News and presentations from today's conference focusing on leading and improving outpatient services during and beyond Covid-19.
Working differently through Covid-19: Ensuring Safety & Quality
Eileen Henderson
Head of Outpatient Services
Hull University Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust
• principles for good outpatient care during Covid-19
• supporting staff to deliver services in different places in order to protect patients at higher risk
• managing staff redeployment and safe staffing
• working with patients who are shielding that need investigations
• ensuring flexibility of approaches depending on patient needs
• sustaining improvements moving forward
Eileen shared experiences at her Trust on how they have managed outpatients during Covid-19 and the measures put in place for patients and staff, in terms of safety and experience. Eileen explained some of the changes such as virtual consultations and telephone clinincs, one stop shops, and investigations in Outpatients where possible rather than MDU, will stay in place following patient feedback. Eileen said successes include; moving services to permanent out patient sites, and research including vaccine trials bringing outpatient staff to the fore and providing valuable opportunities.
Eileen Henderson's Biography 0.02 MBMSWORDfile
West Herts experience of Virtual Medicine in a pandemic
Dr Michael van der Watt
Medical Director & Consultant Cardiologist
West Hertfordshire NHS Foundation Trust
• use of a Virtual hospital to both prevent admission and reduce length of stay
• use of virtual clinics to reduce attendances and improve patient experience
• how to use the Covid experience in improving care in the future
Dr van der Watt gave an overview of how his Trust adjusted to the new environment with a one stop shop way of working. This included expanded hotlines to GPs offering advice and guidance and use of hot clinics where patients could be booked straight in to avoid admission and facilitate early discharge reducing length of stay. They developed a virtual hospital which is now a national examplar. 4500 patients have bee nseen to date and they are now intiatiating a COPD virtual hospital and Heart Failure virtual hospital, pilots have started. The patient patway in the virtual hospital for Covid patients began with patients being seen by respiratory consultants in a virtual clinic, patients were then reviewd daily for 5 days and then every 3 days, with a review at day 14 for long Covid issues. Patients need access to telephone or video conferencing and to be able to fully isolate and self care. The virtual hospital took 1 hour of clinical time per patient (over 14 days). They introduced an App in May 2020 for patients to put in their information such as temperature and breathlessness. The App allowed them to follow how symptoms were evolving and would flag patients needing review. Use of the App was low as they found patients prefered telephone consultation. The virtual hospital continued to work well in Wave 2 with 3000 patients seen, 1/3 low risk and 2/3 higher risk and mortality significantly less.
Presentation Slides 4.18 MBPPTXfile
Supplier Showcase: Implementation of routine Patient Rated Outcome Measures (PROMs) collection in an outpatient department
Dr Anna Shelby PhD
Research and Postgraduate Manager
Pulvertaft Hand Centre, Royal Derby Hospital
• rationale for collection routine PROMs
• practical implementation of PROM collection in a COVID world
• using PROM data to drive service improvement and shape our service
Supplier Showcase: Supplier Showcase: How Automated Appointment Scheduling is Transforming NHS Outpatient Flows during Covid and beyond
Jacob Buckland
Head of Business Transformation
10to8
jacob.buckland@10to8.com
• How NELFT increased appointments from 2000 to 4000 a week, by transforming patient engagement
• How its Phlebotomy Clinic decreased Do Not Attend rates from 15% to 2%, in six months
• How the 10to8 booking solution is currently saving NELFT approximately 28 admin days, per month