NHS does the business

Before the NHS began to experience what has turned into a difficult winter.the winners of the 2014 Health Business Awards were revealed at the Grange Hotel, London in early December.  

Sixteen NHS organisations were recognised for their progress across a range of categories.

Presented by practising GP Dr Sarah Jarvis, also the health and medical reporter for BBC’s The One Show, the Health Business Awards promotes examples of excellence and best practice in Hospitals, Trusts, Clinical Commissioning Groups and other organisations that work inside and alongside the NHS.
    
Frimley Health NHS Foundation Trust was presented with the Outstanding Achievement in Healthcare Award after becoming the first NHS organisation to receive an Outstanding rating following the new style Care Quality Commission inspections. Other winners included Chorley and South Ribble Clinical Commissioning Group, which was the first recipient of the Clinical Commissioning Award after partnering with Greater Preston CCG. The collaboration has helped deliver patient care closer to home by enabling minor operations to be carried out in local GP surgeries, reducing the number of lengthy hospital stays.

Estates and Facilities Innovation
Winner: North Bristol NHS Trust – Hospital Move project
This Trust oversaw the successful move of a major hospital from Frenchay to the Brunel building at Southmead Hospital Bristol. Clinicians working in the Trust have praised the state of the art Brunel building, which has the potential to improve privacy and dignity for patients with single rooms, en-suite facilities and a dedicated route through the hospital which means they do not have to be taken past members of the public before or after their operations. This complicated procedure involved the transfer of services including a major trauma centre, accident and emergency, neurosciences, plastics and adult burns. Most elements of this move were staggered in key stages over the month of May, with the closure of Frenchay A&E and opening of the new department in Southmead done on the same day.

Healthcare IT Award
Winner: University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust
UHB has won much praise for its Prescribing, Information and Communications System (PICS), allowing patients and carers to access information through the use of technology. PICS is a rules-based clinical decision support system that operates throughout the Trust in all inpatient, outpatient and daycase areas, including ITUs. It is regularly updated with input from clinicians.

Healthcare Recruitment Award
Winner: Plymouth Hospitals NHS Trust
The Trust’s Recruitment and Resourcing Team has worked hard to redesign their approach to recruiting Healthcare Assistants, which resulted in the appointment of more than 120 new members of staff; many of these staff have achieved a qualification and full clinical competence sign-off, a reduction in the recruitment time and also a reduction in the amount spent on agency staffing.
    
The strategy involved an external advert placed on NHS Jobs, supported by coverage in local media, which led to open days where applicants were assessed for their suitability. The semi-annual campaigns reduce the recruitment time spent by Clinical Nurse Managers by two thirds and the vacancy to appointment time has been reduced by six weeks, thus reducing agency spend.

Hospital Building Award
Winner: Morgan Stanley Clinical Building: Great Ormond Street Hospital
The Morgan Stanley Clinical Building is an important element of Great Ormond Street’s redevelopment plan to ensure patients receive world-class care in 21st century facilities.

It is hoped that the new building will enable the hospital to treat up to 20 per cent more children and advance pioneering translational research programmes. The building spans 18,500m2 and forms an important element of Great Ormond Street’s major redevelopment plan to ensure patients receive world-class care in 21st century facilities.

Hospital Catering Award
Winner: Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust
77 per cent of NUH’s raw ingredient spend is now on local ingredients. Meat, fresh produce, bakery products and milk are all sourced locally, ensuring security for local suppliers and helping the local economy. Switching to local suppliers has been cost neutral and allowed the Trust to invest £2 million per year in local sustainable businesses and improved focus on patient health.

Innovation in Mental Health
Winner: Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust: Flo telehealth text / Healthy Minds
The Trust has done much to improve mental health services in the Pennine region, with the Healthy Minds scheme helping sufferers of depression and anxiety to access online self-help courses, therapy sessions and group workshops. Attendees are given between‑session support with homework tasks. Service users in Tameside and Glossop have also benefited from a text message‑based support system, which saw mental wellbeing self-rating shoot up by 22 per cent.

NHS Collaboration Award
Winner: East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust / Lancashire Constabulary: A&E Liaison
This partnership has seen two highly trained and skilled police liaison officers being placed in the A&E department of Royal Blackburn Hospital. This forms part of a project which aims to deal with frequent attendees and better improve the individuals’ access to health and care services which best meet their needs.

