Transforming healthcare delivery with virtual consultations on Microsoft Teams

About three years ago, the organization adopted Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams. As a publicly funded organization, the Trust is always looking to get the most out of its investments, and the health informatics team at the Trust quickly found a wide variety of uses for the numerous capabilities delivered in Teams. The solutions were used to provide virtual consultations to select patients, improve internal communications, and most recently, speed COVID-19 test result reporting.

Upgrading analytics capabilities

Data analytics is close to the heart of the health informatics team, and setting out to make data analysis more widely available to NHS employees was one of the first projects the team undertook with Microsoft 365. “We did loads of projects with Power BI when we first got Microsoft 365,” says James Rawlinson, Director of Health Informatics at the Rotherham NHS Foundation Trust. “When we moved our entire analytics platform to Power BI, we saw the power of cloud-based technology to break down silos, provide scale, and improve accessibility. Suddenly, everyone could easily access data through Teams.”

Instead of manually pulling data from multiple sources into weekly or monthly reports, the Trust used Power BI to connect to the data sources directly and create real-time reports with engaging visualizations that made the data easy to understand. In one instance, this access to multiple data sources improved resource allocation by better matching capacity with demand, resulting in a reduction of outpatient waiting lists by 65 percent in just six months.

Keeping doctors informed with SMS integration

When the Rotherham NHS Foundation Trust’s Medical Director wanted a way to communicate with doctors across the Trust, the informatics team naturally turned to Teams. But after easily creating a Teams channel to manage the communications, the team quickly found out that not all of the doctors were always signed into Teams. “To ensure that all doctors could receive the messages in a timely manner, we used Power Automate to connect Teams to our mobile texting provider,” says Rawlinson. “Because of the integration into Teams, now when the medical director sends a message in the Teams channel, all of the doctors also receive a text message.”

Improving COVID-19 test scheduling

When COVID-19 PCR testing for healthcare staff was introduced in the United Kingdom, the Trust had to quickly create a process to manage the huge demand for tests. The initial system required people to call in to schedule a test and then receive a call back with the test results in approximately 24 hours. Given the large number of tests the Trust was performing, the system wasn’t sustainable, and the health informatics team was brought in to create a solution.

Using Power Automate, it integrated text messaging, so staff members receive their negative test results immediately after they become available. “The ability to text patients using Teams was lifesaving for the PCR admin team because they no longer had to phone people, and staff members no longer had to isolate for an entire day while waiting for their test results,” explains Rawlinson. “This COVID-19 testing solution showed how quickly and easily we can use Teams as a platform, and the integration with Bookings and Microsoft Power Platform to create an end-to-end process. We shared this process across the broader NHS, and within weeks it was implemented at many NHS Trusts across the country.”

Creating a telehealth solution from scratch

Virtual consultations are becoming more common among healthcare providers, especially with the demands placed on providers by the COVID-19 health crisis. For some clinicians at the Rotherham NHS Trust, virtual visits delivered using Teams have been around for years, thanks to a dedicated health informatics team that is always looking for ways to improve healthcare delivery using technology.

Back in 2017, when Rebekah Davies joined the health informatics team at the NHS after working as a speech therapist in private practice, she brought the experience of successfully using telehealth solutions. Having recently deployed Teams, the Trust thought the solution seemed like a natural fit to provide telehealth. “We were looking at different video solutions, but they were really costly, and we felt that Teams had all of the functionality we needed,” says Davies.

Initially, the Trust used the Teams telehealth solution for speech therapy patients because they did not require hands-on therapy and could do their prescribed exercises remotely. A Teams channel was set up for each patient and served as a record of the patient’s visits and the prescribed exercises. The Trust used Microsoft Forms to collect patient outcomes before and after each session. “Wherever possible, we digitized paper-based processes like patient assessments and exercises,” says Davies.

“Using Teams for virtual visits provided many benefits for patients and clinicians. Patients found it really flexible, and they didn’t have to worry about coming to the hospital and finding parking. Clinicians were saving on paper and the time they spent entering records into electronic systems,” explains Davies.

Taking telehealth in Teams to the next level

To implement a more complete solution that could be used across the Trust, Davies reached out to Oxford Digital Health (OX.DH), a member of the Microsoft Partner Network, which had a virtual waiting room solution, OX.waiting room (OX.wr), based in Teams. “Teams is a brilliant product for the Trust for virtual consultations. Teams has so many features that no other virtual consultation platform has in terms of accessibility—we can control the background, use Immersive Reader, and build on top of it with the APIs,” says Davies. “With all of the available functionality, we can tailor the virtual experience to meet the individual needs of the patient.”

Davies worked closely with the OX.DH development team to modify the OX.wr virtual waiting room solution to meet the needs of the Trust, which included integrating scheduling with its multiple electronic patient record (EPR) systems and SMS notifications for patients and clinicians. After an evaluation period, NHS Rotherham went live with the OX.wr solution, which uses Teams to provide a user interface for managing virtual appointments and uses the Microsoft Graph API to interact with various Microsoft 365 services such as Bookings, Azure Active Directory (Azure AD), and Teams. As a result, the Trust simplified its IT landscape, improved user experiences, decommissioned standalone point solutions like Attend Anywhere and AccuRx, and saved the NHS money.

Patients can now make appointments online. Appointments are managed with Bookings and sent to the appropriate EPR system. Patients receive text message confirmations and reminders to join their appointment from the device and location of their choosing. When they enter the OX.wr virtual waiting room, they can complete online check-in forms using a bot built with Power Virtual Agents—and they can do all of this from a desktop or mobile device, whichever is most convenient. Clinicians see the appointments on their Teams and Outlook calendars and initiate sessions through Teams plugins. Appointments can be automatically recorded and transcribed. All completed forms are stored in Microsoft SharePoint and are easily accessed through the Teams channel. OX.wr also helps improve patient engagement with integrated survey automation using Microsoft Forms. The results are stored in the underlying Microsoft Dataverse tables for the OX.wr app, making them easy to access and analyze.

The Rotherham NHS Foundation Trust is looking forward to expanding its use of Teams for virtual consultations with the additional benefits provided by OX Digital Health. “I’ve thoroughly tested the OX.wr solution both as a clinician and as a patient, and it's really quick and easy to use. As a clinician, you use it as part of your normal activities within Teams,” says Davies. “For the patient, the virtual waiting room walks them though the sign-in and registration. It has increased patient satisfaction by delivering a digital experience—which has many benefits over coming to the clinic in person.” The team is now working together on OX.patient consent (OX.pc) as the next component to enable.

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