Month: August 2021

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New signups to UBook, our room booking system

Blackburn with Darwen and East Lancashire Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) have become the latest customers to sign up for our state-of-the-art room and hot desk booking system, UBook.

In Spring 2021 the CCGs’ corporate and estates leads approached the Midlands and Lancashire Commissioning Support Unit (MLCSU) as they were investigating new ways to promote agile, office-based working and realised that they needed a powerful and responsive booking system.

MLCSU’s Applications Development team is currently digitising the CCGs’ floor plans to populate the richly-featured interactive system which can be accessed from any browser, desktop, tablet or smartphone. UBook will be deployed across their sites during the summer of 2021.

Nine organisations have now subscribed to the system, which is currently processing bookings for thousands of rooms and desks. Across these clients some 10,000 members of staff are regularly using UBook to manage the booking of meeting and treatment rooms, hot desks, parking spaces, bike racks, projectors, pool vehicles and other physical resources.

The latest version of UBook, launched in 2020, was specifically designed for NHS organisations which needed efficient, easy-to-use administrative systems at a sensible cost.

The latest version of the system includes hot desk booking with social distancing and information-rich reports which can help to inform detailed estates planning. These new features have helped clients to manage the changing demands upon their resources during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly around staff returning to work after lockdown restrictions were lifted.

Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health Foundation Trust signed up to UBook last year after deciding to introduce one simple booking system to replace several procedures across its sites. As the COVID-19 pandemic unfolded they took full advantage of the system’s flexibility, which allowed safety measures to be quickly implemented.

Their UBook pilot scheme, launched in October 2020, allowed bookable desks to be removed from the system to comply with social distancing regulations. The system’s interactive floor maps showed staff which desks were available at any given time and the system automatically locked out desks for 72 hours after each use to ensure that they were COVID-free before being used again. Other UBook clients tie this window into local cleaning rotas to ensure desks are cleaned after each use.

QR codes were also introduced at the Trust to allow staff to check in from mobile devices rather than the planned touchscreens.

Amanda Tierney, Project Manager at Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health Foundation Trust, said: “MLCSU have been exemplary in their commitment to making the system work for our needs. The admin staff find it extremely useful and very easy to use and the ward staff are all positive too.

“I’ve learned so much from working with you and I’m extremely grateful, I couldn’t recommend you highly enough. I think that UBook is phenomenal and will benefit any organisation or trust that uses it.”

MLCSU Application Development Business Manager, Bill Douglas, said: “At MLCSU we were delighted to assist the Trust in its move to a unified room and desk booking system. As ever, we captured new ideas from those who manage estates and clinical functions and built those into the latest feature set.”

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Supporting proxy medicines ordering at care homes

Our Medicines Management and Optimisation team worked with the Black Country and West Birmingham Clinical Commissioning Group, GP practices and care homes on a successful project to increase the use of proxy ordering for medicines.

Background
A national programme to support the roll out of proxy ordering – which allows care homes to order online repeat medication on behalf of their residents – has been launched to help reduce the current high workload of primary care and care home staff.

The Black Country and West Birmingham Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) deployed extra pharmacy staff to work with GP practices and care homes to set up a local system.

Action
Midlands and Lancashire Commissioning Support Unit (MLCSU) supported the CCG with proxy ordering for four weeks in March 2021.

The successful service was then extended until the end of June.

During the project, the MLCSU medicines team worked with GP practices and care homes to:

* provide additional pharmacy technician staff to complete the setting up of proxy ordering with MLCSU pharmacist oversight

* develop partnership working with all stakeholders and ensure regular reporting

* use knowledge and outputs from wider MLCSU teams, avoid repetition of work and support education by developing a resource pack

* provide strategic leadership support for the additional pharmacy response across the region. This included technical and workforce planning and ensuring that processes for safe and effective implementation of proxy ordering systems were developed in both care homes and GP practices.

Impact

A resource pack was developed and distributed to CCG medicine leads at the end of March 2021.

This pack has since been shared with GP practices across the Black Country and West Birmingham to support the implementation process.

Our effort was concentrated on working with care homes to get staff trained and prepared for the system to go live, while local CCG leads worked with GP practices to finalise the set up of proxy ordering.

During the project we contacted 79 care homes at least once a week. As a result, 14% of the care homes that were contacted (11 homes) are now actively using online proxy ordering and a further 37% (29 homes) are in the process of implementing online proxy ordering. When our work ended in June 2021, we arranged a handover to the local CCG teams to help them with future implementation. We also provided a status report on the uptake of proxy ordering in all care homes across the area and shared our learnings with all partners.

Rachael Thornton, Older Persons Specialist Pharmacist – Dudley Integrated Health and Care NHS Trust, said:

“Sonia Bigra [Senior Pharmacy Technician at MLCSU] has been supporting care homes in Dudley to implement proxy ordering with some success. Although the timeline for the project was quite short, we have had a lot of interest from our care homes which we are aiming to take forward in the near future. Sonia has approached the project in a very professional way and communicated effectively with all local stakeholders.”

