Eurocross Medical Service Center
reduces wait times with Platform24 and now responds to 90% of patients within 15 minutes.
Eurocross Medical Service Center is the primary healthcare provider for insured patients of Achmea’s (an insurance company) three brands – Zilveren Kruis, De Friesland and FBTO – in the Netherlands. They give around 6.5 million people access to digital consultations with nurses via chat. Over the past 12 months, Eurocross has carried out more than 6,000 patient consultations via the platform. Many health insurers in the Netherlands now offer a digital first-line advisory service – but no one except Eurocross does so backed by Triage24, a CE-marked medical device (MDR class IIa).
Faster response times lead to happier patients
Eurocross has nurses on duty from 07:00 to 23:00 – and they can consult doctors via the consultation feature in Platform24. When the nurses initiate a doctor consultation, they chat with doctors from a partner organization of Eurocross.
“The advantage is that doctors now have access to the same patient information as the nurses in Platform24, and that is much better than the email-based system we used before,” says Nicole Bootsma, Head of the Medical Team at Eurocross.
“We have improved our response times with Platform24. We now give 90% of our patients a first response within 15 minutes, which is about 5–7% better than before we introduced Platform24. We believe this has something to do with how the platform is designed. It’s easier for the nurses to work in Platform24 than in our old system,” explains Nico van Dijk, Head of Development and Innovation at Eurocross.
Nurses become more efficient with Platform24
This is confirmed by the nurses themselves. “Our nurses really enjoy working in Platform24. The triage report helps them read up on the patients’ complaints before the chat starts, and for complicated cases and cases involving children, where we want to take extra precautions, the nurses can consult their colleagues before giving advice to the patient,” says Bootsma.
The nurses consistently rate the system 7–10 out of 10 possible points in user surveys. “The nurses appreciate the detailed information about the patient’s complaints that the triage summary provides,” explains van Dijk.
The nurses at Eurocross also handle high-priority medical alerts during their workdays, which sometimes leads to a high workload. Now they can switch between taking phone calls, chatting with patients in Platform24, and responding to alerts, without compromising the quality of their medical service.
33 percent of Eurocross patients say they no longer need to see a general practitioner
Just as in many other countries, general practitioners in the Netherlands are under heavy strain. According to Eurocross’s operational experience, the services they offer can help reduce the pressure on GPs’ phone lines.
“We have prevented hundreds of GP visits for our patients, and on average 33 percent of patients say they no longer need to see their GP after their digital consultation with Eurocross. A further 33 percent say they will wait and see if their symptoms resolve,” explains van Dijk. Eurocross collects this data from patients after their digital consultation.
With Platform24, Eurocross nurses say it is easier to escalate a consultation to a doctor, which they feel reduces friction among staff. Through these consultations, the nurses have gained more experience and can now carry out more consultations without a doctor than they could at the start. This also appears to lead to more satisfied patients. Eurocross receives high ratings from patients. Patients currently 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 for and facilitate efficient online consultations, Eurocross’s experience demonstrates the value they see in digital first-line consultations. Eurocross believes this is a model that can be applied elsewhere to further reduce the pressure on GP capacity.
