Warning over huge rise in gonorrhoea and syphilis as STIs reach highest levels in decades

Huge rise in gonorrhoea and syphilis cases as STIs hit highest levels in decades

Firms try to get staff back to office as self isolation rules dropped

The NHS Is Trialling At-Home HPV Tests For Women Who Hate Smear Tests

A new STI service can diagnose you using photos instead of face-to-face

These Are The Places With The Highest STI Rates In England, According To PHE

Michael’s main interest is in diagnostic systems for the detection of blood borne viruses. These include the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), Hepatitis B, and Hepatitis C but also included are the human T-lymphotropic viruses-1 and 2, and the Zika virus.  All these organisms can be transmitted from person to person via the blood and through sexual contact and collectively impose significant morbidity and mortality on the human population.

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Mike Asher

Better Customer Service Comes From Happy Staff The 4 to 8 October 2021 is National Customer Service Week and Better2Know is excited to get involved. The team will be working hard and exploring how they can further improve the level of Customer Service delivered to all their patients around the world.&nbsp; Better2Know is excited to grow their skills and celebrate the fantastic team this Customer Service Week. Better2Know has been shortlisted for the prestigious Morrison Water Services: Customer Focus Award – SME. This is conferred by the Institute of Customer Service in London on 19 October 2021 and they are hoping the outstanding work by all their staff during one of the most challenging times in recent history, will be recognised.&nbsp; Covid-19 has dramatically changed how we all interact and do business and this is the perfect week for Better2Know to reflect on their achievements and commitments of the past year and plan how they can continually improve their levels of Customer Service.&nbsp; Growing our skills A Harvard Business Review has found that engaged and happy employees will lead to happy and satisfied customers. Following the findings of this study, Better2Know is conducting an internal survey among their staff to gauge how they feel about their current working situation. As Covid-19 related lockdowns around the world are being eased, companies and employees are starting to tackle the big question of whether we should all return to how we worked before, from an office, or if the lessons learned during Covid, and the forced working from home, has in fact uncovered a fundamentally better way for employers and employees to operate. Successful Home Working has definitely been enabled by the amazing developments in technology that the world of work has embraced over the past 24 months. Teams, Zoom, Slack and other communications platforms have all enable us to meet and work virtually, but with a reliability and clarity never truly experienced before. We have seen punctuality to meetings improve, virtual discussions with greater structure, purpose and organisation, with features including recording, subtitles, and screen sharing now standard.&nbsp; So, is Working from home better? Apart from the technology that makes it all possible, home working definitely contributes to an improved work / life balance. Gone is the daily two-way commute. Gone are the transportation costs associated with getting to the office and back. An extra hour in bed is now possible, without the risk of being late to your desk.&nbsp; But is it all up-side? Definitely not. You may be at home, but now you have lost the social interaction that an office brings. You lose the cross fertilisation of ideas that comes from sitting with your colleagues, listening to them and discussing the intricacies of the business throughout the day. Now you have to air condition or heat your home every day, all day, whereas before you sat in a climate controlled office environment.&nbsp; So where do we go from here? Better2Know is committed to engaging with all its staff members to explore their needs and wants and meet these to the greatest extent possible. Remote working, office working and flexible working are all likely to feature in our organisational design in the future. Further investment in enabling technologies, new ways to monitor employee contribution and performance and enlightened management styles are requirements for success in the post-pandemic world.&nbsp; That is unlikely to be enough. Creating truly excellent Customer Service is not only about flexible working for your staff; we must do more. Carefully tailored training is clearly a requirement for everyone in the organisation. To this end, Better2Know is holding a series of online training workshops titled ‘Service with Respect’, aimed to equip their employees with the specific tools they need to successfully deal with challenging customer service calls. They believe this workshop will demonstrate our commitment to further education and the development of key skills for all staff. This workshop and others are being designed to prepare employees for today, tomorrow and the future, by giving them the means for dealing with all customer interactions including any difficult situations. Recognition&nbsp; The challenges of the past 18 months cannot be overstated, and it is important to recognise how far we have all come. Better2Know will be celebrating their team who have worked hard to expand Better2Know’s capacity and capabilities during the pandemic. They hold regular meetings between employees and Better2Know’s leadership, including managers and directors, to discuss adapting to the current situation and what leadership means to them in the changing context and how they have been affected. To mark Customer Service week, they will be holding an internal awards ceremony to celebrate team members who have gone above and beyond to serve their customers and support the team. They will be celebrating the problem solvers, the patient champions and the morale boosters, the backbones of the day to day and those consistently striving for improvement.&nbsp; For more information about the service visit www.better2know.co.uk.<blockquote>CEO Michael Asher said “Delivering excellent customer service is also about being able to put yourself in the customer’s shoes. Being able to empathise and sympathise whilst at the same time maintaining a balance between what the customer wants and what the business can deliver. This week we are encouraging our staff to look at our services from the customer’s point of view. Ordering a test online or booking an appointment, calling our customer service line with a query and thinking about how long the call took to be answered, whether the question or issue was dealt with promptly and effectively, and the manner and tone of the person on the line. These thoughts and experiences will all be shared among our staff in the regular virtual meetings held with staff.”</blockquote>

