AQuA Exhibiting Analytics Support at North West Informatics Conference

Two of our staff will be exhibiting our analytics work at this week’s Connect Conference in Blackpool, alongside a range of senior informatics colleagues from across the North West health and care sector.

Hosted by Intersystems and the NHS Skills Development Network, ‘Beyond the Boundaries’ takes place at the Hilton Hotel, Blackpool, on Thursday 21 – Friday 22 September.

Our Programme Director Nadine Boczkowski and Principle Business Intelligence Analyst Paul Hawgood will be showcasing our analytics and business intelligence work with our members from across the region.

Speaking ahead of the conference, Nadine said:

“We’re delighted to be attending Connect Conference and are looking forward to hearing about some of current priorities and to share supporting offers and services available to our members across the region.

“There are some fantastic speakers lined up over the two days, and we hope to see some really innovative analytical and technological developments and best practice.”

Sessions throughout the conference will explore a broad range of topics, including digital innovation, using informatics to improve performance and outcomes across health and care, and how to develop the necessary skills behind this now and in the future.

Nadine and Paul will be at Stand 21 in the reception exhibition area over the two days, and will also be taking part in sessions; with many of our member also delivering presentations throughout the conference.

You can follow Paul on Twitter @PaulHawgood, or for latest updates follow NHS Skills Development Network @ISDNorthWest. 

AQuA Poster Wins National Prize at Patient Safety Congress

The Advancing Quality Alliance's (AQuA) work to improve Alcohol Related Liver Disease (ARLD) care, in collaboration with North West Trusts, has received national recognition, after its poster was selected as one of the winning entries ahead of this year’s annual Patient Safety Congress; taking place in Manchester on 4-5 July.

Winning the prize for the Improving Processes and Outcomes category, the poster details the work of our Advancing Quality (AQ) programme, which supports the delivery of high quality and reliable care; ensuring ARLD patients across the region receive critical clinical interventions across their care pathway, which are proven to lead to better outcomes.

Click here to download

Nadine Boczkowski, AQ Programme Director, said:
“We’re delighted to have won this award and for our work with dedicated Trusts to be recognised on a national level. This really does show the great progress made across the North West to improve the quality and safety of care for patients with Alcohol Related Liver Disease.

“Nationally, ARLD accounts for over a third of liver disease deaths. Administration of the drug Pabrinex within 6 hours of hospital arrival is proven (through evidence based research) to increase the patient’s chance of survival. Since the AQ ARLD condition area was launched in 2015, all participating Trusts have demonstrated improved compliance in this area.”

The Patient Safety Congress and Awards bring together health and care leaders and practitioners from across the UK, to celebrate best practice and leading developments in safety, quality and clinical excellence.

The submission was put together by AQ’s Project Manager, Claire Geoghegan and Principal Business Intelligence Analyst, Nancy Prospero, alongside our two member Clinical Leads Dr Richardson, of Royal Liverpool & Broadgreen University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, and Dr Ramakrishnan, of Warrington & Halton Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

An overall winner across all categories of the poster competition will also be announced at the conference.

The team will also be showcasing two further posters around Hip Fracture and Acute Kidney Injury (AKI).

In addition, AQuA have also been nominated for the Patient Safety Awards for our work in reducing restraint in mental health, alongside the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan), whilst a fantastic 16 of our members have also made the shortlist across a number of categories.

Awards winners will be announced during the evening ceremony on Tuesday 4 July.

For full information about the conference, including a full awards shortlist, please visit the Patient Safety Congress website, or follow updates on Twitter @PSafety4All.

Blog - What’s in a word? Breaking the Language Barrier in Healthcare – Helen Kilgannon

Helen Kilgannon is AQuA’s Strategic Portfolio Lead. Following her recent visit to the International Conference for Integrated Care in Dublin, she shares her thoughts on the power of language used in healthcare, and how change in this can help support better systems.

Helen Kilgannon

Having spent three days in Dublin talking integration, I have so many thoughts and feelings circling my mind and body.

I feel a great sense of pride for what the North West has achieved; there were presentations referencing the excellent work across systems in Millom, Salford and Halton leading changes to improve wellbeing, health and community engagement.

The conference had a really strong focus on engaging the patient. I was struck by the barrier language can be… and I don’t mean the myriad of international languages spoken at the conference.

How often do we in health and care refer to people by condition, behaviour or place in our system: multi-morbidity, complex needs, long term condition, difficult mother, intermediate care patient?

