News & Updates
Breathing Space – How step-down beds in City & Hackney are being used to address challenges of inpatient flow and private bed use
9 September 2024
By Miles Tringham, Improvement Advisor Leaving an inpatient hospital setting is a challenging time; needing to balance recovery, support, and getting back to independence. Unfortunately, some people stay on wards longer than planned because they have nowhere else to go. These social needs become a bottle neck in the system, causing a knock-on effect on… Read More
Reducing Non-Attendances and Improving Health Equity within the Neurodevelopmental Team at City and Hackney CAMHS
6 September 2024
By Lorraine Dick-Charova (Clinical Team Lead for NDT) and Rebecca Itlas (Assistant Psychologist) City and Hackney CAMHS launched a Quality Improvement (QI) project to reduce Missed Appointment rates within our neurodevelopmental pathway. This Tier three specialist service, serving a diverse population in Hackney and the City of London, observed a high number of missed appointments,… Read More
Newham Mental Health: Reducing Use of Private Admission Beds
6 September 2024
By Lucy Brewer (Improvement Advisor), Brunot Ngangue-Ekwe, Ola Kurdelska and Tim Opoku (Inpatient Discharge Team), Dave Baillie (Associate Clinical Director – Inpatients) Teams have been under extremely significant pressure regarding flow through the system. This is due to several issues, such as more complex housing and social factors, and has led to fewer availability of… Read More
Using a driver diagram to support reduction in waiting times for Newham Foot Health Service
5 September 2024
Authors: Marie Parchment (Clinical Lead Podiatrist), Jo Raphael (Head of Adult Therapies), Sarah Skeels (Deputy Director) and Clarissa Sorlie (Improvement Advisor) The Newham Foot Health service are using quality improvement methodology to help them capture their theory of change, in their efforts to reduce waiting lists. Figure 1. Newham Foot Health team Each month, the… Read More
Improving Patient Flow: The Red to Green Approach in Tower Hamlets Centre for Mental Health
5 September 2024
Written By Dalila Magdu and Vernanda Julien Figure 1: Tower Hamlets Globe Ward Red to Green Morning Huddle Current Situation The rising population and increasing complexity and severity of healthcare needs have led to a higher demand for healthcare services. The demand often exceeds available resources, and discharges are frequently delayed due to complicating factors… Read More
Improving Patient Flow in Forensic Services using Quality Improvement
5 September 2024
By Lorna Hayes (QI Project Manager and Coach) with contribution from William Diaz (Improvement Advisor) The Forensic Directorate currently provides secure inpatient services to almost 200 patients with mental illness, learning disability and/or autism, specialist outreach support and supervision to community patients with complex needs. It mainly consists of 2 secure units – John Howard… Read More
The Systems Flow Programme: A Journey of Innovation and Collaboration
5 September 2024
By Sarah McAllister (Head of Improvement Programmes) In the face of mounting pressures on adult mental health inpatient units, East London NHS Foundation Trust (ELFT) has embarked on an ambitious Quality Improvement (QI) programme for 2024/2025. This programme aims to improve patient flow across the entire system, addressing both clinical and financial challenges. The primary… Read More
Improving Flow by Focusing on Better Care Planning and Transitions
2 September 2024
By Chloe Preston, Improvement Advisor Bedford Adult Recovery Community Mental Health Team (CMHT) are carrying out a QI project to improve care planning and transitions, ensuring care that service users receive is needs-based and appropriate. By doing this, the team aim to reduce caseload sizes, waiting times, and the number of service users awaiting assessment…. Read More
Reduction in 18+ weeks breaches for Community Occupational Therapy and Community Physiotherapy in Bedfordshire Community Health Services
27 August 2024
Lead by: Ellie Gillett, Louise Hughes, and Megan Collins Coach: Sharon Eplett Sponsor: Debbie Martin At the start of the Quality Improvement (QI) project waiting lists were up to 34 weeks wait. The backlog at that time was initially generated because of reduced clinical capacity within the Community Occupational Therapy (OT) and Physiotherapy (PT) services… Read More
Service User in People Participation and Quality Improvement
27 August 2024
