Our work with the North West Acute Trust Provider improved their incident and risk management processes, resulting in a notable reduction of open incidents, better risk mitigation, and strengthened data quality by redesigning data capture forms and developing comprehensive dashboards, thereby accelerating their progress towards improvement.

Background

NHS Midlands and Lancashire were approached by a North West integrated care board (ICB) to provide specialist support to an acute trust. The trust had received a ‘Requires Improvement’ notice following a Care Quality Commission (CQC) visit earlier in the year. 

An improvement plan had been formulated, and the trust required capacity and capability to accelerate progress in several key areas of improvement.

Action

Incident management

– Support the progression and resolution of StEIS open incidents. 

– Review the trust incident management process and provide recommendations to improve.

– Reduce the overall number of ‘open’ incidents.

Risk and governance

– Review the trust risk management process against best practices. 

– Review and provide recommendations on improving the Board Assurance Framework (BAF)

– Provide specialist risk training and support departments to reduce risks.

Systems (Datix)

– Review the utilisation and functionality of the Datix system.

– Support data cleansing and improved workflow management within the system 

– Support the redesign of forms to data capture and improve trust-wide processes

– Develop trackers and a suite of dashboards reporting at divisional and executive levels.

Impact

• Deployed specialist subject matter expertise in incident management, risk management, Datix, clinical audit and programme management. This provided a robust framework for delivery. 
• Completed a thorough diagnostic investigation for each workstream enabling stocktake baselining and the prioritisation of programme deliverables. 
• Provided rapid delivery of ‘hands on’ support, providing significant additional capacity and capability to operational leads and teams. 
• Enhanced Trust insight and understanding of the position, the effectiveness of systems and processes, staff compliance and challenges, and therefore the improvement opportunities available.  
• Significantly reduced the number of ‘open’ incidents on the Datix system through incident progression and data cleansing. 
• Reduced the trust level of risk through review, discussion, improved mitigation and conditions for closure along with development of Datix ‘User Guides’ and training programmes for incident management and risk. 
• Redesigned data capture forms and developed of trackers and a suite of dashboards to improve data quality, reporting and oversight and reducing administration time for clinical colleagues.

For more information

For more information and to learn how we can help you, please contact us.