What is the challenge your project is going to address and how does it connect to your chosen theme?

The challenge is to modernise outpatients. Remove the ‘title of outpatients’ by putting patients at the centre of a modernised specialist delivered healthcare model.

Patients who are referred by their GP to ‘see’ a hospital specialist and certainly be followed up by one do not always need to be seen in person.

A different  way of approaching this patient-centred need is required

What does your project aim to achieve?

This project would be a pilot project in out HealthBoard utilising free space in GP surgeries in currently unused clinic rooms to set up virtual ‘specialist reviews’.

We propose to set up a technology-based review with the specialist in the hospital over internet.

How will the project be delivered?

This project will require some up-front resources and commitment by both GP surgeries and their managers as well as interested and enthusiastic doctors in the hospital setting.

Instead of the traditional outpatients where patients have to often travel miles to the hospital outpatient, (this is very true of rural areas of our Healthboard) and struggle to park in overcrowded carparks, they will be able to visit their GP surgery and have a digital appointment.

The GP surgery would assist in the administration of these appointments. The doctor may in the style of ‘Skype’ be in an office based area of the hospital and have a digital scheduler. The patient would indicate their readiness to receive a call. The doctor will then call into their station to have the consultation. The doctor may on their list of patients connect to multiple GP surgeries in turn for these appointments.

Overall we aim to improve patient experience, reduce travel to hospital and free up clinic space for in-person slots.

What and how is your project going to share learning throughout?

We would collect patient experience feedback from all consultations as well as doctor feedback including recommendations.

Other measures would include the overall clinic time use by that doctor and how that changes by location over time.

Balancing measures would include checks for issues around administration and logging of activity and outcomes on the hospital Patient Administration system.

All of these measures will be charted appropriately and the results could easily be shared on this Q-Community platform (fully anonymised) for others to see how things are progressing. This would allow shared learning and provide an opportunity for others to suggest tweaks or changes for further ‘virtual clinic’ sessions on a continual PDSA style learning and development pathway.