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Better engagement with public consultation

We helped Stoke-on-Trent CCG translate a complex consultation into easy to understand documents and campaign materials to achieve better engagement with the public.

Background

The North Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) needed help to summarise a complex public consultation about improving community-based services. The NHS Midlands and Lancashire Commissioning Support Unit (MLCSU) Communications and Engagement Service led on a full suite of public-facing documents and wider campaign materials to explain the proposals and encourage residents to engage with the consultation.

Action

The MLCSU Media, Editorial and Publications Team summarised several large, internal documents to produce a public consultation document that presented the information clearly, logically and in an easy-to-understand way for the general public.

We worked with our in-house Engagement, Involvement and Insight Team and our Campaigns, Creative and Digital Team to provide a seamless end-to-end service which included design, an engagement survey, copywriting, event management and printing materials.

Impact

The 52-page consultation document formed the core copy and content for a micro-website, newsletters, media releases, social media messages and presentations at events.

A designated account manager project managed from start to finish to ensure that sign off processes were adhered to, all partners kept informed and agreed deadlines were met.

The survey was a success and received 553 responses in a 14-week period, and more than 600 people attended a range of public events, focus groups and meetings about the consultation.

For further information about how we can support you please email: mediacsu@nhs.net

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Quick & easy patient referrals for post-Covid illness

Our Data Quality team developed a custom data input template to streamline referrals of patient with post-Covid illness, saving time and effort for clinicians, improving access for patients and creating better reporting opportunities. 

Background
Pennine Lancashire Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) approached our Data Quality team to help support their primary care network’s Neighbourhood Accelerator programme. This programme supports vulnerable patients experiencing ongoing symptomatic COVID-19.

As part of this work, it was decided to create a new patient referral form to be used across the Lancashire and South Cumbria integrated care system (ICS) to refer post-Covid patients to the Lancashire and South Cumbria NHS Foundation Trust. It was later agreed that the work being undertaken across Pennine Lancashire would be rolled out across the rest of the ICS footprint.

Action
The Data Quality team advised the Pennine Lancashire team on how to make the process as seamless as possible for those referring into the service.

Due to the nature of post-Covid illness, a lot of information was being asked during referrals. Reviewing the previous referral process, the team established that it  contained some coded information but also a lot of free text. This resulted in a lot of clinician typing and the potential for important information to be missed out. Also, none of the information being gathered during referral was being recorded back into the patient record as coded data.

Our Data Quality team developed a data input template to allow all of the information needed to be captured, auto populating fields with information recorded during the referral.

We carried out rigorous testing involving GP practices and the Trust. Once the system was ready to be rolled out, our team helped practices to install the package onto their clinical systems.

Impact

Since its introduction in March 2021, the system has been installed in 167 GP practices out of 178 across the ICS area.

It has given the region’s GP practices a quick and easy way to capture the data needed to refer a patient to the post-Covid service.

This comprehensive collection of data will also allow practices to provide detailed information around patients with post-Covid syndrome if it is needed by NHS England and Improvement in the future.

The project has also improved patient access to services by creating a streamlined process which reduces the number of rejected referrals as the form clearly identifies all of the information required.

Lee Hay, Programme Director – Blackburn with Darwen and East Lancashire CCGs, said:

“A huge thank you to Emma-Jane McDonald [from MLCSU]. She has been fantastic and pulled out all the stops to get this vital piece of work completed and rolled out. Thank you so much for all your amazing hard work and dedication, we are very grateful!”

Dr Quashuf Hussain, Deputy Medical Director – Pennine Lancashire, said:

“Emma-Jane, fantastic work, really appreciate your hard work on this.  It’s been a pleasure.”

Elaine Craven, Planning, Transformation & Delivery Officer – Pennine Lancashire, said:

“You are truly amazing, thank you so much for all your hard work and support. It’s been so interesting and really useful to get a glimpse of how EMIS works.”

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Data-driven approach to PHM

What is population health management (PHM)? How can the Midlands and Lancashire Commissioning Support Unit support your health system with data-driven PHM to design interventions and tackle inequalities?

PHM aims to deliver the NHS Long Term Plan’s goal to move from delivering care that mainly responds when someone becomes unwell to a system of targeted early intervention and prevention. That way, the focus moves from treating illness to having a system-wide response to prevent and reduce the impact of illness. The result? A better quality of life, health outcomes and experience for local people.

Our business intelligence team helps health systems with data and intelligence which underpin PHM. We can bring together all of your health system’s data from a variety of sources, including primary care and COVID-19 records, to create bespoke actionable intelligence. This helps you, as system leaders, identify and meet the needs of unique population groups and individuals.

Our in-house risk segmentation tool provides information on health inequalities in specific areas, allowing you to make targeted interventions. It uses a variety of different data sources such as risk stratification, geosegmentation, COVID risk, psycho-social factors, deprivation and geographical location, offering unique intelligence about population health, all the way down to the neighbourhood level.

