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New way for patients to manage their health comes to Harrogate

Friday, 12 April 2024 10:25

More than 100,000 Harrogate patients can sign up to have greater control of their health and care information, thanks to a new digital-first service.

Over the next couple of weeks, HDFT will be sending an email or SMS text to 68,000 patients inviting them to sign up for the patient portal, Patients Know Best (PKB), which is free to use and is accessed via the NHS app.

The new patient-powered digital service, PKB is designed to improve patient experience.

Patients who sign up will initially be able to access most of their outpatient appointments at Harrogate District Hospital online.

Over the coming months, additional features such as the ability to request cancellations and amendments to appointments will be rolled out.

Patients can use the portal as a ‘one-stop-shop’ to see their health care information from other NHS providers, who also use PKB.

To date, more than 20,000 patients at Harrogate District Hospital are using PKB, with over 1,200 appointment letters being sent via the patient portal each week.

Dr Jacqueline Andrews, Executive Medical Director and Executive Lead for Digital at HDFT said:

“The patient portal is a new way to receive your appointment letters as soon as the appointment is made, so no more waiting for the letter to arrive in the post.

“We hope that as many patients as possible will sign up for PKB, but if it’s not the best way for us to communicate with you, we will continue to send correspondence in paper format in the post.”

Increasing our digital offering to patients is a key enabler to providing even better health care at HDFT.

The PKB patient portal has also enabled some clinical teams at the Trust to transform how they communicate with patients.

HDFT surgeons are using the PKB patient portal to deliver personalised post-procedure videos to their patients, providing them with reassurance and information about the different stages of their recovery.

For more information, Harrogate and District NHS Foundation Trust patients should visit the Trust’s website at www.hdft.nhs.uk and search for ‘PKB’.

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