Blog

In the final blog of our series on our Evaluation and Reset work with the health and care systems in the North East and Yorkshire, Programme Manager Ruth Pitman-Jones, reflects on what we’ve been able to achieve to date and what comes next.

In order to achieve our objective to accelerate the adoption and spread of good practice across the North East and Yorkshire region, the ‘Rapid Insights’ phase of our programme had to be just that! The project time frame was necessarily tight.  The impact of COVID-19 on health and care services needed evaluating immediately so we had to strike while the iron was hot and capture the learning and innovative ways of working as they were happening.

After three months of hard work we were exhilarated by how much we had been able to accomplish thanks to the goodwill and commitment of all our partners:

• We received over 450 responses to the four Rapid Insights Surveys that were distributed to each of the Integrated Care Systems. From these we were able to draw out key themes Victoria mentioned in her blog earlier this week. In addition, we collated patient feedback from a variety of sources.
• We have written four Rapid Insights Executive Summary Reports for West Yorkshire and Harrogate Health and Care Partnership (WY&H HCP) , Humber Coast and Vale Health and Care Partnership (HC&V HCP), North East and North Cumbria AHSN (NENC) and South Yorkshire and Bassetlaw (SY&B) ICSs. These contained qualitative and quantitative data.
• In partnership with NENC AHSN, we completed an additional Digital Insights Report with over 500 responses exploring the uptake of digital innovations within primary care across North East and Yorkshire, and at system level.
• We have undertaken 24 facilitated group discussions with a further nine planned for September.
• We have undertaken 36 dedicated case study interviews with a further 20 planned for September.

Collaboration and team work have been critical

It was one project but involved many stakeholders. We were working with four ICSs and all their member organisations, covering the whole of the North East and Yorkshire. We were working at system, place and programme levels covering urban and rural communities.  Along the way we have developed and strengthened so many new relationships in such a short space of time.  We feel privileged we had the chance to work with so many inspiring people, supporting them at a time of national crisis.

And the work began during a Level 4 Incident Alert so we needed to be mindful of the pressure and stresses that our colleagues in health and care services were under.

We aimed to complete the first stage of the project in order to feed into the NHS Phase 2 response, and to start the second stage of project in order to feed into the NHS Phase 3 response.

The project team had to cohere very quickly, working together over Microsoft Teams to communicate, cooperate and build a good team spirit. It has been a learning curve with plenty of opportunities to take responsibility for personal development as well as sharing workloads.  In this socially distanced time, it’s been vitally important for us to be able to interact regularly through virtual huddles and team meetings to check-in on each other’s wellbeing as well as work priorities.

Next steps

Through case study interviews and facilitated sessions we are meeting people with energy, drive and a determination to make lasting change.  We have got insights into new and innovative ways of working and uses of technology and had the opportunity to learn about a wide array of NHS services and ways of working from front-line staff as well as management.

At the heart of the work has been the focus on how the effect of COVID-19 on services has impacted on the patient and the work has brought to the forefront the inequalities in patient experience.

Working with four ICSs has given us the opportunity to share learning, experiences and best practice in a way that has not been done before.

We are now entering the deeper Quality Improvement and Sustainability evaluation phase of the programme where we will continue the fantastic partnership work regionally, and nationally and we’re now working closely with our local NHS England and NHS Improvement Recovery Cell, Learning Network and the National Beneficial Changes Network.