December 2017

December 2017

Project Name: The Hammersmith Nurse Led Haemoglobinopathy / Iron Over-Load Service Development Project.

Joint Working Project Summary:
Hammersmith Hospital, part of the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust (“ICHNT”) currently cares for over 400 adult Haemoglobinopathy (sickle cell disease and thalassaemia) / Iron Over-Load (“IOL”) patients, of which around 60 receive regular blood transfusions and require Iron Chelation Therapy (“ICT”). However, there is not a dedicated Red Cell Clinical Nurse Specialist (“CNS”) to care for the adult Haemoglobinopathy / IOL patients.

The principal aims of the joint working project (“JWP”) are to improve the quality of care and the clinic service for adult Haemoglobinopathy / IOL patients by the development and implementation of a new specialist Red Cell CNS led clinic service for adult Haemoglobinopathy / IOL patients.

Expected Patient Outcomes for this Project:
The new specialist Red Cell CNS led clinic service for adult Haemoglobinopathy / IOL is expected to provide:

  • a patient centric clinic service to build engagement and relationships between the CNS and patients/carers;
  • support for patients/carers to enhance their understanding, encourage a positive approach to their condition and teach effective techniques for self-management in line with current clinical guidelines;
  • a reduction in waiting times in clinic to see a healthcare professional;
  • improve patient satisfaction of the clinic service by 25% at 16 months and a further 25% improvement at 28 months.

The NHS will benefit from a new model of care in terms of Red Cell CNS led clinics working alongside medical / Consultant clinics, which will incorporate regular clinical reviews and assessments of Haemoglobinopathy / IOL patients and provide evidence of service improvement and enhanced Haemoglobinopathy / IOL patient satisfaction.

Novartis working in partnership with the NHS will gain a richer understanding of the main elements of treating and caring for Haemoglobinopathy / IOL patients to improve patient care and Haemoglobinopathy / IOL patient satisfaction to help tailor and adapt Novartis support services.

Novartis and the NHS will combine financial resources for the generation of the new Red Cell CNS post. The NHS will develop the CNS training program, service protocol and patient satisfaction questionnaire. Novartis will provide project management documentation and support.
A project steering group will regularly review and track the progress and impact of this JWP via the generation of aggregated service level reports.

The progress of the JWP will be tracked to six monthly milestones, with the completion of a series of deliverables, which make up each Milestone, triggering the next Milestone to begin. The results will be included in a JWP summary report and a business case aimed at funding the new service once the JWP comes to an end.

Start Date and Duration: December 2017 with an expected duration to the end of June 2020.
Project Period: 30 months

Project Name: Breast Analytics Access and Equity of Service Joint Working Project

Joint Working Project Summary:
The principle of this joint working project is that the Greater Manchester (GM) secondary breast cancer service could be optimised and perceived variations in access to treatment addressed if an analytical approach to pathway optimisation was conducted. 

This can be achieved through the analysis of data generated by routine delivery of care for breast cancer services in GM involving The Christie. The project consists of two components, pathway analysis and patient pathway experience.

The project will provide a visual representation of the secondary breast cancer service in order to understand the variation of access to breast cancer services that exist to the people of GM and build a case for change that can be shared with operational healthcare leaders in the GM region.

This project will be based around partnership working and the collaborative sharing of insights and expertise between the The Christie and Novartis, with the support of IQVIA, in order to optimise the treatment of secondary breast cancer within Greater Manchester

Expected Patient Outcomes for this Project:
The capture by patients and remote monitoring by clinicians of patient experience data is increasingly understood to improve the accuracy and timeliness of treatment interventions. As a consequence of the analysis it is anticipated that the NHS gains clarity on where to focus resource effort in order to reduce variation in access to treatment for the affected patient cohorts.

It is also expected that by understanding patient experience of the breast cancer service improvements can be made to make that service more responsive to particular patient needs.

Start Date & Duration: December 2017 – October 2018

Project Period: 10 months

Partner: NHS Lothian Health Board
Project Name: NHS Lothian Neuroendocrine Service Development

Joint working project summary:
NHS Lothian via the Edinburgh Cancer Centre (ECC) is committed to ensuring that all patients receive the best possible treatment by providing a high quality, effective service for all patients across the South East of Scotland Nets (“SCAN”) region.

To do this for patients with the wide range of neuroendocrine tumours (“NETs”) it is evident that the current service needs further development and greater support.