Based on the label we give someone we make assumptions and judgements about the person, often focusing on a deficit or emphasising a level of complexity before we have even met the person.

How nice would it be, if like the work in Wigan, we started from a point of asking “what matters to you?” and ask the question in their community not our buildings.

How we enable and support people would be shaped by listening to their views, wishes and choices. Perhaps then we could move to a place where we don’t need to define people by conditions to fit into our systems, and integration would be truly person orientated.

There is great learning from international models including Nuka, Buurtzorg and Local Care Coordination on how we can intentionally redesign our systems to meet the needs of a population through building on assets. 

So what’s in a word?

I think the key word is Intentional, asset based working is not an add-on; it’s an intentional change in the way we approach population wellbeing.

More thoughts to follow in my next blog, so stay tuned...

Feel free to share your thoughts with Helen via Twitter @Helenckg or @AQuA_NHS.

Blog - Patient: Engaging, sharing, supporting – Part 2

Kayleigh Price is AQuA’s Improvement Lead for Safety & Mortality. In the first part of her Quality Forum blog she shared her thoughts on patient experience. For part two, she explores how innovation and technology can play a part in improving patient experience.

Kayleigh Price

In this second part of my blog I want to draw on patient innovators and tech. Thanks for staying tuned…

#Wearenotwaiting- How can we safely spread patient innovations and involvement?

Health care is notoriously reticent in using new technology; requiring many rounds of testing before anything can be deemed as fully safe. I’m not saying that this is wrong but we sometimes seem too scared of this tech to let out patients use it. Despite our fears, they are using it anyway. In fact they are using it and then some!

We heard from some patient innovators who had a very strong message for healthcare. This message was beautiful in its simplicity - #Wearenotwaiting (go away and search for it on Twitter- I promise you will be impressed).

Tic tacs for monitoring diabetes and finger tap apps for Parkinsons?

We also heard from Tim Omer who has Type 1 Diabetes. He, along with a number of fellow diabetics, has hacked his monitoring kit. He showed us a tic-tac box which had been emptied (I assume he didn’t eat all of the sweets!) and filled with some simple electronic circuits.

This then connected to his monitoring device to give him real time consistent monitoring of his blood sugar levels, without the need for him to constantly check it. He had then connected this to his smartwatch so that he could easily view this data and make adjustments according to what his body was telling him. Not only that, but this group of diabetics have created over 100 artificial pancreata, just by connecting all of these bits together.

Then there was Sara Riggare, who is living with Parkinson’s disease. She is using apps on her smartphone to measure and monitor her tremor, and uses this data to discuss with her care provider the best options for her care, depending on how her condition is manifesting in real time.

This blew my mind in a couple of ways. Firstly that people have the ingenuity to go out and create these things for themselves. Secondly, that they are having to in the first place.

Are our healthcare systems letting us down so much that patients have to take it in to their own hands to create solutions, often dicing with death whilst they tweak and finesse their systems? (I feel the need to point out that this is not just the NHS - Sara was from Sweden and some of the other speakers were from America and India)

Innovations and engagement for all?

The third and perhaps most important way that all of this has blown my mind is this - How can we as healthcare providers catch up to the innovations our service users are creating? How can we safely ensure access to these innovations for the vast majority of our patients, rather than the very small minority of activated and vocal patients?

And this is the real point I wanted to make - yes patients want to be involved in decisions about their care - of course they do. Let’s be honest, it doesn’t take a genius to work that out. But how best to do it? Not every patient is brave enough to push themselves forwards, or has time (or even the ability) to sit and develop innovative ways to assist themselves. Even those who are leaders in their field often cede all power once they become a patient.

I recently read a book called ‘When breath becomes air’ by Paul and Lucy Kalanithi (I thoroughly recommend this for ANYONE working within health and social care). Paul trained for years to become a neurosurgeon and this book outlines his story as he transformed from highly trained medical practitioner to end of life patient, and the feeling of loss of power that went alongside this.

If even someone who knew the system inside out felt unable to speak up about his care, how can we expect all of our patients to do so? How can we expect them to know what the best options are for them, and how they should go about researching them?

How can we truly engage our patients in their care, ensuring that all of the options (including those we may not have the power to offer them) are outlined? And how can we in health and social care ensure that this is done in a safe and inclusive way?

