Fasting for one test, stopping a medicine for another, a lift home from a third. Most departments still send all of that in one letter. We send what belongs to the test.
Most lost slots are lost before the day before
A diagnostic slot goes to waste for one of three reasons, and all three happen in the days before the appointment rather than on it. None of them is about the scan.
- The prep did not match the test
- The instruction that mattered sat in a letter written for outpatient clinics. The person arrives and the scan cannot go ahead.
- The answer arrived at reception
- The questions your service asks before a test get asked at the desk, too late to give the slot to anybody else.
- They rang to change the date
- Most calls into the department are people trying to change a date, and each one leaves a slot for somebody to refill.
A form gathers what a patient reports
It is not a clinical assessment and never stands in for one. Nothing here scores a patient, ranks a list or rules anyone in or out of a test. Your clinicians do that, against your own criteria.
CORE COMMUNICATIONS
Every message carries the prep for the test that person is actually having
Is there any chance you are pregnant. Any metal implants. Anyone to collect you afterwards. DrDoctor asks the questions your service wrote, at the point your service picks, and chases the people who have not answered. Where your integration supports it, the answers write back into the record.
NO TWO MODALITIES SENT THE SAME
Appointment Notifications
Reminders timed to each modality's own rules. A bowel prep reminder does not go at the same point as an X-ray reminder.
NOBODY LOSES THEIR PAPER LETTER
Digital Letters
The letter goes digital first and reverts to post automatically if it is not opened, so the person who needs paper still gets it.
A SHORTER LIST TO RING
Appointment Management
People confirm from the message. Your department sees who has, and the chasing narrows to the people who have not.
DrDoctor's solutions have given us the space to make sure our patients go through that patient pathway as safely, seamlessly and as efficiently as possible - all while keeping waiting lists short!
Marie Raftery, Associate Director of Oxford Division 2, Royal Orthopaedic Hospital
Connected to CRIS, Soliton, NBSS and more
Imaging, breast screening and the appointment itself often sit on three different systems. We are live with more than 20 of them, through the integration engine your trust already runs.
APPOINTMENT MANAGEMENT
People move a scan from the message instead of ringing the department
People ask to change or cancel from the message, by text or in the portal, with the rules set by scan type, by site or by how close the appointment is. A released slot goes back into use, offered to people who said they could come at short notice.
NO PHONE CALL TO MAKE
Basic Rescheduling
Requests, changes and cancellations from the message. They write back to the record where the integration supports it, checked before go live.
A WORKLIST, NOT A SPREADSHEET
Exceptions come to you
Automated where it is safe, handed to a person by exception. The clashes and the people who need a conversation stay with your team.
Newcastle's radiology service has released 3,401 administrative hours since go live, which the service puts at 35 hours every working day.*
*as of August 2026
WHERE TO START
Three questions come up first
Diagnostics is usually the second thing a trust switches on rather than the first, and it does not have to wait for the connection work.
