The online appointment portal enables women to change their allocated breast screening appointment online
What is the breast screening online appointment portal?
The online appointment portal enables women to change their allocated breast screening appointment online via
www.gov.je/breastscreening. Breast screening involves women having an x-ray, called a mammogram, to look for breast cancers when they're too small to be seen or felt. It’s available to women aged 50 to 69. Once a woman is registered onto the breast screening programme, an appointment is automatically generated for her every two years. She is notified of her appointment date and time in writing approximately one month prior. If the appointment is unsuitable, the online appointment portal allows her to change it to a more convenient time and date.
Why do we need the breast screening online appointment portal?
Previously, if a woman needed to change her appointment, she had to phone the breast screening administration team during office hours. Now, thanks to the online appointment portal, women have 24 hour access to a secure online system via their PC, laptop, tablet or mobile device. It’s straightforward to use and takes less than five minutes to log on and choose a more convenient appointment. The process is similar to changing a seat on an aircraft. It’s an important way of making it easier for women to attend breast screening regularly and fit their appointment into their busy lives.
What are the benefits of the breast screening online appointment portal?
The introduction of an online appointment portal benefits women as it:
- Offers more choice – it allows women to choose a time and date that best suits them
- Improves attendance rates - women are more likely to attend if the appointment is at a convenient time
- Increases accessibility - it can be accessed 24 hours a day and is easy to use. Data shows that women are using the portal 24 hours a day.
- Better utilises our resources – it helps us optimise the availability of precious breast screening appointment slots within the hospital
- Less administration involved - in Jersey, over 5,000 breast screening appointments are arranged each year. Changing an appointment online requires no intervention from administrative staff. So far over 1,500 users have changed their appointment online
- Increases the overall uptake and coverage of the breast screening programme – this will ultimately save more lives
Challenges we faced
From an IT perspective, the project was quite straightforward as the breast screening programme already has a comprehensive IT system in place that manages appointments. There was work involved to ensure the look and feel of the portal was consistent with gov.je. The main challenge was agreeing the number of slots to offer online and how late a woman’s appointment can be changed. We didn’t want this improvement to lead to an increase in late cancellations where it is too late for an empty appointment slot to be filled.
What’s next?
In the future, we hope to use this initiative for cervical screening to allow women to book an appointment for their cervical screening at Le Bas clinic.
The success of this initiative has also lead to other online improvements for the breast screening service:
- Emailing normal breast screening results – women can now choose to receive their result via email rather than in the post. About 70% of women are choosing to receive their result via email which shows an overriding preference for this method of communication. Women receive their results more quickly hopefully reducing anxiety.
- Registering for breast screening online – we launched an online form on gov.je where women can now register for breast screening online, rather than on the phone. Since its launch, about half of registrations are done online.
Business owner
Preventive Programmes team, Health and Social Services
Project management team
- Dr Linda Diggle, Head of Preventive Programmes
- Lianne Dacres, Deputy Head of Preventive Programmes
- Kevin Tierney, IT Project Manager
- Gill Atterbury-Jones, Breast Screening Administrator
- Leonie Wilks, eGov team
- Charlene Brown, Digital Delivery Team
gov.je