How can we adopt and adapt the technologies our patients are developing to ensure that access to these innovations becomes widespread? How can we do this in a system that is straining under the pressure? With staff who are stretched as thinly as possible without snapping? Who are trying their best to deliver the highest standards of care, but are facing ever growing numbers of patients, with less financial support and higher patient expectations?

I don’t pretend to have the answers to these questions, but I would love to hear your ideas for how we could do this. So, let’s start a conversation!

Tweet me @kayleighprice14 or email me at Kayleigh.price@srft.nhs.uk and share your ideas.  Maybe by working together we can come up with some ideas that might be testable, and we can move towards enabling our patients to fly. 

Blog - Patient: Engaging, sharing, supporting – Part 1

Kayleigh Price is AQuA’s Improvement Lead for Safety & Mortality. In part one of her blog, she shares some of her reflections on patient experience from the recent International forum on Quality and Safety.

Kayleigh Price

Last week I was lucky enough to attend the BMJ/IHI international forum on Quality and Safety in London, with a number of colleagues from AQuA. I had the opportunity to present a poster on the Measurement and Monitoring of Safety Programme, but that is not what I wanted to write about in these blogs…

Brains at the door and bodies in the room?

The messages coming out of the forum were loud and clear. Service users want to be involved in decisions about their care. They do not want to be an afterthought. They want to be engaged at every level of their care.

In the opening keynote session, Lord Darzi and Don Berwick were lightly grilled by two patient advocates; Margaret Murphy and Anya de Longh. The pair were firmly in the driving seat, as Margaret reminded us that our service users hold down jobs, look after their families and generally make decisions all day every day.

She then asked why it is that healthcare thinks people leave their brains at the door when they come in to have their bodies treated. And this is a very good point. If we want to move towards a shared decision making approach, we need to remember that our service users have brains, opinions and feelings and that they shouldn’t be  afraid to express them.

Service users say what we are too afraid to

I then attended a session focusing on how patients were engaged with the Q programme and the importance of engaging for a reason was emphasised. To cut a long story short, they were saying that engagement cannot be a tickbox exercise and advised a 4PI model for service user involvement, which encourages us (those in health and social care in general) to think about:

• Principles
• Purpose
• Presence
• Impact

They highlighted the fact that service users can often say the things that our clinicians and other healthcare staff can’t. They don’t have the fear of repercussions that we may have, or the need to navigate the political climate of the NHS. Where we might be thinking it but too afraid to say it, our service users will likely not feel the same restraints we do. After all, they are the ones who will be affected by the decisions we make, so why should they feel they cannot speak up?

Break the focus on transition

Next was a session on the ‘Patient Centred Health Care Home’ which extolled the benefits of involving patients in planning for transitions. The speakers in this session posited that we should consider movement between services less as a transition, more as an expansion or retraction of the current health delivery team.

Basically, the idea is that the service should expand and contract around the needs of our service users. The patient, their family and the GP are the core team (or health care home) and they draft in extra support from other services as and when the patient requires it.

This represented a different way of thinking about how patients move through the system, and for me highlighted the need to ensure primary care, and our patients are fully in the loop about the services they access. Which brings me rather neatly on to session four…

Patients records - partnerships of trust

This session was called ’Twelve Years of Empowering Patients, Improving Lives and Feeling Fabulous’ with the #Empowerlution. This session was presented by one Ingrid Brindle, chair of the award winning Haughton Thornley Patient Participation Group, and her general practitioner Amir Hannan.

They spoke about the fact that healthcare likes to hold on to the information we have about patients. We don’t like to give our patients access to their medical records. Ingrid and Amir posed to us that actually the very person who should have the access to the whole medical record is the patient. They are the ones making decisions about their health and healthcare on a day by day basis. The takeaway message was that ‘health is a lifetime project for us all, and we need all of the tools to manage it’.

To be continued?

In the next part of my blog, I will talk about patient innovators, technology and then hope you’ll join the conversation as I pose some questions on my final thoughts.

Read part two of Kayleigh’s blog here.

You can also share your thoughts with Kayleigh via Twitter @kayleighprice14, or email Kayleigh.price@srft.nhs.uk.