The service development required requires more attention from the NETs lead consultant; to achieve this, NETs CNS support will be necessary to free up the NETs lead consultant capacity.

To achieve this, the Board and Novartis Oncology have joined resources in a joint working project (“JWP”).

The objective of the project is to develop an improved and sustainable  SCAN Nets service within the ECC by: 

  1. Ensuring  equitable access to  service for NETs patients across SCAN;
  2. Improving patient care by stratifying patients into different models of care that better reflect the patient needs; enhancing patient experience by providing a patient key worker to educate patients on their disease, treatment choices, outcomes and  goals;
  3. Improving patient adherence and compliance to treatment and ensure optimal use of medicines in line with Scottish NET (“SCONET”) Consensus Guidelines;
  4. Educating the NHS Lothian NET team at the ECC in disease area, treatments and new developments to support the centre achieving ENETs Centre of Excellence accreditation and sharing best practice with other Scottish Cancer Centre Net Services;
  5. Capturing and using project service data to demonstrate the service is benefitting patients and that the service is financially sustainable for NHS Lothian.


Expected patient outcomes for this project

Outcome 1: Deliver an equitable and more accessible NETs service across SCAN with improved quality of care

Outcome 2: Improve patient care, experience and satisfaction by developing a service that is patient-centric and focussed on the individual needs and requirements of the patients.

Outcome3: Improve patient concordance and adherence to treatment which will improve patient outcomes

Outcome 4: Support the NETs team to become a high performing team suitable to apply ENETs accreditations.

Outcome 5: Demonstrate service sustainability to NHS Lothian

Start Date and Duration: December 2017 –  November  2018 (subject to extension to November 2019)
Project period: 12 months (subject to extension for additional 12 months if the milestones of the first year are achieved)

Project Name: Multi-Disciplinary Team Level Balanced Scorecards Development

Joint Working Project Summary
The principal aim of this joint working project (“JWP”) between UCLH NHS Foundation Trust and Novartis Pharmaceuticals UK Limited is to improve the quality of cancer patient care and patient satisfaction in relation to the Trust cancer clinic service via: (1) the initial adoption, use and analysis of the MDT level balanced scorecards in breast, haematology (lymphoma), lung, prostate and melanoma cancers; and (2) the improvement of the MDT process in order to support clinical teams and to lead to the development of enhanced patient care pathways, improving patient care and satisfaction across the north east and central London and west Essex catchment areas of the Trust Cancer Collaborative which has a total catchment area of 3.7 million people.

UCLH’s development of Multi-Disciplinary Team (“MDT”) level balanced scorecards captures service outcomes data and has been developed by key NHS stakeholders.  The scorecards provide key data required to facilitate enhanced MDTs and enable swift changes to improve patient pathways.  The scorecards will help UCLH Cancer Collaborative in building a comprehensive cancer care system that benefits all cancer patients and healthcare professionals across the region and beyond. The scorecards will provide an effective mechanism to feedback cancer outcomes information, as well as improving patient cancer care and organisation of services.  These scorecards will ensure consistent enhanced cancer care, initiating in redesigning cancer patient pathways in breast, lung, haematology (Lymphoma) and prostate. The scorecards will ensure optimisation of patient pathways enabling patients to make a more informed choice on their treatment options and be more involved in the decision making process.

The JWP will fund two Project Analyst posts that will be responsible for overseeing, tracking, monitoring and analysing the service data input into the MDT level balanced scorecards across aforementioned disease areas, which will result in an improvement in the quality of cancer patient care and satisfaction.

Expected Patient Outcomes for this Project
It is expected that the new MDT level balanced scorecards will help improve and provide consistent quality care to the relevant patient population. Specifically, the following outcomes are expected:

