Hospital top for answering calls (From The Northern Echo)

Hospital top for answering calls

8:31am Monday 7th July 2008 in

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SWIFT switchboard operators at a North-East hospital have emerged as fastest at responding to calls in the country.

On average, callers to the University Hospital of North Durham had only about a second to wait before their query was answered, the national survey revealed.

The Durham switchboard outperformed counterparts in 218 National Health Service acute hospitals with an accident and emergency unit in the study, published in this month's issue of the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine (RSM).

It showed varying experience for callers to hospitals round the country.

The average wait for people ringing the North Durham hospital is six minutes and 20 seconds shorter than those trying to telephone the bottom-of-the-table Bristol Royal Infirmary.

Outcomes of the survey highlight that nearly two-thirds of NHS acute hospital switchboards fail to answer incoming calls within 20 seconds.

The authors found that automated answer systems substantially increased the answer time to an operator. They suggest that this may pass on unnecessary costs to the caller because of the lengthened waiting time.

A few trusts have set their own targets, but there is no NHS-wide standard or audit system for the answering of hospital switchboards.

The authors chose a target response time of 20 seconds, based on the maximum response time aimed for by other none-NHS organisations, such as police forces, councils and universities.

News of North Durham's topof- the-table performance came as a welcome surprise for staff.

Terry Brymer, line manager of the hospital's switchboard system, said: "We are extremely pleased to see the results of this survey.

"They give recognition to the professional service delivered by all staff as the first point of contact for many patients, public and other healthcare professionals."

Hospital switchboard operators handle a wide range of calls and the Journal of the RSM said both doctors and patients heavily rely on them for a variety of important patient-related queries.

The majority of the region's hospitals performed well in the survey, with Darlington Memorial Hospital coming joint 13th, with an average response time of seven seconds.

Newcastle General Hospital was the lowest placed of the region's hospitals, in 125th position at 42 seconds. The rest of the region's hospitals all came in the top half of the survey.