Blog - The Promise of Manager-Clinician Partnerships in the NHS

Andrew Wilson is a Senior Business Intelligence Analyst at AQuA. Following his visit to April’s International Forum on Quality and Safety in Healthcare in London, he shares his thoughts on how the NHS needs to bridge the gap between clinicians and managers…

Andy Wilson

There were many fault lines that scarred society in 2016. Deep divisions between young and old, town and country, were evident across the social fabric of these shores throughout the last year. When we think back to the world of 2015, it feels more distant rather than a mere eighteen months ago.

Whilst there is no doubt that, like any other area of government, the process of leaving the European Union will have a significant impact on healthcare, the opening paragraph was not written with Brexit in mind.

Whilst Brexit will undoubtedly have an impact on the NHS, the focus of this blog is on junior doctors. In early 2016, the junior doctors’ strikes were leading news stories for several weeks. Strong opinions were held on both sides of the argument about the morality of the strikes, their impact on patients, the main protestations of junior doctors and who is responsible for this disagreement reaching this point.

Whichever side or viewpoint you took on the junior doctors’ strikes, I’m sure that you would agree that these are the clinicians who in five, ten or twenty years from now will be clinical leaders across the NHS.

Throw into the mix the pressure the NHS will be suffering over the next decade, a larger population with greater healthcare needs, you could be forgiven for thinking that the chasm between junior doctor and management of the NHS is not traversable.

Learning from Guy’s and St Thomas’ example

At the Quality Forum conference I was fortunate enough to attend a presentation by Joanne Ward (a deputy general manager) and Chris Meadows (a Critical Care Consultant) at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust.

Joanne spoke of how she felt it was critical that she spent more time in the clinical setting she was managing, to better understand the work the clinical team undertook, and their perspective of how the NHS functioned.

Chris told delegates of his experience as a new consultant, attempting to encourage his juniors to develop a better understanding of the work NHS managers do, and how the NHS functions. He also spoke about how their roles cross paths, and how the Trust had developed a programme to pair similar junior doctors and NHS managers, with the idea of letting them lead on a quality improvement project.

The programme consisted of a series of workshops and shadowing of roles to match managers and clinicians. The result of this was to have a formidable partnership that could engage with fellow clinicians to establish the underlying problem affecting patient care and work with managers to explore all options to achieve an improvement. Joanne and Chris also went on to talk about the various achievements of these partnerships had had at the Trust.

Hope for positive partnerships

So despite the picture of doom I painted earlier in this, I want to stress that here is just one (and I’m sure there are many more) tangible example of quality improvement working alongside the clinical leaders of tomorrow.

The gains in fostering more of these Manager-Clinician relationships are potentially massive in patient and experience terms, and there is a simplicity to their work financially too.

Link junior doctors with people who have the capability to change patient pathways, and you can achieve improved patient outcomes and a more engaged staff.

AQuA Staff Latest to Join the Health Foundation Q Community

Advancing Quality Alliance (AQuA) staff are among the latest to join an exciting new community from The Health Foundation, designed to support continuous improvements in the quality of care for patients.

From left - AQuA staff Emma Walker, Amanda Huddleston, Liz Kanwar & Elizabeth Bradbury

Elizabeth Bradbury, Emma Walker, Amanda Huddleston, and Liz Kanwar were recently invited to join the Q Community, which brings together improvement practitioners from across healthcare management, commissioning, research and policy, to share ideas, skills and collaborate on improvement projects.

Speaking of the announcement, AQuA Chief Executive David Fillingham said:

“I’m delighted to see my colleagues join the Q community, alongside our Safety and Mortality Lead Andrea McGuinness, who was among the founding members.

“This is a real testament to their knowledge and experience in improving the health and quality of care, not just with our members in the North West, but also with our partners across the country and beyond.

“AQuA work closely with The Health Foundation across a number of initiatives, and I look forward to seeing our staff work alongside some of the leading individuals from across the health and social care landscape.”

Amanda Huddleston, Quality Improvement Lead for Safety & Mortality, said:

“Being invited by The Health Foundation to join the Q community is a real privilege. This is a great initiative to help grow and invest in quality improvement skills and expertise, and I’m looking forward to working with so many talented colleagues from across health and social care.”

Q is also supported by NHS Improvement, which was established in April to oversee and support NHS Trusts across England.

Staff join a community of 261 improvement experts from across the UK, and The Health Foundation hope to grow this number with further opportunities over the course of the next 12 months.

For more information about Q, please visit The Health Foundation website, or follow updates on Twitter @theQcommunity.

