Patient-centred care, primary care & community services: work themes from 2014 confirmed

Following on from August’s news that we have secured funding for a further five years, we are pleased to confirm the themes of work that will be our focus.

CLAHRC GM will have three themes of work: patient-centred care, primary care and community services, each comprising a range of short and medium-term projects in priority areas agreed with our partners.

We know that lots of research about ‘what works’ doesn’t get put into practice. CLAHRC GM will continue to strive to change that:

• By doing research in participatory ways – involving those who will use the research from the start of the research process

We also know that lots of attempts to put research into practice, and to change individual, team and organisation behaviour, don’t succeed. CLAHRC GM will continue to strive to change that:

• By putting research into practice and learning from that process – so that these lessons can be applied more widely.

Patient-centred care
Patients tell us they prefer to be looked after as a person with problems, rather than with a collection of different conditions. The projects in this theme are all about helping providers of services look after the whole person to avoid fragmented, uncoordinated care episodes that deal with one problem at a time. Our projects will include:

• Helping people with severe mental illness achieve better physical health
• Helping people with long-term physical conditions to cope with associated symptoms such as depression and anxiety
• Improving longer term care for people following a stroke.

Primary care
In partnership with local primary care practitioners and commissioners we will ensure that the provision of primary care services in Greater Manchester is based upon the best available evidence (about ‘what works’) and will put into practice proven service innovations, improving health for people with cardiovascular disease and learning about how to do more of this. Our projects will include:

• Improving access to primary care services
• Improvement in care for people with cardiovascular disease, evaluating improvements that may include:
  • GM-HFIT: An audit and education approach to support primary care to identify and manage patients with heart failure
  • IMPAKT™: A tool to identify and support the management of patients with early stage Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) in primary care
  • Support for self-monitoring of blood pressure: Enable practices and patients to implement NICE guidance and to include patients as partners in the process.

Community services
We will build relationships and create new networks of community service providers, by putting into practice locally relevant research evidence in the areas of wound care, end-of-life services and the community assessment of patients with long-term conditions. This will lead to the development of new opportunities and partnerships for research. Our projects will include:

• Mapping current wound care provision and practice
• Building networks for community provision of wound care and implementing proven treatments
• Evaluating current end-of-life care provision and making improvements for patient benefit
• Enhancing carers’ skills, knowledge and confidence in end-of-life care
• Developing and testing long-term conditions assessment tools in practice.

For more information on CLAHRC GM, please view our new leaflet and poster, and the presentation delivered by Professor Ruth Boaden at September’s Greater Manchester Primary Care Summit.

We are always willing to have discussions with organisations who would like to explore becoming partners in CLAHRC GM, providing they can identify matched funding in cash and in kind. Please email clahrc@srft.nhs.uk if you’d like to explore options for working together.

Date Published: 26/09/2013