Scaling Group Therapy Provision
The Challenge
NHS therapy services face a structural crisis: demand for structured, multidisciplinary rehabilitation is growing faster than workforce capacity can accommodate.
For MSK, pulmonary, cardiac, stroke, and mental health services, the gap between referrals and available appointments is widening every year.
Outdated technology and commissioned service models means teams are under-equipped to provide the minimum recommended multidisciplinary therapy intensity to patients.
People on NHS waiting
lists for treatment
(Nov 2025)
Mental health referrals
per month – 40% higher
than 2019
Cardiac rehab
programmes meeting
national certification (2024)
Just a few groups that can be
scheduled with autonom-e
Neuro Rehab Online
Café NROL
Cogs in Action
Cogs in Motion
Fatigue Management
Living Well
NROL with It
Upper Limb
Your custom groups
Cardiac
Rehab
Psychology
Post-cardiac fatigue education
Circuit exercise
Return to work
Your custom groups
Pulmonary Rehab
Breathlessness psychology
Breathlessness mgmt
Resistance training
Pacing and activities
Your custom groups
Frailty
Support
Cognitive frailty
Energy conservation
Strength training
OT daily living
Your custom groups
How group therapy can help
A single clinician delivering an 8-week virtual group therapy programme to 10 patients generates the same throughput as 80 individual appointments — without proportional cost increases or the need to travel.
The challenge is with coordination: scheduling cohorts, capturing PROMs across groups, managing reminders, and reporting outcomes at the service level.
Autonom-e provides the digital infrastructure that makes group therapy possible and scalable whilst reducing administrative burden, improving workforce utilisation and the patient experience.
Each session is scheduled, patients are automatically notified, PROMs are captured before and after each block, and outcomes are available in real time on the clinician dashboard.
Co-ordinating group therapy:
Referral & Triage
Cohort assignment
Session scheduling
Automated reminders
Monitoring & review
Discharge & PIFU
Platform Features for group therapy services
Streamlined referral, assessment & triage
Patients can be referred from primary care, from external referring teams across a region, or via self-referral if enabled.
Referrals sent directly to autonom-e are encrypted at rest and in transit.
Entry assessments can be configured for different pathways to support initial triage and stratification into group cohorts.
Pre- and post-programme PROM capture to measure group-level and individual outcomes.
Group scheduling and cohort management
Create blocks of weekly group therapy sessions in advance from the clinical dashboard. Triage patients and assign to appropriate groups based on external referral recommendations.
Assign facilitating staff & tech support to each session. Sessions automatically push to each patient’s app with date, time, format, and joining instructions.
Reporting and service analytics
Automated PROM dispatch on entry and exit of therapy programmes collects outcomes to demonstrate change in health.
Recorded attendance allows staff to monitor uptake, throughput, DNA rates, and ROI for every hour of staff time spent delivering care.
Cohort-level outcomes dashboards showing improvement trends across group programmes. Individual patient progress visible within the group context. Export clinical reports directly to electronic health records (e.g. SystmOne).
Service-level data to support commissioning decisions, business cases, and NICE compliance reporting. Cost-effectiveness modelling data to demonstrate value to ICB commissioners.
Self-management and resources
Configurable digital resource library aligned to each group programme (condition-specific written, audio, and video content). Signposting to peer support, local services, and third-party providers within the app.
Translatable resources supporting diverse and multilingual populations. eDiary tools for symptom tracking, goal-setting, and exertion monitoring between sessions
Why choose autonom-e for group therapy?
1. Configurable to your pathway
Tailor group programme structures, eligibility criteria, PROM bundles, session formats, resources, and branding to match your service design – without expensive bespoke development.
2. Reduces administrative burden
Digital scheduling, automated patient notifications, and pre-session PROM capture eliminate paper, postage, and manual data entry. One NHS Trust reported saving several hours of administrative work per week.
3. Reduces waiting times
Patients complete assessments before their first appointment, cutting waiting time by up to 14 days in documented NHS deployments. Group format multiplies throughtout without multiplying clinician time.
4. Scalable across organisations
Supports single-service or multi-site deployments across ICBs, NHS Trusts, community providers, and VCSE organisations – with each site maintaining its own configuration and branding.
5. Evidence-ready
Capture group-level and individual outcomes data to evaluate service impact, demonstrate cost-effectiveness to commissioners, and support research bids or NICE submissions.
6. Supports health equity
Multilingual resources, accessible app design, and professional referral routes for patients with digital access needs reduce barriers to engagement across diverse populations.
Measure KPIs before and after each programme
Autonom-e enabled teams to track key KPIs to monitor health outcomes, staff planning, session availability, and export commissioner-ready reports for each block of therapy
- Monitoring referrals and demography across a region
- Autonom-e's 70+ validated PROMs align to ICB reporting requirements.
- Record attendance rates, adjust session availability according to demand
Co-ordinate and delivery group therapy at scale, seamlessly
Autonom-e’s group scheduling, automated reminders, and real-time dashboards are designed to keep performance visible week by week – so course corrections happen in minutes, not months
- Triage patients effectively based on individual need and external specialist referral
- Automated reminders reduce DNA rates. Pre-session PROMs arrive before the clinician opens the dashboard.
- One clinician delivering 6-week multidisciplinary groups provides exponentially more therapy than 1:1 provision
Demonstrate ROI to support recommissioning
When commissioners ask for outcomes against expenditure, autonom-e provides service audit ready reports to demonstrate patient outcomes, attendance rates, staff cost at the click of a button.
- Number of sessions delivered
- Staff-to-patient ratio
- Staff salary, role, cost-per-session
- Regional software licence savings
Outcomes
98.5%
Clinician hours saved when comparing group therapy to 1:1 for a 6-week multi-disciplinary programme
83%
Reduction in clinician time on virtual assessments (Airedale & Bradford)
96%
PROM completion rate across patient cohorts (Airedale & Bradford)
Contact Us
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