Customer: Safer Salford
Project Background
The Safer Salford programme is a system-wide, quality improvement focused initiative that began in 2016 in the wake of the Francis and Berwick reports (2013), and Salford’s involvement in The Health Foundation’s Safety Measurement programmes (2014a, 2014b).
As part of Safer Salford, the Safer General Practice work stream was launched in 2019. This sought to embed the use of improvement methodologies to support delivery of locally driven safety goals, such as reducing wait times, developing population health solutions and reducing harmful prescriptions. Alongside this, the work aimed to support practices to achieve the 2019/20 Salford Standard and support delivery of core elements of the NHS Long Term Plan and the 2019/20 GP contract.
All five of Salford’s Primary Care Networks (PCN) were involved, each with an improvement lead from one of the local GP practices who was equipped and enthused to test and deliver change, working within their Primary Care Network footprints. Each PCN developed a shared improvement project with an individual improvement aim for each practice.
Improvement aims
Broughton: to reduce wait times for routine appointments
Eccles and Irlam: to reduce incidence of high blood glucose (Hba1C) for patients with diabetes
Ordsall and Claremont: to increase uptake of cytology / cervical smears
Swinton: to improve attendance for childhood asthma reviews
Walkden and Little Hulton: to reduce daily intake of morphine equivalent medications for patients on high prescriptions