The HSJ Value in Healthcare Awards seek to recognise and reward outstanding efficiency and improvement by the NHS and have successfully shortlisted Lancashire Care NHS Foundation Trust for three prestigious awards.
The Trust has been successfully been shortlisted in the ‘Mental Health’ category for its work in enhancing acute mental health care pathways.
This initiative was introduced in response to needing to place 94 patients out of area towards the end of 2015. In order to enhance acute mental health clinical pathways the Trust introduced a range of options for treatment for patients this included specialist short term inpatient assessments, crisis houses and intensive psychological therapies, which do not necessitate admission to hospital.
Phil Horner, Deputy Head of Operations for the Mental Health Network and Lancashire Care NHS Foundation Trust said:
“We are really pleased to be able to offer people in Lancashire a broader range of treatment options when they need specialist mental health care. Whilst many patients undoubtedly benefit from admission to hospital, there are also a number of patients who prefer to access our intensive community support schemes. We have found both patient satisfaction and clinical outcomes to be excellent, and as consequence of our new services our reliance on out of area placements has significantly reduced.”
The Trust has also been recognised for its commitment to patient safety and has been shortlisted for the ‘Improving the value of NHS support services’ category. The organisation is dedicated to being a learning organisation and has created a team of specialised serious incident investigators to learn why an incident occurred in order to prevent it happening again, or to minimise the likelihood of a recurrence.
Simon Pierce, Head of Investigations and Learning at Lancashire Care NHS Foundation Trust said:
“This is a fantastic achievement for a team of people who have transformed the way we investigate and learn from serious incidents in little over a year. They have changed for the better the experiences of staff, service users, their families and everyone who is affected by an incident.
“Every single member of the team has played a key role in this. It can be a lonely and thankless task sometimes, but these staff absolutely believe they are saving lives by learning from incidents, so to be recognised in this way is very satisfying!”
The Pharmacy Team have also been shortlisted for the ‘Training and Development’ category for their work in developing an in-house virtual learning community for mental health pharmacists enabling them to share knowledge in order to improve care.
Lisa Ainsworth, Medicines Management Education and Training Lead at Lancashire Care NHS Foundation Trust said:
“We are delighted to have been recognised nationally for our work in developing this system. The creation of the Virtual Learning Environment has allowed for the sharing of clinical expertise within the team which ultimately leads to improved patient care and experience for those accessing our services!”
The Value in Healthcare Awards recognise excellent use of resources, but they also seek out examples of demonstrable improvement in outcomes, both within back office functions and clinical initiatives. The winners will be announced at the awards ceremony on 7 June 2018 at Manc
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