Cumbrian Company Celebrates National Customer Service Week

Better2Know was presented with a Silver Stevie® Award in the Most Valuable Response by a Customer Service Team category in the 15th annual Stevie Awards for Sales &amp; Customer Service.&nbsp; The Stevie Awards organise eight of the world’s leading business awards programmes. The Stevie Awards for Sales &amp; Customer Service honour outstanding customer service, contact centre, business development and sales professionals all over the world. More than 2,300 nominations from organisations of all sizes and in virtually every industry, in 51 nations, were considered in this year’s competition. Winners were determined by the average scores of more than 160 professionals worldwide on nine specialised judging committees. Entries were considered across a range of categories for customer service and contact centre achievements, including Contact Centre of the Year, Award for Innovation in Customer Service, and Customer Service Department of the Year. Other categories included sales and business development achievements and categories to recognise new products and services, solution providers, and organisations’ and individuals’ response to the COVID-19 pandemic. This year, Better2Know was named Silver Stevie Award winner in the Most Valuable Response by a Customer Service Team, recognising the exceptional level of customer service provided by Better2Know throughout the pandemic. When COVID-19 struck, Better2Know responded expeditiously, shifting from predominantly sexual health services to COVID-19 testing. Better2Know’s dedicated Patient Services team provides 24-hour support by phone, seven days a week, allowing patients to get the information and results they need when it is most convenient. Patients can also contact Better2Know’s advisors using the website’s anonymous live chat service, enabling individuals to ask questions in confidence. Test results are reported online through a secure patient log-in area. This innovative service continues to allow patients across the UK to obtain fast and accurate results for COVID-19 and sexual health tests. A judge commented on Better2Know’s Customer Service Award: “Your team has really worked for a cause to help society to improve day by day. I’d say that your team has done an exceptional job in assisting society even in this pandemic situation.” Another judge commented: “The measures taken to develop contactless testing for COVID-19 with an innovative approach is much appreciated.” “In the toughest working environment in memory for most organisations, 2021 Stevie Award winners still found ways to innovate, grow sales, please their customers, and secure new business,” said Stevie Awards president Maggie Gallagher. “The judges have recognised and rewarded this, and we join them in applauding this year’s winners for their continued success.” About The Stevie Awards Stevie Awards are conferred in eight programs: the Asia-Pacific Stevie Awards, the German Stevie Awards, the Middle East &amp; North Africa Stevie Awards, The American Business Awards®, The International Business Awards®, the Stevie Awards for Great Employers, the Stevie Awards for Women in Business, and the Stevie Awards for Sales &amp; Customer Service. Stevie Awards competitions receive more than 12,000 entries each year from organizations in more than 70 nations. Honouring organisations of all types and sizes and the people behind them, the Stevies recognise outstanding performances in the workplace worldwide.<blockquote>“Delivering an outstanding experience for our patients lies at the heart of our business and our ethos. Patients come to Better2Know at a time of vulnerability and stress, and we are passionate in our duty and mission to solve their problems and relieve their stress as fully as possible. Being recognised by a Silver Stevie confirms we are fulfilling our mission and helping our patients enjoy better health wherever in the world they may be.”</blockquote>

