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NHSE Commissioning Standards for Spirometry
04 October 2024
Dear ARTP Members,
Please see below a roundup of NHS England activity from the Senior Project Manager from the National Physiological Science Transformation Programme NHS England
National Physiological Science Transformation Programme Brief
Introducing our new National Specialty Advisors
The National Diagnostic Programme in NHS England has recently appointed a number of new National Speciality Advisors (NSAs) to enhance the clinical advice and leadership within the programme. For the Physiological Science programme we now have 4 part-time NSAs as part of the programme, including Martin Allen who continues as the overall lead NSA for Physiological Science. Martin is now joined by Jeremy Bland, Keith Pearce and Teresa Robinson. Please see here for an introduction to each of our NSAs and their specific areas of expertise.
NSAs can be contacted through the physiological science programme using the mailbox england.psprogramme@nhs.net
National Physiological Science Data Collections
The cardiac, respiratory and sleep service national data collections are now open until Friday 11th October. Please use the circulated links to access the collections and allow up to 3 days for access related issues to be resolved.
The neurophysiology and vascular sciences national collections will be open during Monday 11th November – Friday 6th December
Guidance documentation and excel templates, which can be used to collate the data required in the stocktakes can be viewed here.
It is important that every service in England completes this data set. For all queries regarding the physiological science data collections, including if you require access to the collections or an invite to our upcoming neurophysiology or vascular sciences webinars, please contact -england.psprogramme@nhs.net
National Audiology Improvement Collaborative
NHS Elect has been commissioned to deliver this collaborative improvement programme which is working with 4 audiology services to test and implement change ideas for improving access and reducing waiting times to audiology services. The 4 being supported with access to an improvement coach, a series of online learning and collaborative sessions and access to “measurement for improvement” expertise. Learning from these sites will be shared as the programme progresses.
Spiro Commissioning Standards
The NHS England 2024/25 priorities and operational planning guidance highlights the importance of timely access spirometry and using new diagnostic capacity in the community to commission these tests. Asthma and Lung UK have recently provided evidence to the Darzi Review identifying respiratory conditions as the leading cause of emergency admissions and NHS winter pressures (costing the NHS £9.6 billion in direct costs each year). Delivering spirometry in the community, closer to home, will reduce acute admissions and improve patient and population outcomes whilst reducing overall NHS spend. New commissioning standard for spirometry have been published here.
Physiological Science Networks
We had an engaging face to face network development day in Birmingham with over 75 people in attendance. The day was an opportunity to network and learn from each other. Thank you to all the presenters. The slide deck from the day can be found here.
Our next step for supporting networks includes, gathering information on network teams in place, developing the maturity assessment template and approach, progressing a leadership development course through a business case and tender.
Physiological Science Strategy – Have your say
Thank you to the 528 people who completed our questionnaire where we asked you about the challenges and opportunities in your services. We will now use your information along with other insight generated when developing our strategy.
Community Diagnostic Centre Visits
Amy was asked to accompany the CDC team and Kirsten Malcolmson from SW London ICB to visit Purley CDC, Kingston CDC and Queen Mary’s Hospital CDC. It was fantastic to see 3 centres that are reaping the benefits of the investment into cardiac science and respiratory science services at these sites. The development and implementation of pathways, the engagement with primary care services to support patients needing diagnostics and the separation of elective requests from diagnostics from the acute site was clearly helping to tackle waiting times across many of the PS tests. Recruitment was flagged as an ongoing issue, any sites that are having difficulty with recruiting to posts are encouraged to reach out to the International Recruitment programme england.cdc.ir@nhs.net for a discussion. Having dedicated administrative support with knowledge and expertise was also highlighted as important for maximising capacity within the service. We heard a similar story from United Lincolnshire Hospitals Echocardiography department – details of their case study can be found below.
Amy also visited the Audiology service at Kingston Hospital and had a tour of the new facilities. The department has seen a month-on-month improvement in waiting times performance which was identified by an apprentice, Providence Luyiga who interned with the PS team for the summer following a review of DM01 data in PS services nationally. The visit revealed the department currently holds IQIPs accreditation and has clearly given vast attention to detail to ensure patients with hearing loss have a good experience within the department. The department would be happy to hold conversations with other physiology services within the area who are looking to start their journey to accreditation, having started theirs after liaising with their local Pathology service, please speak to the national team who can help facilitate an introduction. Building quality processes into diagnostic services is of equal importance to improving operational efficiencies, the PS team have been hosting a series of webinars on this topic which can be found on our Accreditation NHS Futures Page if you would like to learn more about this topic.
Webinars
Thank you to the presenters of our recent webinars. Webinar recordings are in the following links:
To promote the benefits of PIFU appointments, NHS England's (East of England) team have developed a range of resources and assets to promote and explain what patient initiated follow-up (PIFU) is to clinicians and patients.
These assets have been produced in close collaboration with the national outpatient recovery and transformation team and can be used by teams across the country, alongside the national PIFU campaign toolkit.
The assets are held on the NHS Learning Hub, which you will need to register with in order to access them and are. Where applicable, editable files have been provided to enable you to adapt assets for local use:
- Patient PIFU resources
- Clinician PIFU resources
- Social media PIFU resources
- Web page PIFU resources
- Primary care PIFU resources
- 11 minute training video for clinicians
More information on PIFU can be found on the NHS England website and on NHS England (East) regional PIFU FutureNHS pages.
For more information on this the regional PIFU programme, please contact debbie.adger@nhs.net
Upcoming Schedule
Contact us
If you have any questions for the national team or anything to feature in the next newsletter, please get in touch with the team – england.psprogramme@nhs.net
For more information on the National Physiological Science Transformation Project please visit our NHS Futures Page - Physiological Science Programme - FutureNHS Collaboration Platform
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