As reported by NHS England, hundreds of thousands of NHS App messages changed expensive texts, demonstrating vital financial savings for the healthcare system and emphasising the app’s rising significance in affected person communication
Throughout 2023/24, 22.5 million messages have been despatched via the NHS App, which might have beforehand been despatched as a textual content message or letter.
The typical value of sending a textual content message is round 5p, which represents a saving of no less than £1.1 million.
Individuals who change on notifications within the NHS App have their messages robotically despatched via the app.
This avoids the price of sending a textual content message, is safer, and places all affected person NHS messages in a single place.
The messaging companies obtainable within the NHS App relies on a affected person’s GP surgical procedure or healthcare supplier, however many customers can now:
- view messages from their NHS healthcare companies (via the NHS App Messaging service)
- view responses from their GP follow or comply with up on issues like check outcomes (typically referred to as a web based session)
- view messages to their healthcare supplier (reminiscent of specialist docs at a hospital)
Dr Vin Diwakar, Nationwide Transformation Director at NHS England mentioned: “After we speak about the advantages of the NHS App, we normally give attention to affected person comfort, or the admin time saved for frontline employees – however the NHS App can also be saving the NHS vital quantities of cash on textual content messages and postal stamps, and these financial savings will solely get bigger as extra options are added to the app sooner or later.
“By encouraging extra individuals to make use of the NHS App, with notifications switched on, we will actually begin to scale back the estimated £450 million per yr that’s presently spent on speaking with sufferers.”
The NHS App now has greater than 34 million registered customers, which is round three quarters of the grownup inhabitants in England.
Because the starting of this yr, the common variety of NHS App logins per weekday is almost 1.2 million.
Month-to-month logins rose by 69% within the final yr from 18.7 million in March 2023 to 31.5 million in March 2024.
Well being Minister, Andrew Stephenson mentioned: “Greater than 34 million of us at the moment are utilizing the NHS App, which permits individuals in England to entry well being companies like ordering repeat prescriptions and reserving appointments shortly and simply on-line, whereas saving the NHS hundreds of thousands of kilos and liberating up time.
“As we introduced within the Finances, we’re investing £3.4 billion in upgrading and enhancing expertise within the NHS as a part of our plan to make our healthcare system quicker, easier, and fairer, in order that docs and nurses can spend extra time with sufferers and fewer time on admin.”
New options are being added to the NHS App usually because the NHS encourages extra individuals to make use of the app of their on a regular basis lives.
These options allow sufferers to view their GP well being file, order repeat prescriptions, view or handle hospital appointments, nominate their most well-liked pharmacy, discover native NHS companies and get well being recommendation through 111 on-line.