Award
MISSION COPD win Patient Safety Award 2016
Created: 22-09-2017
The MISSION team were crowned the winners for a Patient Saftey Award in 2016 for their work on MISSION-COPD, a collaborative project with Wessex Academic Health Science Network. The HSJ said: “If patients with severe COPD can be recognised before they arrive in hospital in a crisis, there is a lot that can be done to improve their lives, their health and the cost to the NHS of looking after these individuals. “Portsmouth’s MISSION-COPD does just that, working across primary, community and secondary care. It is a quality improvement programme supported by the Health Foundation and Pfizer. “It has delivered significant outcomes, including a 55 per cent reduction in hospital admissions and a 38 per cent reduction in emergency GP visits with a dramatic improvement in medicines management.” One million people in the UK have diagnosed COPD. The condition accounts for 30,000 deaths annually. Cases of COPD are expected to increase by over 30 per cent in the next 10 years, and an estimated two million people currently remain undiagnosed. Portsmouth has significantly higher than average rates of smokers, COPD admissions and readmissions, and deaths related to COPD. MISSION-COPD is identifying those with high-risk or undiagnosed COPD so that they can be diagnosed and treated earlier. Professor Anoop Chauhan, Director of Research at Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust and mastermind behind the project, said: “I could not be more proud. We are passionate about patient safety and it’s enormously pleasing that this has now been recognised by this national award. It is clear that this project has improved, and potentially saved, many lives locally. The teams’ hard work and dedication has been commended by national experts on patient safety and this will only encourage us to do even more.” The MISSION-COPD project team from Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust proactively identify patients with undiagnosed or high-risk COPD from selected local GP registers. They then conduct an assessment of disease control, quality of life and triggers in the practice surgery, followed if necessary by evaluation in hospital by a specialist COPD team. Patients are then followed up by telephone after three and six months to assess sustained health outcomes, disease control and quality of life. The judges at the HSJ awards ceremony said: “This was an impressive project which demonstrated clear evidence based outcomes. The project demonstrated how improving safety in medicines management works alongside broader initiative to provide a system approach to improving health outcomes.” The Patient Safety Awards aim to transform the UK’s approach to delivering high quality care.