Peter Cozzi, service user in Bedfordshire Community Health Services, shares his journey through people participation and quality improvement. Hello, my name is Peter and I live in Kempston, Bedford. I am a service user and have been involved in People Participation (PP) for around a year now. The PP Lead for Bedfordshire Community Health Services… Read More
Reducing waiting lists in the Newham Community Adult Diabetes service
27 August 2024
Written by Michael Asumah (Diabetes Clinical Lead), Michael Marin (Performance Lead) and Clarissa Sørlie (Improvement Advisor) The Newham Community Adult Diabetes service have launched a Quality Improvement (QI) project to reduce waiting times for their service. Figure 1. Photo of the Adult Diabetes team: Michael Asumah, Sarah Boatema, Rita Osemwengie, Mary Aji, Abibatu Jalloh-Charley, Patience… Read More
Increasing Referrals from Newham Borough to the East London Eating Disorder (ED) Service
27 June 2024
By: Brian Sreenan (Consultant Psychological Lead) and Lucy Brewer (Senior Improvement Advisor) The aim of this quality improvement project is to address the disparity in eating disorder referrals in East London. Notably, Newham, has particularly low referrals compared to Tower Hamlets and Hackney. Since starting this project, the team have seen a monthly average increase… Read More
SMI Project shortlisted for HSJ Patient Safety Award
25 June 2024
A quality improvement team based in Luton have been shortlisted for a prestigious HSJ patient safety award, in the category of Improving Health Outcomes for Minority Ethnic Communities. The team have increased engagement of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic service users with severe mental illness (SMI) in their physical health checks by 40%, over a… Read More
Racial Equity in the Forensic Service
25 June 2024
By Mayuri Parmar, QI Coach The key commitment of the NHS is to provide a service that contributes to the health and wellbeing of all that use it, which also relates to the emotional wellbeing of NHS Staff. Nevertheless, the NHS and specifically, the Forensic Service continues to face challenges in prioritising staff wellbeing leading… Read More
Working together across directorates to improve outcomes for young people
25 June 2024
Our project team across Bedfordshire Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) and Bedfordshire Talking Therapies have been running a QI project since October 2023, focused upon improving recovery rates for young people. There are a few different reasons as to why this project started. Within Talking Therapies, we regularly examine our data. One of… Read More
Transforming Dual Diagnosis Care in Luton: A Progress Update
25 June 2024
In this 5-minute update read about the progress of the QI project in Luton, which aims to improve the care of dual-diagnosis service users. by Chloe Preston, Improvement Advisor Back in September, we highlighted the collaborative efforts of Luton Community Mental Health Teams (CMHTs) and external organisations to enhance the care of individuals with coexisting… Read More
“Now I can walk for miles!”: Improving Access to Podiatry for Homeless People in Tower Hamlets
25 June 2024
Authors: Eleanor Mata (Therapy Manager), Stephanie Benjamin (Clinical Lead Podiatrist) and Clarissa Sørlie (Improvement Advisor) The Tower Hamlets Foot Health team are using quality improvement to improve access to their services for homeless people to ensure timely care for foot related issues, prevent complications and promote mobility and comfort. According to Tower Hamlets Council (2024),… Read More
Pursuing equity for those we serve: Celebrating successes and joining the movement to bridge a Trust-wide equity gap
24 June 2024
Dive into this 3-minute read to hear how teams have successfully bridged some common equity gaps! Find out how you can get involved and close the gap in your service too. By Sarah McAllister (Head of Improvement Programmes) In response to the Trust’s strategy to improve quality of life for all we serve, in 2022… Read More
Renato, a service user at ELFT shares his experience being part of the therapeutic engagement work in City & Hackney
8 December 2023
Watch below as Renato describes the experience of being part of the therapeutic engagement work in City & Hackney.
Using the Broset Violence Checklist to assess the risk of violence on Galaxy ward
8 December 2023
Written by Racheal Kafero, Clinical Nurse Manager on Galaxy ward, and Matthew Oultram, Improvement Advisor The Broset Violence checklist (BVC) is a structured risk assessment tool used by clinicians to assess the risk of violence. The BVC is part of the Safety Culture Bundle which was introduced at ELFT following a successful programme of work… Read More
