CASE STUDY
Overview
How Health Innovation Wessex helped secure £350,000 to support expansion of a secondary care, secondary prevention lipid management service
A nurse-led secondary prevention lipid management service has been delivered from Poole Hospital for the last two years (funded by Amarin).
The current service sees patients who have had a primary event i.e. a heart attack and have had the opportunity to undertake cardiac rehabilitation. Normally at this point, patients return to the management of primary care without having had their treatment optimised to achieve the NICE-approved LDL threshold. When using the service, in just six months, 72% of patients have achieved cholesterol levels below national targets, a figure that far surpasses the typical 30-40% improvement over 12 months.
To continue the service, expand current provision and include working directly with primary care (three primary care networks [PCNs] – Mid Dorset, Purbeck and Shore Medical) Health Innovation Wessex worked with Anthony Young, University Hospitals Dorset Lead Cardiac Advanced Clinical Practitioner and the Dorset Inward Investment team to develop and submit a bid to the British Heart Foundation (BHF). The bid of £350,000 was awarded and included funding for an evaluation by our in-house Insight team.
Collaborating with primary care will involve case finding secondary prevention patients, supporting practice teams to optimise treatment for lower priority patients and the referral of high priority ones to the new service.
Our impact
£350,000
secured for the new service
£10,000
(approx.) allocated to each primary care network to support their involvement
1.3 WTE
new roles created within the service
Anthony Young
Lead Cardiac Advanced Clinical Practitioner, University Hospitals Dorset
“The nurse-led Secondary Prevention Lipid Clinic has shown that by supporting patients with education about their cholesterol levels and educating them on secondary prevention, optimising medication for lowering cholesterol and ensuring we take a vested interest in their health, we have been able to lower cholesterol in 72% of patients after six months to below the current recommended targets. This not only improves the health of our patients but reduces the cost on the NHS over 5-10 years.”
Anthony Young
Lead Cardiac Advanced Clinical Practitioner, University Hospitals Dorset
Professor Christopher Boos
Consultant Cardiologist, University Hospitals Dorset and Visiting Professor at Bournemouth University
“This is a considerable grant which is to my knowledge one of the first of its type to given in the UK. It has the genuine potential to transform the delivery of this novel nurse-delivered lipid lowering secondary prevention service across East Dorset. Its clinical impact is likely to be considerable. The wider implementation of this service is expected to significantly reduce secondary atherosclerotic cardiovascular events for patients with confirmed significant coronary artery disease in our catchment.”
Professor Christopher Boos
Consultant Cardiologist, University Hospitals Dorset and Visiting Professor at Bournemouth University
The issue
Hyperlipidaemia is a leading cause of premature cardiovascular disease (CVD). It is responsible for a quarter of all deaths in the UK. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) Lipid Modification guidance 2023 has shown that the lipid management of people with established CVD remains suboptimal; CVD Prevent data reporting that whilst 80% of patients with CVD are treated with statins, optimal dosing is achieved in only 33%.
The reasons for this include inadequate adherence and dosing of evidence/guideline-recommended lipid-lowering treatment. Contrary to recommended best practice, there has not been an integrated secondary prevention lipid service for patients with established CVD in East Dorset prior to the start of this service.
What we did
The impact
Next steps
How can we help you?
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