Derbyshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has reduced its delivery costs by 34 per cent since switching to DX Group to deliver documents and packages.
The trust cares for some 1100 patients admitted to the Royal Derby Hospital and has to handle more than 7000 documents and packages, including confidential patient X-rays and biopsy results each year.
After carrying out a review of its postal services the trust realised costs had increased by 15 per cent.
Robert Ridge, deputy head of facilities management at the trust, explains: “The trust’s usage of Royal Mail Special Delivery had shot up, to ensure the safe arrival of our mail. Yet, we couldn’t always rely on the service to deliver promptly or in to the right hands, and what’s more, our costs were soaring.”
The trust began looking for an alternative provider which could provide a reliable, secure and trackable service, while keeping costs down.
It opted for a package from DX, combining its Secure DX and Courier services, which provided collection from multiple points with parcels being passed direct from sender to courier, and an online resource to track parcels in real-time.
Confidentiality was crucial for the service to work. Ridge adds: “With patient confidentiality running through everything we do at the trust, we felt it was crucial to appoint a delivery service that understood and would help us to achieve our patient-centred aims.
“With a long history of working for the NHS, and as the existing providers of both our diagnostic specimen delivery service and on-site legal Document Exchange, the DX Group was the natural choice.”
Along with cutting costs by 34 per cent in the first year, 93.5 per cent of parcels are now delivered on first attempt.
The DX service is now set to be rolled out across all teams via the hospital post room.
