Case Study: University Hospitals Sussex Reduces Wait Time by 90% With Netcall

The Challenge

University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust serves 1.6 million people across seven hospital sites, spanning most of Sussex’s population, from Chichester to Brighton.

The Trust was formed through a merger in 2020, but the organization remained operationally divided in some ways, with Brighton and Haywards Heath on one side, Worthing and Chichester on the other, and each side maintaining separate booking teams with different telephony systems.

The Trust wanted to bring everything together, driving significant improvements to address patient access challenges, tackling call abandonment rates which frequently exceeded 40% and wait times longer than 30 minutes.

Sussex Hospitals were split across two contact centre systems, Netcall’s Liberty Converse, our omnichannel contact centre solution, in the west and another supplier in the east.

While the west functioned adequately, the east faced severe pressures with long waits and high call abandonment, leaving patients unable to reschedule or cancel appointments and driving up DNA rates.

The Trust wanted to unify their contact centre solution with our patient engagement portal, Patient Hub, to reduce call volumes, ease staff pressure and gave patients a single seamless point of contact. This would improve access, digital patient engagement and outcomes across the region.

The Solution

Netcall’s team supported go-live on-site across Shoreham and Brighton. While Brighton was expected to face the biggest challenge, the transition to Liberty Converse exceeded expectations, delivering immediate improvements.

Intelligent routing and self-service now deflect around 36% of calls, freeing agents to focus on complex patient needs.

Staff quickly saw the benefits. Even high-demand periods like Monday mornings, with over 1,500 calls, are now manageable. Teams value the system’s ease of use, real-time visibility, and ability to scale support when needed.

For patients, this means shorter wait times and faster resolutions. Around 200 daily appointment changes are handled via self-service, reducing call volumes and giving patients more control.

Sussex also deployed the AI Assistant “AVA”, which uses natural language to understand queries, route calls, and enable self-service. Enhanced call-flows further reduce unnecessary contact and direct patients efficiently.

To support a diverse population, the Trust introduced a multilingual AI chatbot, successfully tested across several languages, including Arabic.

They also use Patient Hub to quickly create questionnaires, share appointment information, and reduce inbound queries.

When SMS reminders paused temporarily, DNA rates rose from 8% to 13%, but dropped to 5% upon Patient Hub launch and now sit at around 4%.

Weekly validation messages to 4,000 patients achieve an 86% digital response rate, with additional responses via post.

With increased capacity, the Trust now communicates more effectively across patient preferences. Waiting list validation has also enabled 12% of patients to self-remove, helping clinical teams prioritize care.

These improvements have delivered significant cost savings, including a 45% reduction in monthly SMS spend, while continuing to scale usage across departments.

The Results

• 75% Reduction in call abandonment from over 40% to below 10%
• 90% Reduction in call wait times from 30+ minutes to under 3 minutes
• 36% Calls deflected away from booking centre via intelligent routing and self-service – now 1,500+ calls are easily manageable
• Multi-language AI chatbot serving diverse populations
• 4% DNA rate reduced from 13% to 5% immediately after launch and now hovers at 4%
• 200 Appointments rebooked/cancelled daily via patient self-service (200 fewer calls per day)
• 86% Digital response plus an additional 6% of patients responding to postal letters
• 45% Less SMS costs – reduction in monthly SMS costs, from £33k to £18k, with further savings to come
• 12% Reduction in waiting lists – enabling focus on patients who still need to be seen
• Single phone number for all patients across the Trust
• Questionnaires built in minutes, which previously took weeks
• Appointment information attached, improving patient communication and reducing enquiry calls

This blog post has been re-published by kind permission of Netcall – View the Original Article

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Author: Netcall
Reviewed by: Jo Robinson