Watford Care Alliance - The First Year (Well, almost!)
The Watford Care Alliance, a Prime Ministers challenge fund pilot scheme, has now been successfully setting up and running a variety of different services for almost a year. Since last October , the participating Watford GP Practices have been seeing patients from each other’s surgeries at the extended hours appointment times at evenings and weekends. This innovative change to primary care has now offered over 10,000 appointments and has been warmly received by the vast majority of patients, especially those who struggle to get to see their GP during working hours. As well as this, Watford Care Alliance is continuing to alleviate pressure on A+ E services. These veiws are both reflected in the Patient Survey, (please see figures below) , with 16.5% of patients responding that they would have gone to A+E if Watford Care Alliance had not have provided this service at this particular time and 90% of patients rating the quality of WCA appointments as good or excellent. In addition to these figures, 99% of patients also stated that they would recommend this service to their family and friends.
Over the past 7 months, the percentage of patients being seen at a surgery that is not their home practice has fluctuated. As expected, in the busier months for General Practice, such as the winter, the percentages were higher. In January a weekday total of 27% of patients were being seen at an alternative Watford Care Alliance surgery over their home practice and at the weekends it was a total of 34%. In February the weekend total was 29% and in March the total again lowered to 24% . However, the percentage is again displaying growth, with the total percentage of patients attending an appointment at a surgery that is not their home practice in April increasing to 28%.
An additional branch of the extended hour’s service is a weekend Phlebotomy service that is offered from the Bridgewater House hub. There are 15 appointments available, on one individual day or both days over the weekend. For the past month this service has been fully booked with 7 out of the 11 participating surgeries utilising these appointments. The phlebotomy service will begin to offer a greater number of weekend appointments to satisfy its high demand, with the WCA team welcoming on board two new phlebotomists.
As well as offering an extended hour’s service, Watford Care Alliance has begun working alongside the Rapid Response team in order to relieve pressure from A + E services and the local hospitals. In addition to this, a goal of the integrated health and social care team is to provide patients with the most accurate and appropriate care for their individual needs. These sessions run with a Doctor stationed at the Bridgewater House hub who has access to the needed clinical systems and to the innovative telemedicine system which will allow the GP to see some patients without having to travel to the patient’s location. This ensures a fast response to a patient’s ailment as well as paving the way for the future of general practice.
Another service that Watford Care Alliance offers to the local community is ‘Hospice at Home’. The WCA have been paying for this 12 hour , overnight service , for a trial period and is partnered with The Peace Hospice. The nurses that deliver the overnight hospice at home care are provided by The Peace Hospice and specialise in palliative care. This service is available to the local community on every night of the week, including weekends and is in high demand.
As mentioned above, in order to evaluate the WCA services, a patient survey is provided to some surgeries on an IPad. There are two IPads that are rotated around the participating practices in order to gain a broad spectrum on patient views of the services. Please see below for some results of the Patient participation survey , so far.
Watford Care Alliance has a social media presence! Not only are the team now regularly tweeting, they are also communicating on Facebook and are updating the Watford Care Alliance webpage that you are already on. If you are interested in keeping up with any updates to services and news surrounding Watford Care Alliance, click onto the Facebook and Twitter logos to the right of this blog to like us on Facebook and begin following us on twitter.
