Calabrio Transforms Mersey Care’s Mental Health Crisis Services
Background
Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust is one of the largest trusts providing physical and mental health services in the North West of England. Serving more than 1.4 million people across 170 clinical services sites across the region, the Trust is also commissioned for services that cover North Wales and the Midlands.
Challenge
As part of its ‘striving for perfect care’ strategy, which aligns with the NHS long-term plan, Mersey Care wanted to develop a dedicated 24/7 urgent mental health Crisis Helpline to support communities throughout Cheshire and Merseyside.
Although originally planned for 2021, the launch of the helpline was brought forward in 2020 due to the impact of restrictions imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic. This enabled Mersey Care to respond to the rapidly increasing mental health concerns in the community and provide immediate support.
The existing technology did not allow the clinicians to operationally meet the needs of 1 hour / 4 hour response directive and diversion from Accident and Emergency Services or the pending increased volume forecasted by the delivery of the National NHS111 (Press 2 for Mental Health) pathway. The technology platform required greater resilience, multi-channels and flexibility to support a generative AI Technology approach to reduce risk and improve the Service User experience.
Solution
Mersey Care and NHS Informatics Merseyside partnered with ITGL, a multi-award-winning digital consultancy, and Calabrio to develop the helpline. Together, they have ensured that the latest technological innovations are deployed to continuously improve Mersey Care’s ability to care for people in crisis.
The solution also required the integration of third-party products, and through a rigorous process, Cisco Webex Contact Center / Calabrio successfully met the required specification, including a live real-time proof of concept process to demonstrate that the technology would work. This included the analysis of over 1,000 calls and the provision of real-time feedback and insights that gave board-level assurance on product capability.
In addition, the solution is customised to enable the Trust to prioritise and route calls based on their level of urgency, ensuring critical calls reach clinicians immediately, reducing strain on A&E and facilitating appropriate mental health support without the service user having to attend the A&E hospital.
Utilising text-to-speech features enables the team to be flexible and responsive to patient needs. With the new technology, clinicians can reduce their administration time by utilising the text-to-speech feature rather than inputting their manually recorded notes. Real-time and historical data and reports can be accessed within Webex, allowing the team to better manage calls, queue times, abandoned calls, call-backs and agent availability.
Importantly, the solution was created to make it as easy as possible for the clinicians to operate. Keeping in mind that the user of the solution would not be a technical user but a clinician who is dealing with a patient in need, the platform was customised with features that helped the clinician deliver quick and effective care. For example, features like real-time demand visuals for clinicians to support managing acuity, as well as generating live reports that provide insights into themes and trends for the thousands of calls received daily.
Benefits
Implementing this approach enabled the Trust to respond more quickly, provide the correct care and safeguard the wellbeing of clinicians so that they can continue to deliver this critical service to the highest standard.
The solution has delivered outstanding results, exceeding expectations and goals. For example, Mersey Care has identified that only 21% of contacts handled by clinicians are ‘clinical’. By rerouting calls to the most appropriate team members, clinicians have more time to deal with critical calls. Calabrio Analytics automatically summarises contacts and identifies the location of key points in a call. With transcriptions, contact navigation, and 150-word summaries available within 10 minutes, Calabrio has reduced the time spent on after-call notes and reporting, increasing workforce capacity across all skill sets.
Analytics also identifies repeat contact patterns, either by dialling numbers or other indicators of repeat contact. Mersey Care has currently identified that 15.3% of contacts are repeat callers. These calls can be audited and studied to identify where the service may have been improved or where staff may benefit from further training to ensure that the correct care can be given and to hopefully reduce the need for repeat callers. This also enables the team to identify repeat callers and help them with community services or escalate to the appropriate interventions when necessary.
Dashboards, powered by transcription, identify clinicians who have dealt with high volumes of contacts or where staff have dealt with particularly challenging or abusive contacts. With 50 clinicians leaving the service every year and 6,728 hours spent on induction and training of new staff, identifying staff at risk of burnout enables more effective support for wellbeing. This protects clinicians and improves retention, saving the trust time and resources in the process.
Specifically, the live dashboards within the solution supports the clinical team in having real-time oversight of demand and acuity. This enables the prompting of clinical escalations and mobilisation of resources where required.
The system has also supported team-based and individual learning through supervision using analytics and call recording.
During the COVID lockdowns, an average of 3,500 people per month in the North Mersey area used the service. Now in its fourth year, the Crisis Helpline project continues to evolve, with 500,000 more people known to be using the service than in 2020 and an increase from an average of 2,000 to 9,000 calls handled per month.
Calabrio is a trusted ally to leading brands. The digital foundation of a customer-centric contact centre, the Calabrio ONE workforce performance suite helps enrich and understand human interactions, empowering your contact centre as a brand guardian. We maximise agent performance, exceed customer expectations, and boost workforce efficiency using connected data, AI-fueled analytics, automated workforce management, and personalised coaching. Only Calabrio ONE unites workforce optimisation (WFO), agent engagement, and business intelligence solutions into a cloud-native, fully integrated suite that adapts to your business.
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