Improvement Foundation And NHS Alliance Celebrate Awards Of Excellence For 2007

Main Category: Public Health
Article Date: 23 Nov 2007 - 1:00 PDT

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The Improvement Foundation and NHS Alliance have joined forces for the third successive year to promote innovative practice and better outcomes for patients.

Today, winners of the Improvement Foundation's Guy Rotherham Award, NHS Alliance CHD QOF* and NHS Alliance Acorn Awards, are announced by Alan Johnson MP, Secretary of State for Health, at the NHS Alliance's 10th Annual Conference in Manchester.

Guy Rotherham Award 2007

The Improvement Foundation's Guy Rotherham Award has one Winner and two further 'Highly Commended's.

The 'St Benedict's Hospice Day Centre Project' (for the Sunderland Teaching Primary Care Trust) wins the Guy Rotherham Award for its excellent multidisciplinary team (MDT) improvement of the palliative care provided. This team demonstrated a thorough understanding of the use of quality improvement methods to improve patient care, and carefully measured the individual improvements they made. Through the use of a referral 'decision tree' non-attenders were reduced by 300% and average waiting times halved. Through a streamlined assessment and intervention process a 'Clinical Distress' tool reduced assessment time and patient distress scores were reduced by 24%. This tool was also used to reduce the staff "burn out" scores of professionals and volunteers by an average of 67%.

By working more effectively and efficiently as a team and changing their working practices, but without reducing services which would have impacted negatively on patients, the Hospice Project team saved an average of £5 per patient attendance and further, increased access and attendances by 13%.

The 'Extended Primary Care (EPC) Gynaecology Service' (for the Practice Based Commissioning Consortium South Manchester Hub) is 'Highly Commended' for its development of this effective and innovative service offering gynaecological treatment managed within a primary care setting, allowing patients improved access closer to home. Service developments include five primary care clinics per week led by a GP with a Special Interest in Gynaecology treating a number of conditions, electronic triage of all referrals and diagnostic scans with less than two weeks turnaround and informal gynaecology training for colleagues. As a result, over one-third of gynaecology referrals are seen within the EPC clinic, thus allowing secondary care to focus resources on those patients with higher clinical need.

The 'Salford Perinatal Mental Health Project' is also 'Highly Commended' for effectively challenging the high levels of maternal suicides (in the context of a higher than national-average postnatal depression rate of 29% in the SureStart areas of Salford). A unique tripartite collaboration between the Salford SureStart, Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust and Bolton, Salford & Trafford Mental Health NHS Trust aimed to improve the psychological wellbeing of women during their prenatal or postnatal periods. Many women do not feel able to talk with their GP about their issues with depression, so the service takes referrals directly from midwives and health visitors who are in regular contact with then, expediting their care and treatment. To date, over 400 referrals have been received, including referrals directly from midwives and health visitors already in contact with prenatal and postnatal women. 60% of referrals benefit from psychological therapies or counselling. The team have achieved just a 6 week wait from referral to treatment where previously the wait would have been 12 months.

Ruth Kennedy, Chief Executive of the Improvement Foundation said: "The Guy Rotherham Award mirrors our vision for achieving high-quality healthcare and is a great opportunity to acknowledge the exceptional improvements that organisations and individuals are making across a range of services in primary and community care. The standard of applications this year was outstanding but the winning and highly commended entries stood out due to their high impact improvement outcomes. We want to congratulate all three teams for their innovation and effort, and believe them to be fantastic cases of how a quality improvement approach can result in better outcomes for patients."

NHS Alliance CHD QOF Awards

The CHD QOF Award has two winners a GP Practice and a PCO. Chair of the panel of judges Dr Stewart Findlay commented "This years annual QOF Awards for CHD have been particularly interesting and challenging for the judges, we have had many high quality and innovative approaches to tackling CHD. I would like to thank all the judges for their help and in particular Schering Plough for their support and active involvement".

The Mountwood Surgery in Northwood Middlesex wins the CHD QOF GP Practice Award for their outstanding multidisciplinary approach to tackling CHD. In addition to having a highly organised in-house cardiology team they have a "highly commended" interactive, patient empowering booklet for CHD. This was awarded in the national Ask About Medicine Awards in 2005. The importance of patient education is also extended to running family seminars on CHD which requires a great deal of effort to encourage people to attend. They are now taking this a stage further and will soon be planning a roadshow. All this activity resulted in Mountwood Surgery achieving blood pressure targets of 96.79% in their CHD patients.

North Tees PCT wins the CHD QOF PCO Award for their support and encouragement to GP practices to 'own' CHD care. They provide timely feedback of performance data using funnel plots and regular communication by the CHD LIT and Cardiac Network. Even though North Tees PCT has a high CHD prevalence, 4.2% Vs 3.6% nationally, across the 27 practices 85% of patients achieved cholesterol targets and 91% reached the QOF blood pressure target. Their service developments in heart failure have also been rated as excellent in the Healthcare Commission Review.

Acknowledgements

The Improvement Foundation and NHS Alliance would also like to thank the British Cardiac Patients Association, British Cardiac Society and Prescriber who have worked in partnership to support the award partnership and judging process.

Notes:

About the Organisations

- About the Improvement Foundation: The Improvement Foundation is a not-for-profit company working across the NHS and other public sectors to support service improvement. (http://www.improvementfoundation.org.uk)

- About the NHS Alliance: The NHS Alliance is an independent organisation which brings together Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) with practices, clinicians with managers and Board members, NHS primary care with its patients. It is the only organisation with this remit and operates completely independent of Government (and of any particular interest group or political party). (http://www.nhsalliance.org)

About the Awards

- About the Guy Rotherham Award: The Improvement Foundation's Guy Rotherham Award celebrates quality improvement and better outcomes for patients. The Guy Rotherham Award - now in its third year - is run in partnership with the NHS Alliance. The award celebrates the work of Guy Rotherham who died in 2003. Guy was instrumental in setting up the National Primary Care Development Team, which was incorporated by the Improvement Foundation in 2006.

- About the CHD QOF Awards *The NHS Alliance CHD QOF 2007 Award, sponsored by Schering-Plough, will award excellence for achieved Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF) points covering coronary heart disease (CHD).

- About the Acorn Awards: Now in their fourth year, the NHS Alliance Acorn Awards celebrate innovation and success in providing cost-effective, innovative and inspirational services to patients in the primary care setting.

Guy Rotherham Award case studies

- Further information on the Guy Rotherham Award winner and highly commended runners-up are available as case study documents

http://www.nhsalliance.org