our achievements during 2014/15

Our achievements during 2014/15

East StaffordshireClinical Commissioning Group

www.eaststaffsccg.nhs.uk2

Keep A&E free for emergencies only.Self-care Hangover

CoughSore throat

Take care of yourself. For tips visit www.nhs.uk or www.eaststaffsccg.nhs.uk

NHS 111 Need help deciding where to get appropriate healthcare?

Call NHS 111

Pharmacy Bites and stingsConjunctivitisCough/sore throat/cold ConstipationCystitisDiarrhoeaEmergency contraceptionHeadacheHead liceHay fever/allergies

Your local pharmacist can help you with lots of everyday ailments andoffer good advice

Dentist ToothacheGum problems

GP Surgery Minor injuries (excluding broken bones)Urine infectionsRashesEar painSexual health adviceTravel health advice

Accident andEmergency (A&E)

ChokingChest painSuspected strokeBlacking outBlood loss

Dial 999

Minor Injuries Units(open 24 hrs/7 days a week)

You can also receive minor injury care at the following places;

Samuel Johnson Community Hospital, Lichfield.Tel: 01543 412900

Sir Robert Peel Community Hospital, Mile Oak, TamworthTel: 01827 263800 ext 3806

www.burtonhospitals.nhs.uk

What did we achieve for local people in 2014/15?

We are a small but ambitious Clinical Commissioning Group, well led by local GPs and supported by a small professional team.

We have continued to make improvements in the safety and quality of services and access to these services over the past year, and we are now one of the best performers in the West Midlands. We are also making better use of the money available to us to pay for the extra demands on the health service, with the growing elderly population and the introduction of new and often expensive treatments.We are proud of what we have achieved to improve healthcare for local people and would like to share some of the highlights of the past year with you.

www.eaststaffsccg.nhs.uk 3


What we did in 2014/15How will we build on this in 2015/16?

What does this mean for local people and patients?

Improving Lives Our most innovative and ground-breaking piece of work has been our Improving Lives programme. Having listened to what patients were telling us, and seen the hard evidence about the lack of consistently good care for patients with long term conditions and frail, older people in our region, we decided to change radically how we will buy services for these people in the future. Find out more on page 6.

We will be working with Virgin Care, our Prime Contractor, to prepare for April 2016, when the Improving Lives contract starts.This will involve continuing to work with patients and communities, as well as with those organisations which provide services.

People with long term health conditions will be supported better at all stages of their illness and they, along with all frail elderly people, will be able to live healthier and more independent lives, with better health care.

Reducing avoidable visits to A&E and unnecessary hospital admissionsWe worked with all local GP practices and funded their initiatives to reduce the number of people using A&E and being admitted into hospital unnecessarily.Find out more on page 7 about the sorts of ideas that have been put into action locally.

We will continue to work closely with GPs and Practice staff to build on what has worked well, and find further ways of helping people to make the right choice of where to go for health care.

People are helped to find the health care advice they need closer to home.A&E staff are able to care for the people who really need their help, and hospital beds are available to those people who need to be in hospital.

Telehealth technology to help put patients in controlWe have introduced ‘telehealth’ which is helping put some patients in control of their care – this is now being used at all 19 GP practices in East Staffordshire. Find out more on page 8 about how telehealth is being used at a local surgery.

This will be used more widely across the region and will start to be used for a wider range of health conditions.

Patients can be in control of their own health care, in their home environment, but knowing they have the support from their GP practice when they need it.


What we did in 2014/15How will we build on this in 2015/16?

What does this mean for local people and patients?

Helping patients get maximum benefit from their medicines and reducing wasteWe ran a campaign to encourage people not to order medicines they didn’t need. We also gave some local patients the opportunity to have a review of the medicines they were currently being prescribed. Both initiatives were aimed at reducing the amount of money wasted on medicines which weren’t needed and won a national award for their innovation.Read more about this campaign on page 10.

We will continue to remind patients not to order medicines which they don’t need. We are also launching a new campaign in 2015, to encourage the public to buy over-the-counter medicines for minor ailments rather than visit their GPs for prescriptions.

Less wastage and less spending on unnecessary medicines means we can spend our budget on those medicines which local patients really need to keep them well.

Empowering our staffOur continued strong focus over the past year on organisational and personal development of our staff is helping us to deliver further improvements for patients and communities. NHS England has described the CCG as doing “exemplary work in very challenging circumstances” in terms of the work we do to improve services and value. We are one of five national exemplars of good practice for organisational development.

