Safety Measuring & Monitoring Framework Workshop for Acute and Mental Health Members

Waseem Munir

The Advancing Quality Alliance (AQuA) would like to invite members working across Acute and Mental Health settings to an exciting workshop designed to improve patient safety.

Taking place on 19 January 2017 at the Imperial War Museum North, this one-day event forms part of our work on implementing the Safety Measuring & Monitoring Framework, alongside The Health Foundation.

Waseem Munir, Safety & Mortality Improvement Lead, said:

“Through our work alongside The Health Foundation, we’ve made amazing progress with several of our members in implementing the Framework. This event forms our next phase of work, in which we hope to widen the understanding and implantation of this across our members.

“At this event we’re looking forward to showcasing how our members across Acute and Mental health can use the Framework to think differently about safety, and how it can support them to provide a more holistic view for patients.”

The Safety Measuring & Monitoring Framework was drawn up by Professor Charles Vincent and colleagues from the Imperial College. It provides a platform for discussions on exactly what ‘safety’ means, how it can be best managed, and what needs to be considered when planning safety improvements.

Further information about the framework can be found on the HowSafeIsOurCare website.

For more information about or to book your place on the event, please visit the event website page.

Multimedia Recap - IHI Accelerated Patient Safety Programme

Earlier this month, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) and AQuA welcomed over 50 delegates to an exciting four day event, designed to support organisations to develop and implement safer health and social care systems.

Taking place at Hotel Football, Manchester, our expert faculty guided delegates through the vital skills and knowledge needed to apply improvements to their individual roles and environments.

We've put together a multimedia recap of the best tweets, photos and videos from across the four days. For full information about the course, please visit www.AQuAnw.nhs.uk/IHI

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.

Expressions of Interest: AQuA Board Member Vacancies

The Advancing Quality Alliance (AQuA) are now seeking expressions of interest from experienced leaders to join the AQuA Board.

AQuA Chief Executive
David Fillingham

AQuA’s Board is made up of five Directors from AQuA membership across the North West, as well as four external independent Directors.

We are looking to appoint two new Directors from across AQuA membership, following the departure of Michael Gregory and Gary Doherty, who are stepping down after taking up new roles outside the region.

To help ensure a balance of expertise across our Board, we are particularly interested in applications from members with financial backgrounds, as well as those with experience across primary care and/or commissioning.

AQuA Chief Executive David Fillingham said:

“Our Board members bring a wealth of experience and perspectives to their role in setting and scrutinising AQuA’s work and overall vision.

“Michael and Gary have played a vital role in this during their time with us, and we wish them the best of luck with their new roles.

“We’re now looking for two new Directors, to help ensure we continue meet the changing needs of our members, and provide them with the best possible support we can to address their aims and challenges across health and social care.”

For more information about the role, please download the role description.

To apply, please send a short CV and covering letter, detailing why you would like to join the Board and how you meet the role’s requirements, to carole.maloney@srft.nhs.uk.

If you would like to arrange a further discussion about the role, please contact us on the email above, or call 0161 206 8938.

The deadline for applications is the end of Friday 4 November 2016.

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

Patients should be at centre of decisions about their care, says NICE

NICE - the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence - has joined forces with a wide range of leading health care organisations to help get patients more involved in decisions about their care.

SDM can improve relationships
between patients and clinicians

NICE, alongside NHS England, the General Medical Council, universities and other organisations have come together to form the ‘Shared Decision Making Collaborative’.

The collaborative hopes to promote a move away from ‘top-down’ medicine, towards a culture where clinicians and health care professionals work together with their patients to choose the most appropriate tests, treatments and support packages.

A set of intentions and commitments, which will help make shared decisions about care a reality in everyday clinical practice, has been set out by the collaborative in their consensus statement and action plan.

Professor Gillian Leng, deputy chief executive and director of health and social care at NICE, said:
“When health care professionals work together with patients, research shows that more appropriate decisions are made about their care. This can lead to improved patient safety, better patient satisfaction and more efficient use of resources.

“It’s important that a culture of shared decision making is embedded into clinical practice. NICE, through our collaboration with other leading health care organisations, will make sure that patient centred care becomes an everyday reality in our health service.”

Emma Walker, AQuA

Emma Walker, Portfolio Lead for Shared Decision Making at the Advancing Quality Alliance (AQuA), said:
“We are delighted to be involved with the National Shared Decision Making Consensus Statement. We are looking forward to working with a range of national partners to support the embedding of SDM into practice; drawing on AQuA’s experience of working with teams and organisations in practice and sharing a range of resources, tools and case studies that we have developed over the past 4 years.”

As part of the collaborative, NICE has pledged to:

• raise awareness and promote shared decision making at a local and national level through a series of case studies
• work with NHS England to ensure that shared decision making tools are embedded within guidance and pathways
• look at existing ways to measure shared decision making in clinical practice through its indicators programme
• advocate for research funding to look into the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of shared decision making

Other leading health care bodies have also pledged their intentions and ambitions in the action plan. These include:

• NHS England to make sure that involving patients in decisions about their care is rooted in ongoing work programmes
• Healthwatch England to help support shared decision making on a local level
• The General Medical Council to incorporate shared decision making within its Generic professional capabilities framework, which sets out the knowledge, skills and behaviours which doctors need.

To find out more about NICE, please visit their website or follow them on Twitter @NICEComms.

AQuA Showcase Work on Shared Decision Making at NHS Expo 2016

Last week the Advancing Quality Alliance (AQuA), the North West’s leading organisation in quality improvement, joined thousands of colleagues from across the NHS, to showcase our work at the Health and Care Innovation Expo (NHS Expo) in Manchester.

Emma Walker, who leads our work on Shared Decision Making (SDM), joined partners at the NHS Right Care’s dedicated zone to lead presentations on AQuA’s work on SDM, as part of the national Ask 3 Questions campaign.

Speaking after the event, Emma said:

“Being at Expo with the Rightcare Team was an excellent opportunity not only to link with some amazing thought leaders on ‘Person and Community Centred Care’, of which Shared Decision Making and Self-Management Support (SMS) are aspects of this approach, but also to speak to a range of members and NHS colleagues about what AQuA can offer in support.

“I was delighted to give two presentations on our work. The first with Dr Alf Collins, Dr Al Mulley and Professor Matthew Cripps, looked at closing the Perception Gap in relation to SDM, with my section focusing on AQuA’s expertise and experience in putting the theory into practice.

“In the second we discussed some of our top tips for embedding SDM into practice, focusing on our experience from the past 5 years of working with teams to embed SDM and SMS at both team and organisational level.”

The aim of NHS Expo is to bring clinicians and managers from across the NHS to explore how to innovate and use technology to improve care and treatment to patients.

This year’s conference continued to explore the latest developments in health and care and the continued vision behind the NHS Five Year Forward View, with keynote speeches from NHS England boss Simon Stevens, Sir Bruce Keogh, and Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt.

The two-day event was a great opportunity for the AQuA team to talk about their work with members and wider colleagues across the NHS, and patients to discuss how SDM can help improve their relationships with clinicians and experience of care.

We look forward to attending NHS Expo once again in 2017. For more information about our work on Shared Decision Making, including individual case studies, please visit our website.