AHSN shortlisted for two 2021 HSJ Patient Safety Awards

Hampshire and Isle of Wight Integrated Care System (HIOW ICS), working in partnership with Wessex AHSN, is delighted to be shortlisted in this year’s HSJ Patient Safety Awards.

The HIOW ICS and Wessex AHSN’s team has been shortlisted in the ‘Best Use of Integrated Care and Partnership Working in Patient Safety’ category, recognising their outstanding contribution to healthcare through the delivery of digitally enabled Covid-19 Oximetry at Home (CO@H) services.

Also shortlisted, Wessex AHSN, West of England AHSN, Health Education England, Hampshire and Isle of Wight Integrated care systems (ICSs) for their soft signs video project for Patient Safety Education and Training Award at this year’s HSJ Patient Safety Awards, recognising their outstanding contribution to healthcare.

Following one of the toughest years in the health and social care sector, Hampshire and Isle of Wight ICS and Wessex AHSN continued to champion patient safety, and has been shortlisted despite tough competition from hundreds of applicants.

The HIOW ICS and Wessex AHSN’s digital enablement of CO@H, has been selected based on its ambition, visionary spirit, and the demonstrable positive impact that the project has had on patient and staff experiences within the health and care.

The judging panel for this award is made up of a diverse range of highly influential and respected figures within the healthcare community including Sue Smith OBE (Executive Chief Nurse and Deputy Chief Executive Officer, University Hospitals Morecambe Bay FT), Rachel Power (Chief Executive, The Patients Association), Dr Hester Wain (Head of Patient Safety Policy, NHS England and NHS Improvement).

In Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, the CO@H service was originally inspired by a local GP practice which launched a paper-based, self-monitoring pilot for Covid-19 patients in April 2020. The model was adapted and scaled up across the region over the following months. The service was subsequently nationally mandated by NIRB in October 2020.

Supported by NHSX funding, the ICS CO@H service has become digitally-enabled, with a standardised digital pathway and product put in place across the patch from January 2021.

The project aimed to enhance the digital capabilities of the CO@H service, enabling patients to enter their own data (via text, online or via automated phone calls), improving the visibility and use of data across different settings, creating better alert systems to identify and prioritise patients in need of urgent treatment and to ensure patients were supported and reassured when being cared for at home.

3500+ patients have used the Hampshire and Isle of Wight CO@H service to date* of which over 1400 have benefited from the digitally enabled service°. 

Dr Barbara Rushton, HIOW ICS CO@H Clinical Lead, GP and Clinical Chair for South East Hampshire, said: “We are delighted to have been shortlisted for the Best Use of Integrated Care and Partnership Working in Patient Safety award, as we knew we needed to bring different professionals together to make this work.

“A digitally-enabled service was key to delivering integrated and safe patient care in this environment. The result, we believe, is a really strong, bespoke product that successfully meets our clinicians’ and patients’ needs – and ultimately improves the care we can provide.”

The soft signs video project supports the training of carers to identify deterioration and communicate concern have been selected based on their ambition, visionary spirit and the demonstrable positive impact that they/their project has/have had on patient and staff experiences within the health and/or social care sector. Thus far the videos have been viewed in excess of 400,000 times.

The organisations collaborated to produce videos as a low cost, scalable, accessible alternative to conventional training which were made available on the Health Education England YouTube channel. The videos were initially designed for trained carers in care homes and then adapted for use for informal carers of people with a learning disability forming an essential part of virtual training delivered to more than 2000 professional carers and 8000 informal carers.

The full list of finalists for the 2021 HSJ Patient Safety Awards can be found on https://awards.patientsafetycongress.co.uk/2021-shortlist 

Winners will be selected ahead of the ceremony, which will take place as part of the Patient Safety Congress and Awards in Manchester in September 2021.

(*1 November 2020 to June 2021 / °1 January 2021 to June 2021)