Posters

Telephone activity- measuring the outcomes

Vernon Karen, Innovex MS Support team (sponsored by Merk Serono).

As part of the continuing monitoring of practice and validation of time utilisation of the Innovex / MerkSerono MS Support team, an in-depth analysis of time spent on telephone contacts was carried out.

Aims of the analysis:

Quantification of the actual time spent on the phone
Analysis of type of telephone contact
As stated, validation of time spent on telephone contacts
Develop a telephone monitoring tool for use by all MS specialist nurses

First phase:

The activity analysis took place over a working week (Mon-Fri), included all team members and involved the counting of all incoming and outgoing telephone calls to both mobile and hospital line.

The conclusions from this initial activity indicated we needed to develop a grading system for all calls that would reflect the quality as well as a quantity component of the calls and as a result a grading system was developed by the Team. The Team felt this 1 to 5 scale system was easy to use and enabled calls of differing complexity to be accurately reflected and recorded.

Second phase:

Using the developed grading system, a further analysis took place and the conclusions from this second recording of activity demonstrated that the tool did indeed differentiate between the complexities of calls, allowing for a better analysis of the quality of calls.

Importance of such activity:

Optimizes clinic outpatient appointments (for both CNS and Consultant Neurologist): and as such
Helps achieve the 18 week target and may be regarded as a "clock stopper":
Provides in-depth analysis of often unseen activity and able to present as part of annual reports/ business cases.

Current situation:

All telephone calls are now continuously logged, counted and graded. The numbers collated at the end of each month and form part of the data to support the importance of the roles within each site.