Capacitee - Appointments in PReSS
Appointments in PReSS - Capacitee
In Mid and South Essex an urgent dental pilot service has been commissioned, in which NHS 111 can book urgent dental appointments direct with participating practices.
To support this pilot, RMSL has developed and implemented an appointment booking system built into the PReSS system, which has been utilised by practices for day-to-day dental referrals for several years in this area.
You can view the short video at the bottom of this page, to learn more about how this appears within the PReSS system and how it can be utilised.
From a 111 - Heath Advisor perspective, RMSL have worked with the NHS 111 software provider to build in additional functionality to their existing system. This now enables the Heath Advisor to book a dental appointment direct with practices participating in the MSE pilot.
Thus, this is a seamless end to end process built into existing software platforms, being utilised by practices and 111.
NHS 111 Heath Advisor follow the same triage process that has been historically used for dental services, and only when the appointment is deemed urgent will utilise this added functionality to book an appointment directly with a participating practice.
In a scenario when the Heath Advisor is unable to find an available slot (as they have already been utilised), the Heath Advisor will submit a ‘service request’ to a given practice, asking them to make contact with the patient directly to try and meet their care needs.
The below is an example of what the NHS 111 Heath Advisor is presented with on their system:
The purpose of this pilot is to improve patient access to urgent dental care and improve the overall patient pathway.
Appointments in PReSS
As outlined above, PReSS now supports the viewing of commissioned appointment slots. These slots can be booked by either the practice directly or via 111 or other external providers using CareConnect.
If you are configured to use appointments, you will see the "View Appointments" button on your screen as shown in the video at the bottom of the page.
Please view the video for more information on how to view, book or cancel appointments. Please note that if you wish to change your appointment times this should be done via the commissioning team.
Service requests
Practices may receive ‘Service Requests’ in their PReSS system.
These are generated when NHS 111 Heath Advisor has been unable to book an appointment directly with a practice via their system. This will usually only occur when there are no practice appointments left available to book.
In these instances, the NHS 111 Heath Advisor may send a ‘Service request’ to a practice, this is a document which will note that the patient needs to be seen within a given time period. In these instances, the practice should contact the patient directly to either book an appointment or refer them to another practice/ service if they have no availability.
Please note: NHS 111 Heath Advisor can only see appointments available to book within 24 hours. This is the national infrastructure based on ‘urgency’, therefore if there are no appointments available during that timeframe, Heath Advisors will defer as above.
Practice booking
When a practice utilises the PReSS system to book a 111 - appointment slot themselves, (this may occur when a patient has been advised to contact the practice direct by 111, where 111 have been unable to book a direct appointment) the disposition attached to the booking will have the patient details only (ie as entered by the practice).
The data in these cases will be presented as follows:
Confirmation of bookings
When the patient is booked into an appointment slot by NHS 111, the patient is provided with details of the time slot, the practice address and contact details in relation to their appointment.
It is advisable that on receipt of the NHS 111 booking in PReSS, that the practice contacts the patient using the details provided and reconfirms the booking.
Accepting & Not Accepting Button
PReSS has an accepting and not accepting button at the top of the dashboard.
For the purposes of Capacitee and the 111 referrals this button should NOT be moved to not accepting referrals. This sends a message to the Referral Management Centre and stops referrals being sent to you; however this is not part of the agreed process with NHS England and causes urgent 111 referrals to fail as it does not communicate with 111 or their system where they will continue to legitimately send referrals to the slots you have confirmed as being correct.
If you utilise this button you will be reactivated by a member of the RMSL team.