Successful pilot as mobile app provides quality improvements
Date: 7 November 2018
Author: Southend Clinical Commissioning Group
NHS Southend and Castle Point & Rochford CCGs were delighted to be the first CCGs nationally to be selected to carry out a 12 week pilot, which utilises a mobile application to empower staff to share their innovative ideas for quality improvements directly with senior management.
Out of the four organisations who took part in the pilot, NHS Southend and Castle Point and Rochford CCGs were excited to be awarded an annual licence by UCL Partners, for the fantastic outcomes realised during the 12 week pilot period, which commenced in May 2018.
Both CCGs believe this mobile application is an excellent platform to encourage and staff to share fresh and creative improvement ideas, across the CCGs and primary care. By downloading the ‘ImproveWell’ mobile app and creating an account, staff can share their ideas with senior management and healthcare colleagues, with ease.
Submissions have already been received from primary care and general practice colleagues, across all roles, including admin, clinical and practice based pharmacists.
One suggestion has already been implemented with great success and we continue to work with primary care and general practice to develop their suggestions further.
We have already started to develop use of the app wider across our local health system, where it has assisted with development of our Community Paediatric Project; which supports the movement of the Paediatric Service out of the acute setting and into a primary care setting.
Andrea Bann, Primary Care Development Manager for Southend and Castle Point and Rochford CCGs said: “With the NHS facing ever increasing systemic pressures, the need to continually drive forward quality improvements is essential. Taking part in this pilot is an exciting opportunity for us to drive forward our quality improvement objectives and to encourage staff to provide fresh and innovative ideas, to support continuous quality improvement. We are looking forward to the benefits this pilot can bring and to the improvements it will ultimately bring for patient outcomes.”
Practice Manager at Valkyrie Surgery, Southend, Debbie Johnson, said: “The communication between our CCG and the practice was already good, especially with primary care managers, but the mobile app has enabled us to be more proactive about informing the CCG of ideas for improvements. The way it works, it allows the CCG time to consider, plan and to act, on ideas for possible future processes. It also enables the practice to follow the progress of the idea at all stages until implementation.
“A particular highlight for me was having the opportunity to meet with the CCG for a day, to show them how a large practice operates and to give an insight into the day-to-day challenges we face. This resulted in positive improvement ideas being successfully put in place.
“Thanks to the pilot scheme and the mobile app we have established a new clinical system forum and user group in the practice, to proactively review and address any issues that may arise with our clinical booking system (SystmOne). This means the practice is now sufficiently informed to be able to liaise with the provider of the system about possible future developmental ideas, to benefit staff and our patients.”
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