Manage elective waiting lists with live validation, clinical prioritisation, and proactive patient contact to reduce long-waiters and improve list accuracy.
NHS elective waiting lists have exceeded 7 million pathways. Trusts face pressure to reduce long-waiters while maintaining data quality. Waiting lists contain patients who have moved, recovered, or been treated elsewhere. Without proactive validation and clinical review, trusts book clinics for patients who do not attend, while genuinely waiting patients breach RTT targets.
Up to 10% of waiting list entries are patients who no longer need the appointment but have not been removed, distorting reported wait times and wasting clinic capacity.
Patients are booked in date order rather than clinical priority, meaning a routine case referred six months ago is booked before a clinically urgent case referred last week.
Patients approaching 52-week or 65-week thresholds are identified from monthly reports rather than live data, leaving insufficient time for remedial booking.
Outdated contact details mean validation letters and booking calls fail, adding weeks of delay to an already long wait.
Purpose-built capabilities — not generic templates you have to work around.
Scheduled validation campaigns contact patients via SMS or letter to confirm they still need the appointment, automatically removing those who opt out.
Each patient is scored by clinical urgency, weeks waited, and breach proximity, creating a priority-ordered booking queue.
Patients approaching 40, 52, 65, and 78-week thresholds are automatically escalated to operational managers with recommended actions.
Centralised contact management with SMS, email, and telephone logging to confirm patient details and capture communication preferences.
Compare waiting list inflow, clinic capacity, and clearance rates to forecast wait times and identify specialties at risk of growing backlogs.
A decision-to-treat or booking request adds the patient to the specialty waiting list with clinical priority, RTT clock status, and contact details.
At configurable intervals, the system contacts patients to confirm they still require the appointment. Non-responders are flagged for telephone follow-up.
Validated patients are ranked by a composite score of clinical priority, weeks waited, and breach proximity. The booking team works the queue top-down.
Patients approaching threshold weeks are escalated with a recommended action (insource, outsource, or clinical review for appropriateness).
Once booked, treated, or validated off the list, the patient is removed with a structured outcome code for commissioner reporting.
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The system sends an SMS or letter asking the patient to confirm they still need the appointment via a reply or web link. Non-responders receive a follow-up after a configurable interval. Persistent non-responders are flagged for telephone contact before removal.
Yes. Validation campaigns can be targeted by specialty, consultant, wait duration, or any other list attribute, allowing you to focus on the areas with the greatest data quality risk.
Clinical priority is set by the referring or triaging clinician using a configurable priority scale (e.g. P1-P4). The composite score combines this with weeks waited and breach proximity to create the booking order.
Yes. Long-waiter thresholds, priority booking, and demand-capacity modelling are specifically designed to support the NHS elective recovery targets for reducing 65-week and 78-week waiters.
Yes. Patients booked via insourcing or outsourcing arrangements are tagged accordingly, allowing you to report on activity and cost by provider.
See how automated validation, priority scoring, and long-waiter escalation reduce your waiting list and improve data quality.