Our aim is to be at least as good as, if not better than the top 10% of CCGs. We will continue to develop and train all our staff so that they have the skills and expertise to achieve the best results for patients.

All staff at the CCG are focussing on doing the best for patients at all times and have strong financial control of the money which they spend on behalf of local people.


Our Governing Body, led by GPs and backed by all 19 GP practices in East Staffordshire, took the decision early in 2014 that its number one priority would be to help people to keep healthier for longer, including helping those people with long term health conditions to take more control over their own care.Our aim is to improve the health and life experiences of patients and their families who live in East Staffordshire through• Providing more support earlier to people

with long term conditions• Ensuring people have the right information,

knowledge and skills to make informed decisions about their care and how they live their lives

• Offering a wider choice of and more accessible services

• Joining up care across the healthcare systemWe decided we would use a competitive procurement process to achieve this end. This is the ‘Improving Lives’ procurement, which was launched to the public at the CCG’s public event in June 2014.Using the knowledge we had gained from listening to patients and carers, we worked with the

shortlisted bidders to develop a list of changes which would really make a difference to patients, and the bidders then submitted their ‘solutions’ to how these changes might be achieved within the set budget of the seven year contract. The contract was awarded to Virgin Care as our Prime Contractor, in March 2015 and will come into effect in April 2016.We held a number of public events during the year, and used a process called ‘experience-led commissioning’ to gather and analyse the views of patients and carers. Patients, carers and the local community will continue to be involved over the coming year, as Virgin Care work closely with us to finalise their plans, and beyond, once the contract comes into effect. More information can be found in our brochure ‘Improving Lives... the story so far’, published in March 2015, which is available on our website at: www.eaststaffsccg.nhs.uk/improving-lives

Reducing avoidable visits to A&E and unnecessary hospital admissions

Unfortunately, some of the pressure on hospitals is caused by patients who don’t need to be there. People often end up at hospital, usually A&E, because they are not aware what range of alternatives there are. In East Staffordshire, we are really becoming focussed on providing NHS services that fit in with the way people want to access them, which means more flexibility and better access to services at the times people need them.

Our GP practices have been working with us to invest in improving access for patients. Each practice has developed its own plans tailored to its particular practice needs and all 19 practices have participated. They have shown significant creativity in the different ways they have approached improving access to primary care, avoiding unnecessary admissions to hospital – especially for older patients in residential care – and guiding patients on the best way to manage their conditions, avoiding, where possible inappropriate use of A&E.Since November 2014, we have funded 270 extra GP appointments each week across the district. It means more people should find it easier to book an appointment to see a family doctor at a time that is convenient. These extra appointments will be available on a weekly basis for the foreseeable future.We have also funded schemes which GP surgeries have been running, which include increasing nursing hours, offering minor injuries services within the practice, and even recruiting extra receptionists to help support patients during peak times. GPs in East Staffordshire have been promoting the services of their own practices in regard to treating minor ailments and injuries, so members of the public access primary care facilities instead of emergency facilities at local hospitals.

Julie Hughes, our Primary Care Manager said

“It’s been really inspiring to see the way local healthcare professionals have come together for this scheme, which benefits patients across East Staffordshire, improving their access to services and helping to ensure they are treated in the right place and at the right time. The wealth of enthusiasm for the project and the innovative response of local practices, who have all dug deep to come up with practical solutions that will improve care for their patients, has been overwhelming. As commissioners it is our job to do everything we can to ensure local people get the care they deserve and to have such wholehearted support from our colleagues in local practices goes a long way towards making that possible.”


Telehealth

Telehealth is now being used at all 19 GP practices in East Staffordshire. Bridge Surgery in Stapenhill was one of our first practices to start using this system, with some of their patients using Florence Simple Telehealth to monitor their own blood pressure in the comfort of their own home.

When patients at Bridge Surgery see their doctor/nurse for an annual review, if their blood pressure is above the normal range, they are asked to have a consultation with Health Care Assistant, Amanda Cooper, who sets them up on Florence Simple Telehealth - “Flo” for short.

Amanda is convinced of the benefits for patients when using new technology such as Telehealth. “It’s so simple. I meet with patients and set them up on the system with their mobile phone and loan them the blood pressure monitoring equipment. Then every morning they get an automatic text to their mobile phone, reminding them to monitor their blood pressure, and when they’ve done

that they get a text back with a plan of care depending on what that reading is. They repeat this again in the evening.

www.eaststaffsccg.nhs.uk

Amanda Cooper, a Health Care Assistant at Bridge Surgery, said:

“I monitor the results, which come through to me at the surgery. The system allows me to text patients with encouragement as well as concerns. We use Flo to monitor patients for either one week (patients who are not on any hypertensive medication) or for eight weeks (patients with confirmed or newly diagnosed hypertension), depending on their medical condition. After their time on Flo they will know their average blood pressure reading and have a plan of care which could include a GP review if one is required. Blood pressure is a key factor to patients’ health and with Flo, it really helps patients to take more ownership, getting them to focus on the impact of diet and exercise which has an impact on their health & lifestyle.”

