AI-Enhanced Safety at Blackwood Health Centre

As more practices adopt AI tools and explore new ways of working, the conversation tends to centre on speed and efficiency. However, at Blackwood Health Centre, part of the OHP super partnership, it was clear from the start that convenience could never come at the expense of patient safety. Any gains in productivity had to be matched by a tangible improvement in quality.

We spoke with John, the Practice Manager, and Luke, the admin lead, to understand their initial concerns about adopting AI and how BetterLetter ultimately reshaped their workflows while strengthening patient safety.

Before BetterLetter: A Manual & Overly Comprehensive Process ‍

Before adopting BetterLetter, Blackwood relied on a heavily manual workflow. Letters arrived in the office, were physically handled, reviewed immediately, annotated, then scanned and coded into EMIS. On paper, the process looked thorough, but in practice it created inefficiencies and inconsistencies that compounded over time.

Coding approaches varied widely across the team. Some staff worked through every detail with painstaking precision, while others took a lighter approach. With no shared standard, there was no confidence that the process was either efficient or consistently safe.

“It was probably done in an overly comprehensive way,” John explains. “Maybe things were being coded that didn’t need to be…across our different sites it was done to different standards…because there wasn’t a central process, it was a bit rubbish to be honest.”

For Luke, who was still relatively new to handling clinical letters, the lack of structure made things even harder.

“I hadn’t been doing it for long and we didn’t have someone ready to show me. I had to pick it up on my own.”

Why BetterLetter: A Safety First, Efficiency-Driven Solution

Blackwood’s decision to adopt BetterLetter came from both necessity and ambition: the pressure to lower costs, strengthen safety, and support an overstretched team, combined with a genuine appetite for innovation.

“We like to think of ourselves as at the forefront of innovation,” John reflects. “We are spending £100k a year to code letters that really should be automated…how do we do this quicker, better, safer and cheaper?”

When the team first trialled BetterLetter, its safety-led design immediately stood out. Rather than simply speeding up the existing workflow, BetterLetter introduced structure, transparency, and intelligent prompts. It captured everything upfront, guiding users to review and confirm instead of relying on memory or manual entry.

“For me, the first thing that struck me was the safety element,” John explains. “BetterLetter keeps the human factor in the coding process. It captures everything for you to deduct rather than add.”

For Luke, the benefits were even more immediate.

“It would show me suggestions and all I would have to do was agree with things - and some were things I wouldn’t have known to add.”

Importantly, adopting the system required virtually no disruption.

“It was easy,” Luke says. “There was no adjustment really to make.”

Onboarding: Responsive Support and Confidence from the Start

Introducing new technology into clinical operations usually calls for careful change management, but Blackwood found the onboarding experience refreshingly straightforward.

“It’s all been straightforward,” Luke says. “There is a lot of training available and everyone’s been there when we’ve needed them.”

John emphasises how crucial dependable support is when adopting a new system.

“The responsiveness of the BetterLetter team is excellent…You can really tell the difference when you have a good support team because so many people don’t do it well.”

This combination of thoughtful product design and reliable human support gave the team confidence from the outset. It helped build trust in BetterLetter not just as a tool, but as a partner they could rely on long-term.
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Day-to-Day Impact: Faster Processing, Better Oversight, and Tangible Time Savings

Once BetterLetter became part of Blackwood’s daily workflow, its impact was felt across the entire team.

For Management: Real-Time Visibility and Better Workforce Planning

BetterLetter’s reporting and dashboards gave John a level of visibility he simply didn’t have before.

“From a management perspective, it’s better oversight,” he says. “You can look at the data and processing rates quickly…If things are creeping up, if people are struggling, if there are training needs - it’s more visible, more visual.”

This clarity allowed the practice to spot issues earlier, plan staffing more effectively, and maintain consistent quality across all sites.

For Administrative Staff: Workload Cut in Half

For Luke, the improvement was immediate and practical.

“It used to take me a long time,” he explains. “Now I can just scan them, they go into BetterLetter, and I can carry on with something else… It’s made a big difference.”

By removing manual steps and presenting suggestions upfront, BetterLetter enabled Luke to process letters more accurately in a fraction of the time. It also gave him the capacity to add details he previously had to leave out.

“You’d probably leave things out because you didn’t want to spend too long on a letter. Now you’re able to add more details you would have left out before.”

BetterLetter has also strengthened training and collaboration. Tasks can be delegated more easily, and newer staff can get support without slowing anyone down.

“Others can send me tasks or letters they’re unsure of and I can pick them up easily.”

Safety, Consistency, and Peace of Mind‍

Above all, the team values the confidence they now have in the safety and consistency of coding.

“For me, it’s peace of mind,” John says. “The time it takes is almost halved, so we can redeploy staff…It’s released a lot of time.”

Luke feels the same way, especially given the complexity of clinical terminology.

“It’s quite a minefield looking at letters and terminologies…the suggestions, and seeing past problems, give you peace of mind.”

John also highlights BetterLetter’s governance and diligence as a key point of differentiation.

“BetterLetter does things the right way. They don’t cut corners. They follow protocol and good governance. You can see they’ve dotted every I and crossed every T.”

This level of trust has been essential for embracing AI in a setting where safety isn’t optional.
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Return on Investment and Recommendations to Other Practices

Both John and Luke are clear about the value BetterLetter delivers not only in time saved, but in improved accuracy, confidence, and the ability to support staff more effectively.

“100% yes to BetterLetter,” Luke says. “It’s made a massive difference.”

John shares the same view:

“You can do things faster, better, safer. You can make a great return on investment if it’s used the right way.”

They also point to ongoing training and support as a major benefit, particularly for practices bringing in new admin staff or helping existing teams build confidence.

“There are more resources…the training is a lot better,” Luke explains.
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One of John’s final reflections captures the scale of the change:

“I’d never processed letters at all, and within a couple of hours I was comfortable I wasn’t missing anything…What would take four weeks to feel comfortable doing took me two hours. That says a lot.”

For a practice that prides itself on innovation, BetterLetter has become more than a tool. It’s now a foundation for safer workflows, more confident staff, and a more resilient way of operating.

Blackwood’s experience reinforces a principle that guided them from the outset: efficiency only matters when it strengthens, rather than compromises, patient safety. By increasing transparency, halving processing time, and ensuring consistent data quality, BetterLetter has helped the practice unlock capacity, reduce costs, and build greater confidence across the entire team.