Successful results from our heart failure management project
The GM-CLAHRC team are currently writing up the evaluation for the GM-HFIT Heart Failure Management Project, and have identified some early successes.
Heart Failure (HF) affects around 900,000 people in England, with 60,000 new cases annually and accounts for 2% of NHS inpatient days and 5% of emergency admissions to hospital.
The project has been working to improve the detection, management and care of HF within 13 practices in NHS Manchester, focussing on supporting primary care clinicians to help manage heart failure patients more effectively, whilst improving the accuracy of disease registers.
During the evaluation of the project, GPs at The Family Practice in North Manchester reflected on how the project has benefited their practice.
Dr Tim Saeed, GP Partner said: “We’ve benefitted well, really well, it’s really provoked a lot of thought. The clinical training was excellent, as there were questions I wasn’t sure about and issues I wasn’t sure about. But the work that GM CLAHRC has done has helped to clarify it."
There has also been a direct benefit to HF patients in the improved care and support that they now receive at the practice.
He added: “There are two circumstances that crop up. First will be pre-existing HF patients they will be swept up by the health care assistants and they will do all their bloods and make them an appointment with us (GP) and our side of it is to optimise the drugs and make sure whatever should be done has been attempted. With the new patients, we have a model that we can follow and that we can draw from a resource. So it’s great.”
Mike Spence, Knowledge Transfer Associate from GM CLAHRC facilitated the project, he said: “It is fantastic to see that all of the hard work put in by Dr Saeed, his practice team and GM CLAHRC, is paying off. The practice has developed a structured way of working, utilising the GM CLAHRC resources, to ensure that heart failure patients receive a high level of care.” Following the success of the project in NHS Manchester, GM CLAHRC is currently rolling out the programme to practices in NHS Bury.
A full evaluation report of the project in Manchester will be available from July 2012.
Date Published: 08/06/2012