richmond & wandsworth · adult social care

Occupational therapy waiting list management, by voice

Urgency surfaces, in time to act - on a list of 700

A voice-AI pilot to call every resident on the OT waiting list every month - keeping priorities current without burning the team

outbound calling occupational therapy richmond & wandsworth 2024-2025

the problem

working days / month

just to hit the monthly check-in target on the OT waiting list - and that is before post-call admin

A monthly SLA the team could never quite hit

7 staff for 700+ residents 20 min per call, every time growing list, fixed team admin alone eats 15 days

The SLA said: every resident on the list, called every month, to check priority and circumstances

The team had the will. They did not have the time

what we did

Voice agents that check in, surface change, and triage urgency

call every resident monthly confirm they still need OT surface change of circumstances flag urgent cases

Always introduced as an automated assistant. Anything urgent goes straight to a person

Calls run in waves of hundreds. Outcomes land in Mosaic and the council's existing tools, with a written summary of every call

// monthly check · outbound ot waiting list

Hello, I'm calling from the council adult social care team about your occupational therapy waiting list place. I'm an automated assistant. Can I confirm I'm speaking with Mrs Patel?

Yes, that's me

Thanks. You've been on the OT list since March. Are you still waiting for the assessment, or has anything changed?

Still waiting - but my mum's fall last week has made it harder to manage at home

I'm sorry to hear that. I'll mark this as a change in circumstances so the team can re-prioritise. Someone will be in touch this week

how it runs

Built for adult social care, not retrofitted to it

data

calls, transcripts and summaries stay in UK data centres · GDPR · Cyber Essentials Plus · SOC 2 Type 1 · IBM Cloud for Financial Services Validated

escalation

urgent cases go straight to the council's existing OT triage team, in real time, with full context · safeguarding cues trigger immediate prioritisation

consent

introduces itself as automated · residents identified by name or authorisation · opt out any time, logged

integration

outcomes land in the systems the team already uses · Mosaic · Liquidlogic · Eclipse · or CSV export

speed

outcomes land within seconds of the call · priority changes reach triage the same day, not the next monthly review

limits

no clinical judgements · no clinical re-prioritisation · no 999 routing · does not replace the OT assessment · it handles the routine check-in, the team does the rest

the result

the pilot

Run across the full OT waiting list cohort

Calls run in parallel waves - the same method scales from hundreds to thousands

74% // of contacted residents

had their case status confirmed or change of circumstances surfaced in a single call

Urgency surfaces in time to act

priority shifts that would otherwise sit hidden between monthly reviews reach the triage team the same day

triage

Urgent change in circumstances surfaces the same day, not weeks later

capacity

Monthly check-ins that would have taken 44 working days now run in waves

focus

OT staff back on the assessments residents are actually waiting for

from the pilot wrap-up

"It creates capacity for [occupational therapists] to increase residents' contact time and focus on their primary duties"

Violina Harpar, Occupational Therapy Service Manager, Richmond & Wandsworth Councils

The phone channel reached people that letters and texts leave behind - older residents on the OT waiting list told the team they were pleased the council had called and not forgotten them

what it shows

What the pilot showed

Voice reaches residents across the board

Older and less tech-confident residents engaged with the calls

Routine work comes off the team

Skilled staff are freed for the assessments residents are actually waiting for

Conversations are shorter and more to the point

The agent presents a clear reason to call, the resident gets a definitive outcome - no padding either way

Priority surfaces in the call

When circumstances change between reviews, the resident says so - and the team hears it the same day, not at the next scheduled check-in

It works for any council carrying a clinical waiting list

Occupational therapy, social care assessments, mental health screening - any list that needs a recurring touch to keep priority current

The pilot was joint

Designed with the council's OT service leads, tested on real residents, signed off by the service

Wondering how much of your OT waiting list could be called this month

Book a 30-minute walkthrough - we will show you how the Richmond & Wandsworth pilot ran, what a deployment looks like for a list your size, and what it would cost

Or see the rest of the Richmond & Wandsworth work on our UK public services page →

gdpr · cyber essentials plus · soc 2 type 1 · ibm cloud for financial services validated · ico registered · uk data residency