  • Creation of MDT level balanced scorecards protocol for MDT members, detailing the benefits of the scorecards with links to data from other trusts to facilitate benchmarking across the collaborative.
  • Produce analysis reports tracking changes to patient pathways and patient care, including cancer waiting times data.
  • Generation of a questionnaire, co-designed with patients to assess patient satisfaction towards their care, support and disease education.
  • Generation of a questionnaire to assess MDT staff satisfaction on the MDT level balanced scorecards.
  • Produce report on patient satisfaction in their care, support and disease education.
  • Produce report on MDT staff satisfaction with MDT level balances scorecards.
  • Over 110 additional patients that will benefit from specific after treatment care due to information captured in MDT scorecards, compared to baseline
  • Analyse service data to show improvements in patient care in line with national standards.
  • Generation of a report defining the achievements of the 2 posts highlighting the improved cancer services in breast, lymphoma, lung and prostate.
  • Initiation of MDT level balanced scorecards within melanoma.
  • Create a slide set to be presented to clinical teams detailing the improvements in the quality of cancer care. The improvement will be in terms of additional patients benefitting from improved care in line with service standards and patient satisfaction.
  • Produce a report on improvement of data completion rates.
  • Produce a JWP summary report which illustrates the quality of cancer care. The improvements will provide evidence to the NHS team for the long-term financial sustainability of both roles.
  • Presentation to the National Cancer Vanguard Board with the aim that the model will prove scalable and replicable across London Cancer and throughout England. 
  • Completion of patient satisfaction in 110 patients who benefitted from specific after treatment care, 80% of patients highly satisfied with service;

Start Date & Duration: December 2017 – December 2018
Project Period: 12 months

Project Name: The Royal Marsden Partners Cancer Alliance Oncology Pharmacy Service Improvement Joint Working Project (“JWP”).

Joint Working Project Summary:
The Royal Marsden Hospital NHS Foundation Trust is the central coordinating hub of the Royal Marsden Partners Cancer Alliance (“RMP”). The RMP is a network of public health, primary, secondary and community care NHS organisations working together in partnership to deliver cancer services across a 3.5 million catchment population of North West and South West London. There is increasing local medical oncology service demand and challenging oncology pharmacy workforce conditions across the RMP.

Aims:
Novartis and the NHS team will work together on a JWP that combines resources, time and expertise to improve the quality of cancer patient care and patient satisfaction of the clinic service across the RMP catchment population.  This will be achieved through:

  1. the assessment of oncology pharmacy service functions and skill mix which support RMP clinical teams in the treatment and care of patients and the delivery / administration of chemotherapy / drug treatment; and
  2. the improvement of oncology pharmacy service functions which support RMP clinical teams and the introduction of new models of care to further support the delivery / administration of chemotherapy / drug treatment across respective RMP sites.

Cancer patients will benefit from quicker access to chemotherapy / drug treatment, regular clinical assessments and full blood / liver / renal function biochemical tests. This will enhanced patient consultations with distribution of support materials given to patients to facilitate better disease understanding, self-management and medicines optimisation.

The RMP will benefit from an assessment of the oncology pharmacy service functions along with the development of training materials, service protocols and a series of educational meetings for pharmacy and clinical teams. These elements will facilitate the implementation of new oncology pharmacy functions and models of care led by two new roles:- Consultant Oncology Pharmacist and New Care Models Oncology Pharmacist, to improve the quality of cancer care and patient satisfaction.

Novartis will benefit through developing a stronger partnership with the RMP and gain a richer understanding of the RMP oncology pharmacy service functions and service standards. This will enrich awareness when developing JWP’s with other NHS stakeholders and Cancer Alliance sites. The JWP will also support patient access to optimal treatment strategies and improve patient management / outcomes.

Novartis and the NHS will combine financial resources to equally fund the Consultant Oncology Pharmacist and New Care Models Oncology Pharmacist posts. The NHS will provide clinical oversight, training for the new roles along with the generation of the service protocol and patient satisfaction questionnaire. Novartis will provide project management and JWP documentation support. A project steering group will regularly review and track the progress and impact of this JWP via the generation of aggregated service level reports.

Expected Patient Outcomes for this Project 
The JWP will impact and touch over 500 advanced cancer patients, across the main RMP sites, to improve the quality of cancer care in line with the service standards and patient satisfaction of the solid tumour pathways in terms of:

  • quick access to the most appropriate chemotherapy / drug treatment at the right time for the right patient;
  • accurate chemotherapy / drug prescription verification, completion and assessment of full blood count and liver / renal function biochemical tests;
  • patient clinical assessment and reviews, by the RMP clinical / oncology pharmacy team, subject to tumour / hospital site;
  • patients offered the option to have their treatment delivered closer to home at satellite sites;
  • enhanced patient consultations and support materials given to patients to facilitate better disease understanding, self-management and medicines optimisation.
     

Start Date & Duration: December 2017 to December 2018
Project Period: 12 months

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