Better2Know wins Silver Stevie Award

Anthea Morris, Co-Founder of Better2Know, calls for women who are too nervous about getting screened for cervical cancer at a clinic, or are not attending appointments due to the pandemic, to consider self-administered ‘DIY’ HPV tests. With Public Health England records revealing that cervical cancer screening rates are as poor as 50.4% amongst London Boroughs and 60.9% in other areas of the UK, Anthea Morris urges women to get tested and, as an alternative to attending a clinic appointment, explore using a ‘DIY’ HPV test that can be self-administered in the privacy of their own home. The data shows that screening rates for cervical cancer in England are at record lows, and more than 1 in 4 women who are eligible for screening do not attend an appointment. The existing poor rates of cervical screening, due to women feeling embarrassed about attending their appointment, have been further impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic. With lockdowns and strict restrictions reinforcing the need to ‘stay at home’, the importance of a screening appointment has, in many cases, been overlooked. Furthermore, immense pressures on the NHS caused by Covid-19 have resulted in delayed appointments and extended results times. The good news is that Better2Know is one of only a few providers to offer self-sample vaginal collection tests that screen for 20 HPV strains – including those that cause most cases of cervical cancer. With this test, women can continue to take care of their cervical health from the comfort of their own home, without the need to visit a GP surgery.<figure class="image"><img src="https://s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/newspage.com-staging/company/816/images/ea57f39f2aac3bb8bff3c81a6718007f5aa1668ccff0a95791cbe71e941ff93abea8e319d784a459e28305beca6daa3a3d1bd4fbaa2b9005620dae3e70083043.jpeg"></figure>Anthea Morris comments: “Women who go untested for cervical cancer are at a great risk of not getting treatment early enough if they have a disease. With cervical cancer screening rates still well below what they were 20 years ago, and one in three women nationwide failing to attend their cervical screen because of embarrassment, alternative tests that are more acceptable to women will hopefully have a positive impact on the number of women getting tested. Although self-administered home tests for the Human Papillomavirus are easy and convenient, they are not yet available consistently on the NHS and I would encourage any woman who does not want to undergo a smear test, to get one”. A study by scientists at Queen Mary University of London also reveals that DIY home test kits for HPV could help more women discover whether they are at risk of cervical cancer.&nbsp; Other studies show that embarrassment and inconvenience are key factors in women not attending appointments, while a British Medical Journal study suggests that women could be twice as likely to get tested when given the option of a ‘DIY’ test over going into a clinic.How do ‘DIY’ HPV test kits for cervical cancer work?Mike Asher, Better2Know’s CEO and Co-Founder explained: “Getting an early diagnosis and treatment are key to increasing survival rates for cervical cancer. The privacy and convenience that self-sample HPV tests offer addresses some of the biggest barriers to women getting tested. Better2Know can send the easy-to-use kits in the post to any address in the UK or Ireland, giving women the option to do the test themselves in the privacy of their own home. The tests arrive in plain packaging and women just need to use the provided swab to take a quick vaginal sample and return it in the mail. Results are completely confidential and can be accessed via a secure online portal that’s accessible 24/7. There’s no waiting around for a call or going into a clinic, which is perfect for women with hectic lifestyles or who are anxious about seeing someone in person”. What is the difference between HPV and PAP smear tests? HPV tests work by searching for strains of the Human Papillomavirus (including types HPV-16 and HPV-18) which cause 99.7% of cervical cancer cases. PAP smears look for abnormalities in the cells lining a woman’s cervix that could develop into cancer. HPV tests are thought to be more effective at detecting risk of the disease. Women who want complete peace of mind can have a combined HPV and PAP smear test at their local Better2Know clinic; a service which is not always available on the NHS.&nbsp; Analysis of the latest figures from PHE by Better2Know shows that women are more likely to not attend a screening appointment in some areas than others.&nbsp; &nbsp;<blockquote>“Getting an early diagnosis and treatment are key to increasing survival rates for cervical cancer. The privacy and convenience that self-sample HPV tests offer addresses some of the biggest barriers to women getting tested”</blockquote>

1 in 4 UK women miss their cervical cancer screening appointment

Michael’s main interest is in diagnostic systems for the detection of blood borne viruses. These include the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), Hepatitis B, and Hepatitis C but also included are the human T-lymphotropic viruses-1 and 2, and the Zika virus. All these organisms can be transmitted from person to person via the blood and through sexual contact and collectively impose significant morbidity and mortality on the human population.

Chairman and CEO

Better2Know

Media coverage of Mike Asher