From inbox-based referrals to digital intake

The front door of care is broken

What we learned from their experience is something the wider NHS already feels every day: no matter how advanced your systems are behind the scenes, the front door of care is still built on unstructured documents, inconsistent formats and manual processes. And until we address that, the delays, duplication and pressure on staff will continue to grow.

What we learned working in NHS settings is that your NHS teams don’t have a small or isolated operational problem – it has a national intake crisis rooted in how information enters services, but in small teams across the NHS. Millions of interactions still arrive through channels that were never designed for modern demand.

The data you shared makes the scale impossible to ignore:

• Outpatient, AHP and community booking lines handle hundreds of thousands of calls annually.
• Missed GP appointments cost £216 million in rebookings, lost slots and repeat patient contact.
• Patients in some regions face 10 or more access numbers, each with its own mailboxes and manual processes.

This is the real picture: the volume of incoming information has grown, but the way we capture it has not.

And working with Everyturn taught us something important: most of these interactions could have been prevented – or completed safely – if the NHS had a structured way to capture, read and route information the moment it arrives.