Winner

Tameside and Glossop Integrated Care Foundation Trust: Tameside and Glossop digital health service

Care home residents who become unwell in Tameside and Glossop are now assessed remotely before a GP or an ambulance is called, enabling many of them to stay at home at a lower cost to the NHS. Community and primary care staff and carers can access a nurse specialist over Skype.

The service was piloted in four care homes in 2017 and has been rolled out to all of those in the area. Its remit has been expanded to include a contact point for palliative and end of life patients, dealing with some non-urgent 999 calls, and becoming the first contact point for acute GP referrals into hospital.

Since it started 8,500 Skype consultations have taken place, with around a quarter of these leading to an avoided ambulance call out and accident and emergency attendance. This is likely to amount to around 900 admissions avoided in Tameside and Glossop Integrated Care FT, and 3,205 bed days saved.  

Notional savings for the trust are £740,000.

Read a detailed case study about this project at HSJ Solutions

Finalists

  • Bristol Royal Hospital for Children, University Hospitals Bristol FT: Efficiency and Safety of Criteria Led Discharge for Children
  • Doncaster and Bassetlaw Teaching Hospital FT: SmartER: A new way of managing the waiting patient in the ED 
  • Eye Treatment Centre, Whipps Cross University Hospital, Barts Health Trust: Rapid Triage: Changing the face of eye casualty
  • Lincolnshire Community Health Services Trust: Urgent Care Streaming
  • NHS RightCare: Implementation Team: High Intensity User Programme
  • North Staffordshire Combined Healthcare Trust: All Age Mental Health Liaison Service
  • Royal Devon and Exeter FT: Reducing unnecessary venous cannulation in ED
  • Tameside and Glossop Integrated Care FT: Virtual Fracture Clinic
  • Tameside and Glossop Integrated Care FT: Development of New Electronic Emergency Department Health Record System