Everyone Active Case Study

The challenge

All of Everyone Active’s exercise referral schemes, which are aimed at people who are inactive and at-risk of, or living with, a long-term health condition, fit under that community banner. Its schemes include Good Boost and Escape Pain, as well as cancer pre-hab and cardiac rehabilitation.

Rebecca Phillips, strategic lead for health and wellbeing at Everyone Active, oversees and delivers the brand’s exercise referral offerings. “My role is to implement the community health and wellbeing strategy across the business, under the overarching aim of helping everyone move more. I look at what’s working well in one area and, together with our exercise referral teams, scale that up across our portfolio,” she says.

A national approach to meet local needs

“We have 68 local authority partners and offer some form of exercise referral in all of our 230 centres nationwide,” says Phillips. “It’s a national approach tailored to local need. What’s on offer is always bespoke for our partners in each community – whether that’s councils or Integrated Care Boards. Each partner has different strategic health and wellbeing objectives, so our local teams have autonomy. This ensures what we offer is targeted and relevant to that area.”

Everyone Active’s central exercise referral offer is, says Phillips, a selection of activities that local teams draw down on. This approach would not be possible without ReferAll, which Everyone Active has been using since May 2024. “By having a single point of access and one task-based management system for all our referrals we can engage with not just healthcare professionals but the community and voluntary sectors locally, while keeping tabs of everything nationally,” says Phillips.

“ReferAll allows us to differentiate our programme offerings and collect distinctive outcome measurements for every scheme, while still collating a national overview of data. Our exercise referral schemes don’t start in the gym; often that’s the last place we get to. We create person-centred physical activity plans depending on what people enjoy. For some this could be visiting community cafés before they’re ready to even consider any activity, moving onto walks, or aquatic interventions. Managing that would be impossible without ReferAll’s software.”

A consistent approach

Everyone Active was using a system for customer mapping, comms and marketing but there were gaps with exercise referral. “I met with lots of providers and ReferAll offered what we needed while being open to making changes to deliver on our requirements,” says Phillips. “The system is easy to use both from a national and local point of view. This is essential as we get approximately 2,000 referrals per month across the business from GPs, social prescribers, physios and occupational therapists. This number is growing all the time – from the dashboard I can see a 44% increase in referrals year on year.

“As we grow exercise referral within our business, ReferAll allows me to have a consistent approach and standardise our offer, from Sunderland to Somerset and everywhere in-between. I can see the referrals coming in and establish what’s needed to manage and support colleagues locally – where we need extra resource, where there are bottlenecks and even where training is needed.

“My colleagues love ReferAll as it makes the process they go through to support the individual much quicker. It standardises data input, the prompts make sure the team are supported to do their job well and collect the right data, which in turn improves the quality of reporting I receive. ReferAll is also helping us develop what our standard pathway looks like and suggesting different procedures to help colleagues manage the process.”

Proving the good we do

Key for Phillips was the ability to see where referrals are coming from and whether they’re from areas of deprivation. “I can see that 22% of our referrals come from levels one, two and three on the Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD), which are the most deprived deciles. After three months, 67% of our referrals are still active as either casual users or paying monthly Direct Debit, after six months it’s 42%. I can share this aggregated data with council partners to show that we’re supporting the right people.

“I’m also able to better understand the demographic of our referrals now,” she says. “It’s often assumed exercise referral is for older people but I can see that 23% of our referrals are aged 55-64. That’s still working age.

"I’m using that data to adapt our model and programme more effectively, offering appointments out of working hours. ReferAll is helping me to adapt and improve our offer as demand changes.”