The NEL Digital Team have several projects to support Primary Care, here are some summaries and please contact the team on nelondonicb.digitalfirst@nhs.net if you want to find out more!
Digital First Primary Care Transformation – OCVC
Aims of the Project
The project is committed to optimising and improving online consultation & video consultation utilisation across NEL by continue to support practices to understand the benefits and increase utilisation of online consultations as part of embedding total triage.
Future Plans
Establish the local NEL-wide OCVC dashboard as a sustainable source of information for the current OCVC utilisation usage trend, performance and areas of improvement.
Collaboration with the Comms team into the next OCVC promotional activity using the Patient Engagement platform.
The goal is to familiarise the residents of NEL to the OCVC services as part of improving the utilisation of OCVC among the practices.
Interdependencies with others
eHubs project:-
The interdependency related to promoting and implement Hub working arrangement with the practices in the same PCN where they are common OCVC tools
NHS Apps:-
The OCVC project and NHS App are under the common banner of the patient Engagement activity where Comms team will promote the usage of OCVC, NHS App, PKB to the residents of NEL through as series of planned engagement and promotional activity.
Digital First Primary Care Transformation – Telephony
Aims of the Project
The telephony project aims to identify opportunities across practices and PCNs to optimise telephony systems and interactive voice recognition (IVR)s to improve patient experience when calling and managing demand / streaming request to self-help and/or appropriate service and sharing demand across several sites.
Enhance practice efficiency and improve patient experience
Provide security for practices and support business continuity
Digital First Team to work collaboratively with NEL Primary Care team and Fuller PMO team to meet the telephony goals set under the Fuller Report and NHS Primary Care Recovery Plan.
Key deliverables:
Support Practices to migrate to cloud based telephony to support remote flexible working. Practice who are on analogue telephony will be supported via the commercial procurement hub to terminate their contract. They will be asked to choose a supplier from the better purchasing framework to migrate to. The NEL strategy is to encourage choice influenced by the presence of a well-functioning provider currently function in the practice geographic PCN.
Support PCNs to select one provider. Through baselining, target selected PCNs where some of the practices have a well-functioning provider and steer the analogue practices to that supplier to promote a telephony e-hub solution.
Carry out a pilot to test a single point of access to practices within PCN. This will explore the possibilities of telephony across a group of practices where there can be greater integration and operational interoperability of practices within a single PCN e.g. practices providing support for others in the PCN by taking their calls where they may be otherwise busy.
Future Plans
Ensure ALL practice within NEL move to fully cloud-based solution by Q3 of 2024
Carry out successful pilot of hub working across NEL where PCN hubs are operating a single point of access on behalf of the PCN.
Interdependencies with others
eHubs project:-
The interdependency related to promoting and implement Hub working arrangement with the practices in the same PCN where they have a common provider to aid hub working.
Digital First Primary Care Transformation – e-Hubs
Intro
The Digital First programme works in collaboration with the local and regional programmes to support Primary Care Networks. (PCN) The goal is to ultimately increase collaborative working between practices within a PCN by using digital tools to underpin, manage and streamline processes. Practices working collaboratively in an e-hub could be admin based, clinically based, or a combination
Aims of the Project
Explore and pilot innovative ways of collaborative working at a PCN or place-based level to manage aspects of primary care and maximise the use of all roles, ensuring patients receive the care they need in the most efficient way possible.
Optimise the use of digital tools to underpin, manage and streamline workflows within the e-hub
Optimise workforce skill mix to support the e-hub model, utilising ARRS roles to support triage, treatment, advise and signposting.
Key deliverables:
Optimise the use of digital tools to underpin, manage and streamline workflows within the e-hub
Optimise workforce skill mix to support the e-hub model, utilising ARRS roles to support triage, treatment, advise and signposting
Create a sustainable framework for future e-hub provision including financial sustainability and models, workforce modelling ensuring the right skill-mix is being utilised to support the e-hub and future areas of opportunities that could be included within the e-hub.
Opportunities to co-locate and work together with extended access services and other hubs within the local area including utilising the services to manage digital requests
Future Plans
Ensure ALL practice within NEL move to full EMIS interoperability as this underpins the basis of interdependence with other projects by Q3 of 2024
Carry out successful pilots of hub working across NEL where PCN hubs are operating a single point of access on behalf of the PCN, both from online consultation and Telephony view point.
