PenCHORD Current Activity

NICE recently issued guidelines on pre-operative assessment which outline different tests for different types of surgeries in association with ASA scores indicating a patient’s fitness for surgery.

Based on these guidelines, the anaesthetics department wanted to know how streamlining pre-operative assessments (POAs) would possibly affect the time until the final outcome and the number of assessments. This project aimed to find out if advance knowledge of ASA grades helps to streamline the POA process.

This project will analyse daily telephone demand for urgent care appointments in one large Truro medical practice, and assess the impacts of additional non-clinical staff at stages of the queue to reduce waiting times and inform an optimal resourcing model.

Each practice tends to operate its own processes for the management of urgent patients. Within the 3 Spires Truro Practice, a new and evidenced based model is operating where all urgent requests are telephone triaged by a GP to assess requirements for urgent same day GP appointments.

A large proportion of memory clinic referrals are cognitively healthy which places considerable strain on stretched services locally, nationally and internationally. We have developed a computerized clinical decision support system (DECODE) which has the potential to provide an effective triage tool for memory clinics.

By ruling out inappropriate referrals (false positive cases of dementia) the system has the potential to reduce waiting lists, reduce the cost of diagnosing genuine cases of dementia, and prevent unnecessary distress in cognitively healthy patients who can be reassured at a much earlier stage. In order to strengthen the rationale for a definitive evaluation of the DECODE system as a memory clinic triage tool we need to model the anticipated impact on patient outcomes and financially.

This project modelled the pathway for minor injuries at Yeovil District Hospital to visualise the workflow and to evaluate the impact of introducing radiographer-led discharge from A&E. Joint work was undertaken with the Medical Imaging Department (Prof Karen Knapp), who have analysed training needs for radiographers.

The aims of this project were to; (i) identify the current variation in the use of cardiac troponin tests across the South West region; (ii) predict the impact of using the high sensitivity troponin; and (iii) identify the barriers and facilitators for the efficient use of high sensitivity troponin.

How would the findings of the previous urgent care centre geographic modelling in Cornwall be affected if we were to:

a) consider urgent care sites in Devon as viable sites for those near the border

b) include travel times for those travelling by public transport