On this page
The benefits of this project
Benefits for Your Patients
- Quick and easy access to digital fit notes
- No need to travel to collect fit notes
Benefits for Your Practice
- Staff time saved as no printing needed
- Financial savings from reduced paper & printing
Benefits for The Planet
- Carbon savings from reduced patient travel to collect fit notes (1.06 kgCO2e per average return patient journey to GP practice)
- Lower carbon costs from reduced use of paper & printing
- Reduced wasted from uncollected fit notes
Opportunity for improvement
- In some GP practices, clinicians leave printed fit notes for patients to collect from the GP reception desk. These are frequently not collected, resulting in waste. In addition, the numerous notes can cause clutter, leading to confusion and difficulty in finding the correct certificates for patients who come to collect them. It is also a potential confidentiality issue with other people in the waiting room overhearing patient names being spoken about.
- Moving to digital fit notes can streamline the process, reducing waste and patient travel to collect fit notes. This QIP suggests a method for making this change (see disclaimers).
- You might like to create SMARTS goal for this project e.g. Run an online training session for staff on how to issue digital fit notes and reduce printed fit note use by >50% within 1 month.
How to carry out this project
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Investigate
Look at your GP reception area:
- Is there a space where fit notes are stored awaiting patient collection?
- Is it well organised?
- How many notes are there?
- Are many of them out of date?
- Do clinicians print the notes and leave them in reception or does the reception team print them?
- Does the practice have a method for sending fit notes digitally e.g. AccuRx?
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Discuss
Chat to the Reception team, practice lead team, IT lead and clinicians issuing fit notes.
- What do they think of the current system?
- Do they have any suggestions for improvement?
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Baseline data
Ask the reception team to keep a tally of any printed fit notes given to patients over one week.
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System for digital fit notes
Ensure the practice has a method for issuing digital fit notes.
Work with the IT team to implement a system if not already in place.
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Train staff
Ensure anyone issuing fit notes is aware of how to send them via text message or other digital means. This could be via a variety of communications e.g. email, staff newsletters, F2F discussions, practice meetings, online training sessions etc.
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Check in
Touch base with all staff including the Reception team every 1-2 weeks to ensure the process is working smoothly for patients and staff.
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Post-intervention data
3-4 weeks after advertising the digital fit note system, ask the Reception team to repeat the tally of printed fit notes for 1 week to look for change.
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Study
Review the results, summarise learning, share with practice team & decide if any changes are needed to improve the process.
Decide when to re-audit again to ensure the change has lasted e.g. 2-3 months and use the Project Monitoring form to keep track.
Many practices run automatic searches at regular intervals – speak to your practice team about including this project in those searches.
Top tip
The reception team are key to this project, so ideally lead on it together or at least chat with them early on to get their views on how best to make it work.
How to scale this project up or down
| Please note - Use of this project requires NetworkPLUS membership. If you would like to share this project with others, please invite them to purchase their own membership—access must not be shared with non-members. |
Share your project with your PCN, Federation, ICB (England) or Cluster, Health Board (Scotland or Wales) or GP federation, Health Trust (Northern Ireland), so the learning can be shared and the project easily implemented by other practices too.
Have you completed this QIP?
Tell us a little about your project and enter your data in order to generate a certificate showing the probable cost savings and other benefits. This project may help with CQC evidence submission (see disclaimers).
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