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Dr Alex Wong, a GP at Bridge Surgery, said:

“The way in which Amanda has used Flo has made a big difference to patients’ health and it has meant that these patients have only been prescribed medication when it has been needed. This system has also freed up our 24-hour heart monitors, ensuring they are now available more quickly for older patients.”

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One of the surgery’s patients, who used Flo to monitor her blood pressure, said: “What was good was that I felt I was in control of my own health care, in my own environment, but knowing support was there from Amanda, if I needed it. It was good to be in control.”

Bridge Surgery has received a national award in recognition of its successful use of this Telehealth technology to help patients to monitor their health.

So far, the surgery has only used Flo to monitor blood pressure, but the system can be used for monitoring other conditions too, and can be used to help people who want to quit smoking, for medication reminders, people suffering from Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), weight management and patients with asthma.

Bridge Surgery, along with the other Surgeries in East Staffordshire, will be looking into developing the system for monitoring other conditions over the coming years.

Helping patients get maximum benefit from their medicines and reducing waste

Our Medicines Optimisation Team ran a medicines waste campaign called “What a Waste” which included a series of Medicines Clinics at GP practices, which are believed to be a national first. The Medicines Clinics toured GP practices across East Staffordshire. At each, patients who had complex needs, for instance patients aged over 75 who receive more than eight prescription medicines per month, were invited for an appointment.

The Team’s innovative approach meant it won a well-deserved national award. It won the overall Gold Award and the Medicines Adherence and Waste category of the 2014 PrescQIPP Innovation Awards. (PrescQIPP is an NHS body which aims to ensure best value is achieved for the £10 billion the NHS spends every year on drugs.)The clinics were run by Claire Dearden, Quality and Governance Lead for the Team. Claire said: “We’re absolutely delighted to have received this national award for work we are really proud of. The clinics we held are a small part of what we do, but we believe they are a first and are proving a real success. It’s a chance to sit down with these patients and chat to them about their prescriptions. We really want to make sure they understand what they are taking, why they are taking them, and to ensure they are actually taking them in the correct way. That is really important to make sure they are getting the most benefit. We can also help identify when patients are still receiving medicines on repeat prescription they really don’t need anymore. The patients really seem to appreciate these clinics and so do our local GPs. We sit down with each patient for around 20 minutes, which is time a very busy family GP simply may not have. Our team are not doctors but they are very expert in medicines use.” With the help of patients, on average £50 per patient can be saved by better repeat

prescription management. That has the potential to generate real savings for the NHS while improving care for patients.

Did you know?Every year in East Staffordshire,

£800,000 of unused medicines are wasted!

East Staffordshire CCG would like you to know that if this sum can substantially reduce then the money saved can be used to improve patient care for those living in East Staffordshire Borough Council area.

For more information visitwww.eaststaffsccg.nhs.uk

Medicines cannot be reused once they have left the pharmacy – please ensure you check your medication and return any unwanted items while you are still inside the pharmacy. www.eaststaffsccg.nhs.uk10


Looking ahead… our main focus for 2015/2016

As well as continuing to build on our achievements of the past year of

• Improving Lives for those with long term conditions and the frail elderly

• Reducing avoidable visits to A&E and unnecessary hospital admissions

• Increasing the use of telehealth to put patients in control

• Helping patients get maximum benefit from their medicines and reducing waste

...there are also other areas we will be focussing on in 2015/16, which will complement all of the above, including

Improving Life Expectancy: We have already significantly improved female life expectancy to above the national (England) average, and we are now working to achieve the same for males in East Staffordshire.

Staying Well in Later Life:We will be working closely with Public Health to further improve the quality of our preventative programmes.

Mental Health:We will continue to increase access to psychological therapies and improve dementia diagnosis rates still further.

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If you would like this document in large print, alternative format or in a different language, please contact us.

East Staffordshire Clinical Commissioning GroupEdwin HouseSecond AvenueBurton upon TrentDE14 2 WF

Website: www.eaststaffsccg.nhs.ukTwitter: @NHSEastStaffs

our achievements during 2014/15

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