Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust (CNTW)’s Informatics Project Team is celebrating being shortlisted for a prestigious patient safety award.
The team has been shortlisted for Patient Safety Innovation of the Year in the HSJ Patient Safety Awards, which help drive improvements in culture and quality across the NHS by celebrating the teams and individuals putting safety first.
The Informatics Project Team has been recognised for its implementation of online consultation solution, OneConsultation.
The project is born from the Trust strategy to provide choice to patients and staff; and offer digital solutions as an option for care and treatment. CNTW began the project as a pilot in May 2019 and when the pandemic hit, it was rolled out from a small-scale project to Trust-wide in a matter of weeks.
Online consultations have provided a reliable way for patients and their families to see and speak to members of all CNTW clinical community teams. They have also proven to be extremely beneficial during the pandemic. When staff and patients were unable to meet in person, the consultations allowed them to replicate face-to-face conversations from their own home.
It has also greatly reduced travel time and costs for staff and patients, while maximising the clinical time available to staff working across a huge geographical footprint.
Nicola Orkney, Digital Project Manager at CNTW, said: “The team are just so incredibly proud. We know how many entries the awards get, so to be recognised for our work is a wonderful achievement. This was a real team effort, with support from the whole department and the wider Trust to implement the project.”
Feedback from both staff and patients has been positive, with 95% of patients saying they either strongly agreed or agreed they were satisfied with the overall experience of their consultation call.
Nicola added: “The solution has not only saved the services across the Trust money, but it also allows clinicians to continue to provide treatment and care to their service users during the pandemic when face-to-face appointments weren’t possible.”
Entrants were selected based on their ambition, visionary spirit and demonstrable positive impact that their project has had on patient and staff experiences.
Winners will be selected ahead of the ceremony, which will take place as part of the Patient Safety Congress and Awards in Manchester in September 2021.
The full list of finalists for the HSJ Patient Safety Awards can be found on https://awards.patientsafetycongress.co.uk/2021-shortlist