Interdependencies with others
OCVC Project:-
The interdependency related to promoting and implement Hub working arrangement with the practices in the same PCN where there is a common Online Consultation provider.
Telephony Project:-
The interdependency related to promoting and implement Hub working arrangement with practices in the same PCN where there is a common Cloud-based Telephony provider
Digital First Primary Care Transformation – Automation
Aims of the project – Automation
The overall aim is to free up clinical and administrative staff capacity to allow them to work on value adding tasks through development of pilots and exploring the use of new and existing tools to support the process of automation within Primary Care. Supporting improved efficiency, productivity, quality and patient care, through targeting high volume low complexity repetitive tasks and where solutions allow, support clinicians in making decisions.
Future plans
Automation can range from simple add-ons for existing administrative and clinical systems to more complex software ‘bots’ that emulate human operations. Examples of automation might include auto-filing/processing of pathology results, patient self-booking of appointments, automated coding of correspondence and recall/review systems. Digital First is a key leader in encouraging automation to improve local initiatives and functionality.
The Academic Health Science Network (AHSN) has funded 2 pilot projects to drive and better understand the use and utility of automation in Primary Care. The funded projects include
Havering North PCN – CareIQ Radar
Havering North Primary Care Network is utilising CareIQ Radar to automate risk stratification and call & recall for the improved management of chronic conditions.
In the first weeks of using CareIQ Radar automation, 3,787 patients with high severity Diabetes, Hypertension and Atrial Fibrillation were successfully contacted, and 50% of diabetic and high-risk hypertensive patients recalled.
Automation has enabled months of work to be completed in a matter of minutes. This is saving administrative time, improving communication and follow-ups leading to improved patient outcomes.
For a PCN with a 50k patient population the tool is projected to free up to 21,000 hours of staff time and save between £505k and £740k per annum.
To find out more about CareIQ Radar click here.
Nightingale Practice
The Nightingale Practice are working with Edenbridge Apex to develop a groundbreaking rota management tool informed by demand and capacity data to; reduce the administrative burden of rota management, improve practice efficiency by ensuring the right number of doctors are working on any given day, and improve access for patients to GP appointments.
The solution is currently being stress tested within the Nightingale Practice and is due to be launched across 4 ‘phase 1’ pilot sites during September 2023 and then across all practices within NEL.
Early feedback from staff has been incredibly positive, the solution along with staff feedback will be presented at the upcoming NHSE London Digital First Automation in Primary Care workshop in September 2023.
“We are using the test site, and we feel really excited about how much easier it will be from a staff member’s perspective of requesting leave, and from the management perspective of it being approved / declined. It is so visual, and will enable much better planning in advance for people who are wanting leave. We can already see how it will be time saving for management, and how, with better planning, this will ultimately be better for patients getting appointments.” Nisha Patel, GP clinical lead
Digital Social Prescribing
Aims
The digital social prescribing project’s long-term strategic aims is to support services to improve social prescribing activities, thereby increasing the overall wellbeing and support offered to some of our most vulnerable communities. This will improve the quality of operational interaction between the service users, VS provider and SP link work through digital tools.
The aims are:
• Introducing digital systems that enable case management, link to the directory of services, record activity and outcomes and can be used by individuals using health and care services –
– Refresh NEL SP template and dashboard in collaboration with SPLW and align with National minimum dataset.
– Support procurement and implementation of case management system for NEL boroughs.
• Supporting and developing systemic evaluation and a culture of continuous improvement through the foundation of shared data to monitor activity and outcomes, and for shared learning.
Summary
• The Dashboard team will be working to update the dashboard once the final codes has been sent by CEG in the next few days.
• The final template codes will also be sent to Joy so that their template can be aligned to the NEL template.
• Working with the digital facilitators team to help support the rollout of the updated templates, they will be producing some user guides, videos and support if required to SPLW.
• Joy rollout – Havering is in the process of recruiting a project manager to support the implementation of Joy in their borough.
• Joy can be used for many other things within the ICB- Introducing digital systems that enable case management, link to the directory of services, record activity and outcomes and can be used by individuals using health and care services
• Enable existing ICS teams to sustainably support and manage the processes and tools implemented by the programme