In this article we highlight the winning entries in the Forward Healthcare Awards 2020 that took place last week.
You can read about the awards evening on Twitter @leading1health or using #FHAwards.
Overall winner – Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust – Healthy Together’s 0-19 Public Health Digital offer
Healthy Together is the name for Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust (LPT)’s 0-19 public health nursing service (health visiting and school nursing) delivered across Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland.
A vital and growing element of this service is its digital presence, as parents/carers and young people want easy access to trusted information and advice about all aspects of their health and wellbeing, without making appointments with health care professionals.
The digital aspect of Healthy Together comprises three websites: Health for Under 5s (www.healthforunder5s.co.uk ), Health for Kids (www.healthforkids.co.uk) and Health for Teens (www.healthforteens.co.uk).
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the three websites were a vital tool for sharing important health messages with children, young people and families when face to face contacts have been restricted.
Community or Primary Care Innovation Winner: Ardens Healthcare Informatics – Protecting Patient Safety and Improving Primary Care
Ardens Templates help to protect patient safety, improve the primary care experience and make practices more efficient. As GPs themselves, they have installed Ardens in over 2,500 practices.
As the COVID pandemic started Ardens created new COVID specific templates based on Public Health England (PHE) advice within a few days. They have been updated whenever new guidance has been produced and have been used in tens of thousands of appointments, helping to identify new cases, and particularly vulnerable groups for shielding.
Enhancing Care through Technology Winner: Intouch with Health
Transforming Worcestershire Acute’s pre-operative assessment process with a complete digital pathway including digital questionnaires patients complete from home.
Rachel Foley, Senior Sister Pre-Operative Assessment Countywide at Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, said: “Earlier POA interventions are allowing us to identify patients at high risk of being unfit for their operation and intervene sooner and with more effective medical input to ensure they stand the very best chance of their surgery going ahead. Our elective surgery patients can now complete their health history questionnaire from the comfort of their own home, in their own time, then submit the answers in real-time to our clinical teams.”
“This also helps improve the patient experience. Current wait times for surgery can be lengthy, and if a patient is told last minute they are unfit, it can be very frustrating.”
“After assessing answers submitted by patients using Synopsis Home, our clinical staff can quickly triage and separate the patients that are fit and ready for their operation and don’t require a full POA in hospital from those that do. Staff also benefit from referrals and replies being contained within one system, alongside completed risk assessments.”
“100% of Anaesthetic referrals and reviews are completed on Synopsis. We are seeing an increasing trend of patients choosing to use Synopsis Home to complete their pre-operative questionnaire from home (currently 64%).”
Driving Healthcare Forward Initiative of the Year Winner: Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust – Towards happy, healthy and productive teams – Northumbria Healthcare’s Staff Experience Programme
As the pandemic started, the Trust worked in collaboration with Open Lab at Newcastle University to rapidly develop a bespoke staff engagement platform – Corona Voice. Each week, they asked staff to rate their motivation for work, alongside a varying set of additional questions to learn about their health and wellbeing during this challenging time.
In three months, the survey had received 10,400 responses. These comments were formally analysed, with key themes disseminated rapidly across the executive team. Measurement and evaluation were supported by dedicated data analysts within our team, as well as researchers at Newcastle University.
Excellence in Communication and Engagement Winner: Cheshire and Merseyside Health and Care Partnership – Digital Covid Response Group
C&MHCP Digital Teams from every organisation cooperated fully during the Covid crisis by working round the clock with clinicians and managers to solve problems with dedication. The central team coordinated all partners to support the rapid shift to home working providing solutions on hardware and software, EPR and exchange information systems and supporting families to keep in touch.
Partnership of the Year Winner: HAS Technology – PAMMS / LondonADASS
In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, London ADASS and HAS Technology worked together to repurpose its PAMMS software to enable crucial digital collection and collation of health and social care data to help manage risks on a daily basis across all care settings in its 32 boroughs.
Supporting Healthcare Teams through Technology Winner: Technology Enabled Care Cymru – Rolling out the NHS Wales Video Consulting Services
In March 2020 TEC Cymru was commissioned by Welsh Government to roll out video consulting initially to Welsh GPs in 7 weeks. In the first 5 months, from a standing start, they enabled over 33,000 virtual patient consultations across more than 100 specialties in primary, secondary and community care.
