Heartlands HIV Service supports you with an innovative service, designed to reduce your clinic visits.
Many patients tell us that they have busy lives, perhaps because of work, study, raising children or all three! This makes visiting the hospital costly, both in terms of time and because of costs associated with time off work, travelling and parking.
After listening to our patients we developed VIRTUAL CLINIC, a telephone consultation service provided by either a Clinical Nurse Specialist or an HIV Specialist Pharmacist. If your Doctor feels your condition is stable, one of your clinic visits will be replaced by a virtual clinic appointment. At an arranged date and time we will contact you using a telephone number that you provide and undertake a consultation that is 30 minutes or shorter in duration.
As long as all is well, you will be given follow-up appointments for 4 or 6 months as agreed by your Doctor and a suitable prescription will be made available for collection from either the hospital, a local Boots chemist or delivery to your home (as long as you are in the catchment area) – the choice is yours.
Over 100 patients completed a satisfaction survey and these are some of the things they said.
- 100% felt the staff member calling was organised, friendly and helpful
- 99% felt the length of the telephone call was suitable for their needs
- 98% of patients felt that the consultation had met all of their needs
- 96% want to continue having virtual clinic appointments
- 92% of patients found virtual clinic more convenient than attending in person
Consultants have commented that the care patients receive is of a high standard and safe and that they have no hesitation in referring suitable patients. Many patients have said, “more virtual clinics please”!
After the service was presented at a National HIV Conference in June 2012, some other centres around the country have shown an interest in setting up their own virtual clinics and we are supporting them to do that.
If you are interested in knowing more about virtual clinic service, please feel free to ask us.
