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

We want to understand more about how older and unwell people are looked after in the healthcare system. Studies of unwarranted clinical variation often focus exclusively on hospital-based care. This project will identify opportunities for improvement by looking across the whole patient journey for people who frequently move between different healthcare settings.

We will focus on pneumonia, which results in 200,000 admissions to hospital each year in the UK and is a major cause of hospitalisation, particularly for older people and those in residential care. Our aim is to capture data on the critical role that GPs play in preventing, diagnosing and treating pneumonia in community settings, and in post-discharge support. Our challenge is to understand the impact interventions made in out-of-hospital settings have on both patient outcomes and hospital admissions.  This approach will benefit both healthcare providers and patients.

What does your project aim to achieve?

We want to better understand the current pathway of pneumonia care, particularly for older people and those in residential care, identifying examples of unwarranted clinical variation as opportunities for improvement. We will take a holistic approach, extending the use of clinical quality metrics from secondary into primary care and using patient history to explore potential opportunities to improve the early identification and treatment of pneumonia. The work is designed to generate insights that will inform the development of a number of quality measures designed to support primary care providers to improve pneumonia care and support better outcomes for patients.

How will the project be delivered?

Within the Advancing Quality (AQ) programme, we have a wealth of skills and experience in data analysis, QI methodologies and supporting organisations to improve the treatment of pneumonia in secondary care. We will use the same delivery approach in primary care, establishing a group of clinical experts to develop a set of targeted measures to support appropriate care. This measure set will enable peer comparison and promote the sharing of good practice.

We will work with Vision Health to access primary care data for pneumonia patients. Vision Health is a healthcare software provider with excellent coverage of the primary care sector. Their software also has analytical and reporting capacity. We will use a statistically significant sample of primary care data collected by Vision Health to create a joined-up picture of care for people with pneumonia, from diagnosis to discharge and beyond. We will share our findings using existing primary and secondary care collaborative networks.

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

AQ is an organisation founded on collaboration, whether this is through hosting showpiece networking events on clinical themes, webinars to enable discussion, or our daily work with trusts to promote better patient care. We will apply this ethos here, sharing key findings and involving partner organisations where possible to build new and strengthen existing improvement communities in the area of pneumonia. Through our established in-house communications team, we will promote our work and share content digitally to achieve the widest possible reach, using the network of contacts we have built up in over a decade of quality improvement experience in pneumonia and respiratory care.