To find out more about our business intelligence services, see our PHM videos and PHM and risk segmentation tool pages from the links below, or contact the Business Intelligence team at mlcsu.bi-productdelivery@nhs.net

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Central integrated care system media office

Lancashire and South Cumbria Health and Care Partnership (HCP) is an integrated care system where there is a collaborative partnership of local authority, NHS and community organisations that join-up health and care in the area. It’s a complex partnership that needed a central media office function to coordinate a system approach.

Action

The NHS MLCSU Media, Editorial and Publication Team provide assurance that media enquiries and requests across the system are being handled in a timely and efficient manner ensuring that protocols are followed, and stakeholders and partners informed. Our full-service professional media office function includes an out-of-hours service, crisis management and media monitoring for complete resilience.

Impact

The NHS MLCSU media office serves as a front-line contact between the Lancashire and South Cumbria Health and Care Partnership and the media, with a focus on building strong relationships and providing reputational reassurance by ensuring all enquiries are managed, approved and handled centrally.

The newsroom supplies local organisations, services, and functions in the partnership footprint with a designated contact for media specialist support and strategic advice.

The extensive logging, reporting and monitoring produce an unparalleled overview of reactive and proactive media whilst the out of hours crisis management service supplies essential resilience to communication teams during evenings and weekends. In just one month during the Covid-19 pandemic, we managed 105 media enquiries and 8 proactive media releases resulting in a total PR reach of over 1 billion 397 million.

We have also been commissioned to support on shorter-term projects and campaigns more recently working with the Lancashire and South Cumbria Cancer Alliance.

Neil Greaves, Head of Communications and Engagement for Lancashire and South Cumbria Health and Care Partnership, said:

“The excellent work and invaluable support that the NHS MLCSU Media, Editorial and Publications Team have provided in Lancashire and South Cumbria over the past four years has been outstanding.

“I am safe in the knowledge that I can rely on their media specialists to work seamlessly with my team to manage media enquiries and that there is increased capacity to support when there are fluxes in requests or if there is a crisis occurs.

“It’s really reassuring to have the resilience of a full press office function but also a designated Media and Public Relations Manager lead who has extensive knowledge of the local area and our organisation. The media team excel in providing complete end-to-end media management at pace and are adept at following complex protocols across organisational boundaries when liaising with key stakeholders. Their invaluable understanding of how the NHS, integrated care systems and health and care partnerships work makes them a real asset to my team.”

For further information about how we can support you please email: mediacsu@nhs.net.

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Database supports national CHC workforce recovery project

We designed a national database to record, monitor and report the onboarding, training and development of continuing healthcare (CHC) staff recruited quickly and in large numbers to clear the backlog of CHC assessments caused by the pandemic.

Background

Additional NHS Continuing Healthcare (CHC) staff had to be quickly recruited to clear a backlog of patients due to the suspension of the CHC framework during the pandemic.

NHS England and Improvement (NHSEI) commissioned the Midlands and Lancashire Commissioning Support Unit (MLCSU) to design and implement a national database designed to capture details of staff recruited or seconded, any training given and additional working hours completed.

Action

* We designed the database following consultations with NHSEI and CHC regional leads.

* Weekly progress reports and weekly update meetings through Microsoft Teams allowed us to develop a good working relationship with NHSEI, meet database requirements and respond to queries.

* Supporting materials including videos were designed showing how to use the database, with training sessions for staff inputting the data.

* A central CHC training inbox was created to deal with employer and employee queries regarding staff registrations and employees booking onto CHC workshops.

* We facilitated the online booking system for the workshop sessions.

* Anonymised data reports were provided to NHSEI on a monthly basis throughout the project.

Impact

The success of the project was the result of highly-effective collaborative working with NHSEI and Health Education England, with all organisations working as one team to deliver the project at pace.

The database enabled a swift registration process to be set up, providing access to comprehensive workforce development information. We were able to regularly report the workforce numbers being registered to NHSEI.

It also allowed us to break data down into workforce training numbers by organisation and training accessed by type (national/ local), along with anonymous feedback on the process – including experience of working in NHS CHC – to inform improvements and evaluation of the training. The database for employer registrations was closed on 31 March 2021, with a total of 745 registrations made on the system.

Ten CHC workshop sessions, offering a total of 1,500 places, were supported by the booking system, directing CHC employees and employers to the National NHS CHC training programme, newly developed by Health Education England on the e-Learning for Healthcare platform.

Andrea Westlake, Assistant Director of Nursing and Quality at NHS England and Improvement – Midlands, said:

“The involvement of MLCSU has been highly valued in helping deliver the workforce recovery project during the pandemic.

“The CSU is able to deliver at pace, responding to our needs in a highly professional, creative and efficient manner.

“The team were always professional, courteous and supportive; going the extra mile when we needed assistance. A highly recommended team.”