Push Doctor: Driving Better Patient Outcomes

Let’s talk about that feedback loop between the digital platform and the doctor and the patient.

Doctors, typically, on our platform, can do hundreds of consultations per month. All of those doctors, in real time, get feedback. They can either log into our platform or our medical team speaks to them about it. What we’re doing and how we’re changing and moving the posts, actually, in real time, that doctor gets all the feedback, straightaway. 90% of your consultations you followed the correct, regulated path of care. But for 10%, you didn’t. It’s public knowledge but, in the NHS, around 80% of all prescriptions are the right prescriptions. But there’s close to 20% which are either incorrectly prescribed and/or something else could have been recommended.

But it’s human nature. When you’re seeing patients back to back, are you going to get everything right, every single time? Yes? No? What we were able to do, straightaway, when you’re doing it, that feedback loop comes to you instantly. The doctor comes in an prescribes amoxycillin for something which didn’t require that. Straightaway, we can ping you and say, actually, amoxycillin is not supposed to be there. I think, from a doctor’s perspective, for the first time, we can see that 97%, 98% of our consultations follow the guidelines that it should follow. Those 2% or 3% that don’t, they get that real time feedback. A doctor can sit there, every single month, every single week, every single day, depending on how frequently you want to do it, review all their consultations, get a summary of all their consultations. Ultimately, one big thing that I’m proud of is that, we make doctors safer. That is brilliant and very, very powerful and that’s one thing that excites me about this market.

It’s also interesting the way that you are reducing the customer feedback loop and making it shorter. In giving that real time feedback, you can actually drive a better experience in quality, for the patient, because the doctor has more refined feedback quicker, on quality.

It’s exactly that. At the same time, sometimes, patients don’t know that. Our NPS for Push Doctor hovers around 59, 60. But the number one feedback from customers, on why they didn’t like the service or had issues with the service was because the doctor didn’t give them the medication that they wanted. Every single time that I’ve reviewed it, the doctor is 100% right. The fact that a patient comes on a private platform or the NHS platform and says, I want this medication and we had this a lot in the private days, I’ve paid my £30, I want my amoxycillin. It’s not safe for you to have that. Terrible experience; what was the point? Useless. Actually, it’s that education of the customers, too. We’ve done a lot of work on our content, a lot of work on our messaging to say, just because you don’t get the medication, this is for your own good. From our perspective, from the NHS perspective, there’s no incentive, no targets, no nothing to say, this is what you need to prescribe. This is what you don’t prescribe. There is a target to say don’t prescribe antibiotics needlessly, that’s there. For us, making sure the right type of care is there, consumers don’t always see that.

We’ve done a lot and we need to continue to do a big piece to educate the consumer to say, actually, this is for your own good, which is actually one of our challenges. Customers don’t see it that way. Now that we are more with the NHS, it’s somewhat different. But particularly on the private platform, I used to hear it every single day. I paid; I should get what I want. It doesn’t work like that in healthcare. We can do that in other markets, but we’re not going to give you drugs, if it’s not the right medication for you. That may mean one-star reviews; it might mean bad Trust Pilot, but you know what, you’re safe. You’re safe, the doctor’s got comfort, we’ve got comfort.