As innovations develop into real world solutions and services, our role moves to identifying and supporting those with the greatest potential to improve health and care across the West of England and beyond.
Our focus is on selecting innovations and innovative practice with a proven clinical evidence base to spread more widely across our local systems.
We act as a facilitator or guide in encouraging adoption and spread, using quality improvement approaches to continue testing, learning, adapting and refining.
Here are some case studies exploring our work at the ‘Deploy’ phase of our innovation pipeline from 2023-24.
Polypharmacy: getting the balance right
In England, NHS primary care dispenses more than a billion prescription items every year. As more people live longer with multiple long-term health conditions, the number of medicines they take often increases.
Whilst medicines of course bring many benefits, we also recognise that this can create a significant burden for people trying to manage multiple medicine regimes and, in some cases, it can cause harm. We refer to this as problematic polypharmacy.
Problematic polypharmacy adds a cost to the healthcare system and diminishes quality care for patients. Much of this is preventable.
On behalf of the Health Innovation Network, we have led the national Polypharmacy Programme since 2022 to help address these issues.
We have set up communities of practice across England, attended by over 2,500 stakeholders. These support local systems to showcase good practice and work together collaboratively to share ideas on how to address problematic polypharmacy locally.
The programme focuses on three ‘pillars’ to drive change at a national and local level.
Pillar one – population health management
1,247 health and care professionals have attended our popular webinar series for support in using data from the NHSBSA Polypharmacy Prescribing Comparators to understand risks and identify and priorities patients for structured medication reviews.
Pillar two – education and learning
We have delivered 24 national Action Learning Sets with 928 GPs and pharmacists. These are an evidenced-based education approach to upskilling primary care professionals, using a structured method to enable small groups to explore complicated issues around problematic polypharmacy by meeting regularly and working collectively.
We have trained 33 polypharmacy educators through our train-the-trainer model, who have since delivered bespoke polypharmacy education locally to 1,175 GPs, pharmacists and other health professionals. In the West of England we have designed and delivered our own bespoke Action Learning Set and masterclasses around local priority areas.
Pillar three – changing public behaviour
In September 2023, we launched a range of evidenced-based resources in a number of community languages to support and help prepare people invited for a structured medication review (SMR) with their GP, pharmacist or other healthcare professional. We collaborated with a range of academic, clinician and patient innovators to develop the resources, combined with a phased user testing approach.
Packaged to support easy adoption, the resources include implementation guidance for GP practices, a patient SMR invitation letter, example questions and leaflets encouraging patients to think about their medicines and raise concerns with their health professional. They are available in print, digital and read-aloud formats.
In November 2023, GPs, pharmacists and geriatricians from across the country, gathered at the Royal Pharmaceutical Society in London to celebrate the achievements of the Polypharmacy Action Learning Sets. Here we launched the Health Innovation Network’s ‘state of the nation’ report, showcasing the impact and learning from our Action Learning Sets and providing recommendations for continued change.
Find out more at www.healthinnowest.net/polypharmacy.
