Axa Health’s digital orthopaedic service has proven “transformational” for the insurer and its customers driving down consultations, scanning and treatments, according to its head of specialist and practitioner relations Sarah Taylor.
Presenting findings at LaingBuisson’s Private Healthcare Conference this week, Taylor, a physiotherapist herself by background, said the service which is operated by HBSUK was one of the most transformational things she has ever seen.
Remaining virtual
The service aims to provide fast and convenient access and take a patient as far through an outpatient pathway as HBSUK possibly can while remaining virtual.
It does this by offering digital triage and assessment enabling patients to ask HBSUK simple questions that allows them to identify the urgency, the type of clinician, the modality and the kind of information that it can then find to support the consultation.
Elaborating on the success of the service, Taylor revealed more than 60,000 Axa Health members have used the service – equivalent to a quarter of the total number of patients to have presented with a orthopaedic claim and 40% of the insurer’s larger corporate book.
While large corporates tend to have a much younger demographic, Taylor added fairly senior people have also gone through the programme.
Need for consultations, scanning and treatment down
Taylor further revealed the service has also resulted in a reduction from 59% to 17% in consultations, scanning down from 56% to 20% and treatment – invasive procedures including injection therapy down from 25% to 9%.
And where patients have been referred by their GP to an orthopaedic surgeon and they have been offered the service, Taylor said that 74% of these patients did not require onward intervention by a specialist and most were managed by physiotherapy.
Efficiency gap
But Taylor told delegates that the figure the insurer was “particularly” proud of related to its efficiency gap.
“The efficiency gap shows that when accessing care through the service, patients who go on to see a specialist, 92% of them will see some form of intervention versus 66% going through a standard pathway,” Taylor said.
“So this is good for the patient. It’s good for Axa. And in our view it is also good for the clinician.
“The senior specialist is receiving the right patient to whom they can provide the right service.”