Publication of Advancing Quality (AQ) 2015/16 Clinical Intervention Measure Results

Nadine Boczkowski,
AQ Programme Director

The Advancing Quality Alliance’s (AQuA) flagship reliability of care programme, Advancing Quality (AQ), has recently published 2015/16 clinical intervention measure results for its NHS member organisations across the North West.

The AQ programme, which was founded in 2008, supports partners to improve the consistency and quality of clinical care across a number of Clinical Focus Areas (CFAs) such as; Acute Kidney Injury, Hip and Knee Replacement, Sepsis and Early Intervention Psychosis.

For each of these areas, a set of core quality measures are identified and agreed by local clinical experts across the region, aligned to national standard guidelines. Working to ensure every eligible patient receives the standard care every time, according to each measure has proven to positively impact outcomes; not only helping to save lives but reduce re-admissions, complications and length of hospital stay.

Nadine Boczkowski, Director for the AQ Programme said:

“We know that people’s health in the North West is generally worse than the England average. In part this is due to the high levels of deprivation seen across the region compared to other areas of England. The AQ programme provides an approach to measure and evidence base the delivery of consistent quality practices in prevalent conditions across the North West.

“Although there has been decline in results in some areas, impacted by changes to measure definitions and thresholds, it is encouraging to see such positive and increasing results in critical areas such as sepsis, AMI and Diabetes . The ongoing commitment of member organisations and their staff to continuously improve and sustain the quality of clinical care is unfounded. 2015/16 continued to identify and spread the scope and scale of best practice by coming together as a collaborative community, sharing knowledge and learning to drive innovation and improvement.’’

The results, which are featured in full on www.advancingqualitynw.nhs.uk can be viewed by hospital or locality. Hospitals included in the published results are commissioned to participate in the programme as part of their local contracts. Some participating organisation’s data may not be published if they do not meet the data quality / completeness threshold for public reporting.

The Clinical Focus Areas included in the 2015/16 results are:

• Acute Kidney Injury
• Alcohol Related Liver Disease
• Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease
• Dementia
• Diabetes 
• Heart Attack
• Heart Bypass
• Heart Failure
• Hip Fracture
• Hip or Knee Replacement Surgery
• Pneumonia
• Psychosis
• Sepsis

The Trusts with 2015/16 results being published today are:

Acute Trusts

• Aintree University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
• Countess of Chester Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
• East Cheshire NHS Trust
• East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust
• Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
• Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
• Mid Cheshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
• Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust
• Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospitals NHS Trust
• Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust
• Southport and Ormskirk Hospital NHS Trust
• St Helen’s and Knowsley Teaching Hospital NHS Trust
• Stockport NHS Foundation Trust
• Tameside Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
• University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust
• Warrington and Halton Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
• Wirral University Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust

Mental Health and Care Trusts

• 5 Boroughs Partnership NHS Foundation Trust
• Cheshire and Wirral Partnership NHS Foundation Trust
• Greater Manchester West Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust
• Lancashire Care NHS Foundation Trust
• Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust
• Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust

Independent sector providers

• BMI Healthcare - The Alexandra Hospital
• Ramsay Healthcare UK - Euxton Hall Hospital
• Ramsay Healthcare UK - Fulwood Hall Hospital
• Ramsay Healthcare UK - Renacres Hospital

AQ Listening Exercise: Share your views on the Advancing Quality (AQ) programme

Over the next three months we’re asking members to share their views on the Advancing Quality (AQ) programme; AQuAs flagship reliability of care offer.

After almost a decade of successful collaboration with North West healthcare organisations, AQ has delivered demonstrable improvements in the quality, reliability and outcomes of clinical care.

To ensure members continue to gain the most value from an effective reliability offer we would like members to help shape our 2017-18 priorities for AQ by taking part in our online survey, a short phonecall or face-to-face meeting.

Nadine Boczkowski, AQuA Programme Director for AQ & Analytics said: “Your valuable input into the listening exercise will help us to shape services and develop new offers tailored to your needs, offering support in the right areas to drive up the quality and safety of care and deliver consistently high standards.”

The Listening Exercise is open to staff across all members currently participating in AQ, as well as those who have previously taken part in the programme (please note AQuA and AQ membership are separate).

The short survey should only take approximately 10 minutes to complete, and you can take part by following the link below.

Click here to take the survey

Alternatively, if you would like to arrange a short meeting or telephone interview then please email: advancing.quality@nhs.net to arrange.