Patient Data Award
Winner: North West Ambulance Service NHS Trust: Electronic Referral Information Sharing System
NWAS’ Electronic Referral Information Sharing System (ERISS), which now has over 2,000 registered users, aims to transform the ways in which patient information is shared between doctors, clinicians and ambulance crew, meaning patient care can be delivered at the right time in the right place. The system helps to protect vulnerable patients and reduces the number of unnecessary ambulance calls by making it easier for doctors and clinicians to flag up any conditions or care plans a patient may already have.

Patient Safety Award
Winner: Great Ormond Street Hospital Foundation NHS Trust
The team at Great Ormond Street has won accolades for its project, ‘Pursuing zero by building hospital foundations for safety’. The programme is an attempt to reach ‘zero harm’ in healthcare, an ambitious target. It is led by 10 senior members of staff, who are given a day a week to work on patient safety. Staff work to achieve a range of outcomes, including to reduce unnecessary delays, maintain high levels of medication safety and eliminate hospital acquired infections.

Telehealth Award
Winner: Stoke on Trent Clinical Commissioning Group/Partners
Stoke-on-Trent CCG’s Simple Telehealth (STH) is an intuitive, personal, self-monitoring and alerting tool which uses familiar mobile phone SMS text messaging to collect patient observational data and offers real time advice or guidance to the patient according to the information sent in. Simple Telehealth is affordable and deployable on an unequalled scale across an unrivalled range of conditions and pathways with the SMS text messaging free to patients signed up. Simple Telehealth and its licensed service ‘Florence’ (Flo) is a multi-award winning NHS innovation developed and owned by the NHS.
    
The system helps to: improve adherence with treatment regimes through encouragement, reminders and interactive contact and to boost clinical productivity.

Transport & Logistics Award
Winner: St Helens and Knowsley Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust
St Helens Hospital has taken steps to improve the visitor and staff car parking experience and to help create a more sustainable, user‑friendly parking regime. The system uses a new IP- based operating system architecture that enables it to simply and directly connect with multiple technologies being deployed in hospitals and their car parks both now and in the future. This technology has cash and card handling options and can accommodate newer payment technologies in addition to barcoded tickets, staffsmart cards and automatic number plate recognition (ANPR). It offers a streamlined, regular parking service to patients, visitors and staff, and frees up parking staff to perform vital tasks. The ability to integrate control of the St Helens Hospital parking with the future parking needs of Trust was a key consideration.

Air Ambulance Service of the Year
Winner: Dorset and Somerset Air Ambulance
In Spring 2013, DSAA paramedics began an educational programme to obtain a post‑graduate qualification in Advanced Paramedic Practise (Critical Care), with training taking place locally. Hospitals provided short placements to enable paramedics to gain first-hand experience of conditions and treatments that they do not necessarily come across on the air ambulance.

Ambulance Trust of the Year
Winner: West Midlands Ambulance Service
West Midlands Ambulance Service has a reputation as one of the leading NHS organisations in the UK. Formed in 2006 following a merger of four ambulance services in the West Midlands, the Trust has progressed to a high performing emergency service attaining foundation trust status in 2013. WMAS serves a population of 5.6 million who live in the areas of Shropshire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire, Warwickshire, Staffordshire and the Birmingham Coventry, Solihull and Black Country conurbation. Successful projects include the implementation of an ambitious £10 million ‘Make Ready plan throughout the region which has resulted in clinicians having their vehicles refuelled, cleaned and restocked in readiness for duty, and the introduction of a range of services that drive down A&E admission rates.

NHS Publicity Campaign Award
Winner: NHS West Suffolk CCG – Emergency Department Cinema Campaign
West Suffolk teamed up with NHS Ipswich and East Suffolk CCG to put together an advertising campaign screened in an Ipswich cinema that encourages people to use hospital emergency departments appropriately and consider other healthcare options, such as pharmacies, GP surgeries and the NHS 111 phoneline. The hard-hitting film shows the possible consequences when a hospital emergency department is used by patients for the treatment of minor injury and illness, highlighting what could happen when emergency department staff are treating minor health issues instead of a seriously ill young girl. The advertisement was commissioned to run at the Cinema during the busy winter period when there is extra pressure placed on the NHS and its staff.

2015 Event
The Health Business Awards will continue to recognise examples of excellence in the NHS. For 2015, the event will once again be held in December. Entry is free of charge to all NHS organisations, and requires the submission of a 500-word NHS statement, which can be completed online.

Entry is open from January 31st and closes on October 1st.

For further information, visit the event website at www.hbawards.co.uk