“It’s not appropriate for customers to have six or seven individual interpreters onsite at any one time and at significant cost to them. It may be that two could be utilised more efficiently. If they require an interpreter urgently, it might be possible to use an interpreter who is already there.” Yasmin Khan, Operations Manager
At a hospital in Yorkshire, multiple teams in different parts of the building require and book Enable2 interpreters. Enable2 soon came to notice that there were often numbers of same-language interpreters onsite at once.
Enable2 discovered:
· Staff across the team were working independently
· Staff were unsure of how to use the booking portal to its full potential
· Staff were unaware of ‘block bookings’
· Staff were unaware of the cost of ‘wasted’ sessions
Cost-reducing measures:
· Ensuring staff were trained and comfortable with the portal
· Staff using the portal to see who is already onsite
· Adding appointments to a ‘block booking’ and saving money
· Arranging doctor appointments for same-language support together
“If two patients are booked in at 11am with different doctors but need the same language service, it saves the hospital money to stagger the doctor appointments and have one interpreter attend both consecutively. Staff now allocate certain days and timeslots to same-language appointments. This way the doctor gets to know the interpreter too and everyone is more comfortable.” Joanne Kennedy, Operations Director
Not only are staff arranging less interpreters to be onsite by booking appointments in a block and fully utilising one-hour sessions, they are also fully using the Enable2 booking portal. If they need an interpreter urgently, they can go into the portal and see if there is an interpreter somewhere onsite already. They can call the staff member elsewhere in the hospital to make contact and request an additional service, often at no additional cost.
“Staff now work together on bookings"
“Doctors and patients feel more comfortable now they see the same interpreter for each appointment"