Frailty pathway integrates service to provide more and better care outside of hospital – NHS Improving Quality

• Many frail elderly people in hospital could be cared for more effectively in the community, or could avoid admission altogether if more robust preventative services were in place
• Lincolnshire West CCG led the creation of an integrated frailty pathway, supported by a wider range of services including a community response team, to enable the frail elderly to remain healthy and safe at home
• The Canadian Frailty Scoring Tool was used to identify people at risk of unnecessary hospital admissions so that they can receive appropriate care planning and proactive support
• Following the introduction of the new pathway, unscheduled hospital admissions and excess bed days for the over 75s have fallen and people are more likely to be cared for at home by the clinician best placed to help them

NHS England chief defines ‘multispecialty community providers’ – Health Service Journal
The NHS England chief executive has set out nine requirements that define a ‘multispecialty community provider’, one of the key care models in his vision for the future of the NHS.

Finding patients before they crash: the next major opportunity to improve patient safety. Editor’s choice. Bates, D. W., Zimlichman, E.   BMJ Quality & Safety Volume 24, Issue 1
Adverse events cause large numbers of deaths in hospitals, and many more serious injuries. Often, however, it is difficult or impossible in a specific circumstance to determine whether or not the outcome would have been different with an earlier intervention. On the other hand, substantial evidence exists for many conditions—sepsis for example—showing that earlier, more aggressive intervention can improve patient outcomes, especially with the use of protocols or guidelines.

Confidential Enquiry into maternal deaths and morbidity
The National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit at the University of Oxford has published Saving Lives, Improving Mothers’ Care: Lessons learned to inform future maternity care from the 2009-20012 UK and Ireland Confidential Enquiries into Maternal deaths and Morbidity.  For the first time, this latest report from the Confidential Enquiry into Maternal deaths and mortality includes the care of women in Ireland and the care of women who survived severe illness and complications around the time of birth. The report shows an overall fall in maternal deaths from 11 per 100, 000 in 2006-08 to 10 per 100, 000 in 2010-12, primarily due to a reduction in the direct causes attributable to pregnancy.

Online patient access to health services
As of September 2014, 21% of patients in England have been able to access their medical records online, a significant increase on 2% this time last year. The number of patients able to book their appointments and request repeat prescriptions has also jumped to 91% and 88% respectively. NHS England’s Patient Online programme team has been working closely with practices across England to ensure they have the support they need to confidently offer these online services.

Improvement measurement guides
NHS Improving Quality has produced two bite-sized guides to support staff in measuring their improvement work:

• The One Hour Improvement Expert: how to become an improvement measure expert in 60 minutesis designed to offer an interactive introduction to the topic of improvement measurement, and features signposting to experts and key resources. It is divided into a series of sections giving staff simple steps they can take to improve their knowledge and apply it to the workplace. Topics include indicators, sourcing and collecting data, driver diagrams, variation, and analysis.
• The A to Z of measurementaims to demystify the key terminology in the field of measurement by providing concise definitions.