For more information about the Listening Exercise, you can download the flyer. If you would like to find out more about Advancing Quality, please visit the website.

Please note the online survey will close for feedback on Friday 30th September.

Join us at NHS Confederation 2016

This week we'll be attending the annual NHS Confederation 2016 conference and exhibition in Manchester.

As the voice of NHS leadership and employers across the country, Confed brings together and speaks on behalf of the whole health and care system.

With a range of leading figures from healthcare, NHS staff and partners in attendance, the conference is always an exciting chance to explore latest developments and share learning alongside colleagues from across the country.

This year's conference will be focusing heavily on efforts to transform health and care for patients, and looking at new and emerging models of care, redesigning health and care systems, and better integration and efficiency of services.

We're delighted to be attending this year's conference, and look forward to meeting AQuA members and colleagues from across the NHS to share our work, and learn how other organisations are improving care for patients.

Come and visit our team at Stand 129 inside the exhibition hall, which you can find on the exhibition floor plan. We'll also be tweeting updates throughout the day from @AQuA_NHS with the hashtag #Confed2016.

You can also find a full programme of events and activities, as well as a list of speakers on the conference website, or follow @NHSconfed on Twitter for updates.

Response to the National Confidential Enquiry into Patient Outcome and Death (NCEPOD) Report for Sepsis

The Advancing Quality Alliance (AQuA), a quality improvement body based in the North West of England, welcomes the findings of the recent NCEPOD report, ‘Just Say Sepsis!’

Sepsis is a severe and life threatening illness caused by the body’s exaggerated response to an infection. It is a significant cause of death and long-term health problems.  In the North West sepsis is responsible for around 13,500 hospital admissions and 3,500 deaths every year. Early recognition and prompt management can improve survival and reduce the risk of long term complications. 

The Advancing Quality (AQ) Team, based within AQuA began working with 14 Acute Trusts across the North West in September 2014 to help to improve care for patients with sepsis. To support this, a measure set was developed with 9 measures that cover the key steps in management of patients with sepsis. The measure set has 5 main aims:

1. Ensuring patients with infection have an early triage and assessment for sepsis.
2. If sepsis is present, a series of investigations and treatments are carried out.
3. If sepsis is present, the severity is graded.
4. If there are signs of severe sepsis, a senior doctor should assess the patient.
5. Ensuring ongoing monitoring of patients with sepsis.

Dr Emmanuel Nsetebu

Dr Emmanuel Nsutebu, AQ Sepsis Clinical co-lead and AQuA Patient Safety Fellow who participated in the NCEPOD review process is pleased with progress in the North West:

“The work being done in the North West is already addressing a number of recommendations which were included in the NCEPOD Report. By working with a number of Trusts across the North West, this allows us to undertake a collaborative approach to ensure that patients, no matter which hospital they visit, receive the same high standard of care for sepsis. Following the publication of the report, the AQ sepsis programme will review the recommendations and I am confident that we are in a strong position to deliver on most of these.

Organisations which are part of the AQ sepsis programme are regularly monitored on their performance in delivering all AQ sepsis measures. The data is shared amongst participating organisations on a monthly basis. Externally audited performance data is also published bi-annually at www.advancingqualitynw.nhs.uk. In addition to improving care, the AQ sepsis programme aims to improve clinical coding of the condition.

Dr Conor McGrath

Dr Conor McGrath, Clinical Co-lead for AQ sepsis and Consultant in critical care medicine explains:

“We are working hard to make sure that clinical coding for sepsis in the North West is improving. The programme aims to raise awareness of the condition and how to accurately reflect this in medical documentation. The programme also works with clinical coders to ensure a consistent approach to coding across participating organisations. Our data has shown that organisations that are part of the AQ sepsis program already have a higher level of coding for sepsis compared to the hospitals that are not participating.”  

The work of the Advancing Quality team continues to drive improvement to patient care in the North West, through strong clinical engagement, implementation of best practice, high quality data and working in collaboration across a number or conditions. More information about the team and the work that they do can be found at www.advancingqualitynw.nhs.uk.

- ENDS -

• For further information or to request an interview please contact, Katie Stephenson, Head of Communications and Marketing at AQuA on katie.stephenson@srft.nhs.uk or 0161 206 8025
• A full copy of the NCEPOD Sepsis report ‘Just Say Sepsis’ can be found at www.ncepod.org.uk/2015sepsis.htm