Picture this: your GP practice has just invested in the latest online consultation system. The vendor promised it would revolutionise patient access and reduce workload. Six months later, the reception team is overwhelmed, patients are frustrated, and they’re wondering what went wrong.
Sound familiar? You’re not alone.
From October 2025, general practices in England must implement online access that is available during core hours. The promise is compelling: free up time for those who need it most by enabling digitally confident patients to self-serve. But here’s what we’ve learned from working with practices across the UK; success isn’t about the technology you buy, it’s about how you implement it.
At Caja, we’ve spent the last couple of years in GP practices, watching digital transformations succeed and fail. The difference isn’t the sophistication of the software or the size of the budget. It’s whether practices understand that they’re not just installing new systems, they’re redesigning human experiences.
Take Mrs. Thompson, who’d been avoiding her practice’s new online system because the login process felt like solving a puzzle. When the practice simplified their approach, removing jargon, cutting unnecessary steps, and using plain English she became one of their most enthusiastic digital users. The technology hadn’t changed, but the behaviours and human experience had been transformed.
The Questions That Really Matter
While vendors focus on features and functionality, the practices that succeed ask different questions:
How do we align our new systems with our processes and values to create a consistent service? How do we help patients channel shift their behaviours and actions whilst improving their experience? How do we support our staff through this change? And crucially, how do we ensure we’re improving access rather than creating new barriers?
These aren’t technology questions; they’re human questions. And they require human-centred solutions.
The Behavioural Breakthrough
Our research revealed something remarkable about timing that illustrates the power of behavioural insight. Practices following the 48-hour national standard for online consultation responses were seeing patient frustration and unnecessary phone calls. But those responding within 24 hours witnessed patients start trusting new systems, phone calls dropped, and satisfaction soared.
Why? Because our brains are wired to value immediate gains. When we feel heard quickly, we trust the process. It’s simple psychology, but it transforms the patient experience.
Similarly, we discovered the power of care navigation, transforming reception teams from gatekeepers into guides. Instead of “The doctor can’t see you today,” trained staff learned to say, “I can get you the right help today, let me find the best person for your needs.” The result? Patients felt heard, staff felt empowered, and the right care happened at the right time.
Introducing Our Behavioural Insights Design Sprint
We know that trying to implement all of this while keeping your practice running is a challenge. That’s why we created the Caja DiscoveryQI, a tried and tested way to gain clarity on delivering sustainable change while identifying hugely impactful improvements you can implement immediately.
Our five-day Behavioural Insights Design Sprint combines creative problem-solving with behavioural insight, working with your knowledge and challenges to reimagine patient experience and outcomes.
Here’s how it works:
Day 1: Understand the Context We spend time with your team and patients, analysing available data and researching your specific challenges. We’re not just looking at what’s happening; we’re understanding why.
Day 2: Define the Problems Using behavioural insights, we prioritise which problems to tackle first and where you can have the greatest impact. We look beyond symptoms to root causes.
Day 3: Generate Ideas Through co-design sessions with your team and service users, we generate solutions that work with human nature, not against it.
Day 4: Create Prototypes We turn the best ideas into tangible solutions that people can see, try, and provide feedback on; no lengthy development cycles.
Day 5: Test and Learn We put prototypes in front of real users, observing interactions and gathering insights that guide next steps.
What You Walk Away With
After five days, you’ll have actionable behavioural insights with clear evidence for needed improvements, prioritised and tested solution ideas, evidence-based recommendations for immediate and long-term changes, and a roadmap for future development.
But the benefits go deeper. You’ll have created space to step back from day-to-day pressures and examine your whole service. You’ll gain clarity amongst complexity, identifying the right problems before jumping to solutions. Most importantly, you’ll understand not just how people interact with your services, but why.
The Human-Centred Future
Digital transformation in primary care isn’t about working harder, it’s about working with people. When we place human behaviour at the heart of our design decisions, we don’t just improve access metrics, we restore confidence in our services.
Ready to discover how behavioural insight could revolutionise your patient experience? Let’s have a conversation about what’s possible
