Multi-site private clinic groupSample
Moving patient intake off the clipboard for a multi-site clinic group
A private clinic group with eleven sites was collecting medical histories and consent on paper at reception, phoning reminders by hand and typing everything into its practice management system afterwards. We designed and built a patient app and web portal for pre-appointment intake, consent, scheduling and reminders, integrated with the practice management system. No-shows came down and a large slice of admin came off the front desk.
- Client
- Multi-site private clinic group
- Industry
- Healthcare & Life Sciences
- Year
- 2023
- Duration
- 6 months to all sites live
- Team
- 5 people
Illustrative figures for a representative engagement.
The challenge
Where things stood when we arrived.
Every appointment started with a clipboard. Patients filled in history and consent forms in the waiting room, reception typed them into the practice management system, and clinicians regularly found gaps or answers they couldn't read. Repeat patients filled in the same forms every visit.
Reminders were phone calls, made by reception staff between check-ins. Coverage was patchy, and the group's did-not-attend rate was well above what it was prepared to accept. Rescheduling meant a phone call in both directions.
The practice management system wasn't going anywhere, so anything new had to integrate with it properly. Health data brought GDPR special category obligations, and the patient base ran from teenagers to people in their eighties, so accessibility had to be designed in from the start.
The solution
What we built, and how it fits together.
We designed and built a React Native app for iOS and Android, with a matching web portal for patients who would sooner not install anything. Both cover pre-appointment intake questionnaires, consent forms with versioning, appointment booking and rescheduling, and reminders by push notification, SMS and email with a one-tap confirm or reschedule.
An integration service sits between the patient-facing products and the practice management system, exchanging appointments, patient demographics and completed questionnaires as FHIR-style resources over the vendor's API. Consent and intake responses are written back as structured data rather than PDFs, so clinicians see the answers in the record they already use. Reconciliation jobs flag any appointment that fails to sync.
Data protection and accessibility were part of the brief. We completed a DPIA with the group's information governance lead, minimised the data asked for on every screen, encrypted data at rest and in transit, and put role-based access and audit logs in place. The apps meet WCAG 2.2 AA and were tested with patients across age groups. Questionnaires are configurable by the clinical team without a release.
Approach
The order we did things in.
Technology
- TypeScript
- React Native
- Expo
- React
- Next.js
- Node.js
- PostgreSQL
- REST / OpenAPI
- AWS
- Sentry
- 01
Discovery and design at two sites
The first three weeks went on observing reception and clinical workflows and interviewing patients in waiting rooms. We also mapped the data flows to the practice management system. Figma prototypes were tested with patients before any code was written.
- 02
Integration and information governance
The integration service and the DPIA came first. Appointment and demographic sync ran read-only against live data for a month so the team could trust it before write-back was switched on.
- 03
Pilot at one site
A single site ran reminders first, then added intake and consent, with reception staff feeding back every day. Questionnaire wording and reminder timing were tuned over six weeks.
- 04
Remaining sites in three waves
The other sites followed in three waves over two months. Each got staff training and a support runbook, and the group's IT team was trained to manage questionnaires and keep an eye on the integration.
Results
What changed.
- Did-not-attend rate fell by roughly 28% across the group within four months of reminders going live
- Around 70% of patients now complete intake and consent before they arrive, and repeat patients confirm their existing answers instead of starting again
- Reception teams report roughly three hours a day per site saved on typing up forms and making reminder calls
- Clinicians see complete, structured answers in the practice management system before the patient sits down
- The clinical team updates questionnaires and consent versions itself, with a full history of what each patient agreed to
“Reception was losing the first ten minutes of every appointment to typing up forms. That time is spent with the patient now.”
Sample quote. Replace with an attributed client statement.
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