The NHS Elective Recovery Strategy sets out ambitious targets for elective care, at a time when demand and waiting lists are still at substantial levels.
NHS England published a report: Principles and approach to deliver a personalised outpatient model in May 2022:
“We must focus capacity on those with the most urgent needs and those who have been waiting a long time for care, making best use of valuable staff time and resources. This will require changing models of care. One of the pillars of this approach is to deliver a personalised outpatient model that better meets individual patient need and improves quality of care and patient outcomes. It is anticipated that this will enable providers to re-purpose clinical time from outpatient follow-up (OPFU) appointments where clinically appropriate to, and beneficial do so… Each provider and system have been asked to reduce outpatient follow-up appointments by a minimum of 25% by March 2023 compared to 2019/20 baseline”
Read the report in full here
"Through this more personalised approach to outpatient follow-up appointments, patients can expect their care needs to be dealt with faster and closer to home where appropriate. This will be done in a way that improves overall efficiency, while not transferring follow-up to capacity-constrained services in the community and general practice without a coherent system plan."
Learn more at our virtual Transforming Outpatients 2023: Delivering a personalised outpatient model CPD confernece which is taking place on Friday 24th March 2023.
Attending this conference will enable you to:
- Network with colleagues who are working to transform and personalise outpatient services
- Develop effective strategies for tackling demand in outpatients
- Learn from established practice delivering effective outpatient services
- Understand the personalised outpatient model and what needs to change in your outpatient service
- Implement Patient Initiated Follow up
- Develop your skills in improving capacity, access, patient flow and waiting times in outpatient services
- Improve practice and capacity in remote consultations
