Case Study: Sussex Hospitals Reduced Wait Time by 90% With Netcall

The Challenge

University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust serves 1.6 million people across seven hospital sites, spanning most of Sussex’s population, from Chichester to Brighton.

The Trust was formed through a merger in 2020, but the organization remained operationally divided in some ways, with Brighton and Haywards Heath on one side, Worthing and Chichester on the other and each side maintaining separate booking teams with different telephony systems.

The Trust wanted to bring everything together, driving significant improvements to address patient access challenges, tackling call abandonment rates which frequently exceeded 40% and wait times longer than 30 minutes.

Sussex Hospitals were split across two contact centre systems, Netcall’s Liberty Converse, our omnichannel contact centre solution, in the west and another supplier in the east.

While the west functioned adequately, the east faced severe pressures with long waits and high call abandonment, leaving patients unable to reschedule or cancel appointments and driving up DNA rates.

The Trust wanted to unify their contact centre solution with our patient engagement portal, Patient Hub, to reduce call volumes, ease staff pressure and gave patients a single seamless point of contact. This would improve access, digital patient engagement and outcomes across the region.

Solution

Netcall’s project team were on-site at both Shoreham and Brighton for go-live, supporting staff through training and testing to ensure everyone felt confident with the new system.

On day one, the Liberty Converse contact centre solution went live, introducing intelligent call routing, self-service options, and an AI Assistant (“AVA”) that uses natural language to understand what patients need and route them correctly.

The Trust also developed intelligent call streams to reduce unnecessary calls and guide patients to the right service more efficiently.

To support its diverse population, Sussex began implementing Liberty Converse’s multi-language AI chatbot, successfully tested in Polish, Arabic, Ukrainian, French and Spanish.

They also embraced Patient Hub’s Questionnaires, allowing staff to create and update patient forms in minutes and attach information leaflets directly to appointments.

The Trust began sending DNA questionnaires, giving teams better insight into why patients miss appointments.

Weekly waiting list validation is now automated and sent digitally through the system, with postal follow-ups for non-digital users.

With expanded capacity in the booking centre, Sussex can now communicate with patients in the way that best suits them.

“Liberty Converse has been really, really positive for us. The team love it. It’s just so versatile and easy to use. We’re in control – Netcall came and ‘taught us how to fish’ and now we run it ourselves, giving the Trust the flexibility to adapt our system to our evolving needs without ongoing professional services costs.

And when we do need support, Netcall has proved to be extremely responsive,“ said James Allan, Interim  Associate  Director - Planned  Care, University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust

Results

• 75% reduction in call abandonment – from over 40% to below 10%
• 90% reduction in call wait times – from 30+ minutes to under 3 minutes
• Reduction in call handling times – to under 3 minutes
• 36% of calls deflected away from the booking centre through intelligent routing and self-service, meaning that 1,500+ calls are now easily manageable
• Multi-language AI chatbot – serving diverse populations
• DNA reduction – rates dropped from 13% to 5% immediately after launch and now hover at 4%
• 200 appointments rebooked / cancelled daily – via patient self-service (200 fewer calls per day)
• 86% digital response rate – plus an additional 6% of patients responding to postal letters
• 45% reduction in monthly SMS costs – from £33,000 to £18,000 with further savings to come
• Waiting lists reduced by 12% – enabling focus on patients who still need to be seen
• Single phone number for all patients across the Trust
• Questionnaires built in minutes – which previously took weeks
• Information attached to appointments – improving patient communication and reducing enquiry calls.

“We saw immediate and dramatic improvements, literally overnight. Call abandonment dropped below 10% on day one. Waiting time dropped. Call handling times are quicker. When 1,500 calls in a day feels effortless rather than atrocious, you know something significant has changed,” said James Allan, Interim  Associate  Director - Planned  Care, University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust

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Reviewed by: Megan Jones