Customer story
Eurocross is staffed by nurses from 7 am to 11 pm – and they can consult doctors via the consultations feature in Platform24. By starting a doctor’s consultation, the nurses chat with doctors at a collaborating partner to Eurocross.
“The advantage is that the doctors now have access to the same patient information as the nurses in Platform24, and this is much better than the email-based system we used to use,” says Nicole Bootsma, manager of the medical team at Eurocross
„We have improved our service response times with Platform24. We now give 90% of our patients a first response within 15 minutes, this is about 5-7% better than before we introduced Platform24. We think it has something to do with the way the platform is designed. It is easier for the nurses to work in Platform24 than in our old system”, Nico van Dijk, Development and Innovation Manager at Eurocross, elaborates.
This is echoed by the nurses themselves. “Our nurses really enjoy working in Platform24. The triaging report helps them to read up on the complaints of the clients before the chat starts, and for complicated cases and those concerning children, where we want to take extra precautions, the nurses can seek advice from their colleagues before advising the patient,” says Bootsma. The nurses consistently rate the system around 8 out of 10 possible points in user surveys. “The nurses appreciate the level of detail about the patient’s complaint generated by the triage summary”, explains van Dijk.
The nurses at Eurocross also handle high priority medical alarms during their workdays, at times leading to high workload for them. They can now alternate between taking phone calls, chatting with patients in Platform24 and answering alarms, without compromising the quality of their medical service.
The general practitioners are, just like in many other countries, under heavy strain in the Netherlands. According to Eurocross’ operational experience, services like the one they offer may help reduce pressure on GP telephone lines.
„We have prevented hundreds of visits to GPs for our patients, and on average, 33 percent of patients say they no longer need to see their GP after their digital consultation at Eurocross. Another 33 percent say they will wait and see if their symptoms pass,“ explains van Dijk. Eurocross gathers this data from patients after their digital consultation.
With Platform24, Eurocross nurses say that it’s easier to escalate a consultation to a physician, which improves their collaboration. With the help of the consultations, the nurses have gained more experience, and are now able to complete more consultations without doctors than in the beginning. This seems to translate into happier patients as well. Eurocross enjoys high ratings from patients. Currently, patients rate the service 4.86 out of 5 when asked.
Through a combination of well-trained nurses, access to doctors and a digital platform that helps prepare and facilitate efficient online consultations, Eurocross’ experience demonstrates the value they see in digital first line consultations. Eurocross considers this a model that could be applied elsewhere to further reduce the pressure on GPs capacity.