Monday, August 14, 2017

Three Liverpool Members Awarded Health Foundation Innovation Funding

The Advancing Quality Alliance (AQuA) is pleased to announce that three of our Liverpool members have been selected for The Health Foundation’s £1.5 million Innovating for Improvement programme.

Alder Hey Children’s Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, NHS Liverpool Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), and the Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospitals NHS Trust were among the 21 projects selected across the UK to receive the funding.




The Innovating for Improvement programme will run for 15 months. Each of the three projects in Liverpool will receive up to £75,000 of funding to support delivery, as well as the evaluation of how the innovation improves the quality of health care.

The three Liverpool-based projects set to benefit from the funding will each focus on improving a different area of health care for patients with respiratory health needs in the city.

NHS Liverpool Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) will use this funding to build on the success of Liverpool’s Advice on Prescription in Primary Care project, which was set up in partnership with Liverpool’s Citizens Advice Bureau (CAB) to help alleviate poverty, hardship and other common social risk factors that negatively impact on a person’s health. The project will identify new care pathways that would benefit from the scheme, and test it in respiratory services.

Dr Janet Bliss, Clinical Director for Community Services at NHS Liverpool CCG said:
“We are delighted with the news of these three Innovating for Improvement funding awards, each of which will be used to help develop cutting-edge health projects that will directly benefit local patients.

“The Advice on Prescription Project is a ground-breaking scheme which enables all Liverpool GP’s to refer their patients to CAB advisors for help on a range of social issues such as housing, homelessness, job loss and debt.

“Being part of the programme will enable us to continue to build on the successful work already being undertaken through this scheme, with the aim of reducing many of the social risk factors that can negatively impact on people’s health and wellbeing.”

The Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospitals NHS Trust will use funding from the Health Foundation to improve how heroin smokers access chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) community services across Liverpool and help reduce the time they need to spend in hospital.

A large number of heroin users in Merseyside are at risk of developing and dying from COPD, a lung disease associated with smoking that causes symptoms such as cough and breathlessness.

The innovative project, which is being led by consultant respiratory physician Dr Hassan Burhan, is engaging with patients by working in partnership with drug services, NHS Liverpool CCG, and 2Bio Ltd’s Impact Science Team who provide innovation services to the Trust and have supported the development of this project.

Dr Hassan Burhan, Consultant Respiratory Physician, Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospital NHS Trust said:
"Heroin users often don’t engage with community services, which can lead to late diagnosis of COPD and missed opportunities to slow how the disease progresses. Up to one in two heroin smokers have COPD, and one in eight admissions with exacerbations of COPD to our Trust are in patients with a history of heroin smoking.

“We are really pleased to have secured this award and look forward to implementing our ideas to improve COPD management and outcomes in this hard to reach group of patients.”

Alder Hey Children's Hospital NHS Foundation Trust will use the funding to help evaluate the effectiveness of their SCORE programme, a new healthcare model that empowers children with asthma to understand their condition, self-manage it and participate in activities. The model involves an initial consultation to set goals and optimise treatments, a peer-group educational intervention, and two blocks of activity.

Dr Ian Sinha, Consultant Respiratory Paediatrician at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital said:
"We are delighted to have received this funding award for this new approach to asthma treatment, which is centred around children and communities. We hope to demonstrate that it is both clinically effective and cost-effective through the programme, and to be able to share this learning more widely.

“More than ever we need to be thinking creatively about new ways of working in health, and each of these innovative projects highlights that Liverpool is a forward thinking city with regards to new models of care.”
Sarah Henderson, Associate Director from the Health Foundation said:

“We are delighted to be supporting three fantastic projects in Liverpool to enhance care for patients in the local area, with a focus on improving respiratory services. We are keen to support innovation at the frontline across all sectors of health and care services, and I am pleased that we will be able to support these ambitious teams to develop and test their ideas over the next year.

“Our aim is to promote the effectiveness and impact of the teams’ innovations and show how they have succeeded in improving the quality of health care, with the intention of these being widely adopted across the UK.”

To find out more about the Innovating for Improvement programme, go to: http://www.health.org.uk/programmes/innovating-improvement  

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