are pre-printed with the Trust's logo and address.