South Tyneside and Sunderland NHS Trust: Transforming Referral Processing with Intelligent Automation

Challenge

Following the pandemic, the Trust saw a sustained increase in demand across most services. Cancer referrals in particular were rising sharply, requiring efficient and timely processing to maintain pathway performance and meet internal standards.

The process of transferring referrals from the national e-Referral Service (eRS) into the Trust’s Electronic Patient Record (EPR) was highly manual, involving the opening and saving of multiple documents. This approach was resource-intensive and contributed to a growing administrative backlog, with routine referrals reaching volumes of approximately 900. The two-week-wait team faced mounting pressure to consistently meet internal targets for triage and booking turnaround times.

Staff across the scheduling team were managing a heavy workload made more difficult by system performance issues and repetitive manual tasks. Completion times were notably faster out-of-hours, highlighting inefficiencies in peak periods. Concurrently, higher-than-usual staff absence rates were affecting overall team capacity and contributing to reduced morale.

Solution
Implementation of four key automated workflows:

1. Moving Routine and Urgent Referrals from eRS into Meditech (Patient Administration System)
2. Moving Urgent Suspected Cancer referrals from eRS into Meditech
3. Fixing the Responsible Clinician in Meditech Appointments
4. Logging referrals and booking patients for the newly inaugurated Lung Cancer Screening Programme (LCSP)

The Trust established a robust business case and secured initial funding from their local Cancer Alliance. A cross-functional RPA governance group was created, including clinical safety representation to ensure patient well-being remained paramount throughout implementation.