Q Exchange
Expanding ‘Steady on Your Feet’ Falls Self Assessment Website
- Proposal
- 2022
Meet the team
Also:
- Samantha Rigg
- Angela Brooke
- Jodie Holtham
- Gemma Donnelly
- Adam Gatenby
- Alison Aylen
What is the challenge your project is going to address and how does it connect to the theme?
Steady on Your Feet was built with Lottery funding and charities local to South Tees. The software developer is Better Agency. Northamptonshire was added and we would like to provide access to residents of the BOB (Buckinghamshire, Berkshire and Oxfordshire) Integrated Care Board. The Falls Leads and Improvement Teams from each area are engaged and enthusiastic. South Tees who have most experience using the tool would like to use this opportunity to enhance the web site to include muscle strength exercises to further promote falls prevention. The tool would provides a falls self-assessment with personalised action plan for those at risk of or concerned about falling. In Buckinghamshire it forms part of the Falls Pathway re-design and management of backlog of referrals to the Falls Specialist Team. It also links to the Frailty strategy for anticipatory and preventative care planning.
What does your project aim to achieve?
Provide access to Falls risk self-assessment tool to residents in Buckinghamshire, Berkshire and Oxfordshire.
To provide advice and guidance to those who do not meet the threshold for full multifactorial assessment by the Falls Specialist Team
To assess impact on Falls Pathway in Buckinghamshire and inform re-design.
To promote self-management and falls prevention particularly for those with Clinical Frailty Score of 3-5.
To facilitate feedback from stakeholders e.g. patients, GPs and carers.
To provide access to advice and guidance via the internet to cohorts of individuals who are not confident to access formal healthcare services .
How will the project be delivered?
Working group will be established across BOB with Falls and Improvement Leads to develop content applicable to local areas (e.g. contacts, referrals to local services etc), develop local communications plan and integrate into local Falls improvement plan.
The working group will include the web designer company.
Also the South tees Falls lead to develop the content with new exercises.
In Buckinghamshire this fills a gap where there is no further input to patients who are referred into the Falls Pathway and do not meet the criteria for an assessment with the Falls Specialist Team. Referral rates at different touch points of the pathway will be monitored. A hypothesis is that with access to the tool GPs will refer less patients and there will be less burden on the triage function in the pathway.
Questionnaire for web site users to be developed for feedback.
Licence for 3 years included in costings.
How is your project going to share learning?
Increased awareness nationally about the web site.
An additional aim of the group will be to learn from the process of onboarding the Bucks/Berks/Oxfordshire region to make it more efficient and cheaper to onboard new geographical regions/Trusts and spread access to the tool.
There will be learning from how this impacts on the referral pathway which can be shared in the networks attended by the Falls Leads.
Also learning from take-up about self management.
How you can contribute
- Additional ideas about measurement.
- I'm not sure this would impact on the number of people attending front door with Falls but we could monitor.
- Any experience about in communications of health promotion/preventative initiatives and encouraging public engagement
Plan timeline
| 21 Mar 2022 | Content and population review by BOB team |
|---|---|
| 19 Jun 2022 | Kick off and Scoping |
| 3 Jul 2022 | Core Feature Development and Upgrades |
| 1 Aug 2022 | Regional Web site set up for BOB |
| 18 Sep 2022 | Final snagging and preparations to go live |
| 30 Sep 2022 | Sign off and Go Live |
Comments
Megan Morys-Carter 10 Mar 2022
Debbie, Sophie, this sounds like a great project!
On measurement, have you done any measurement of the effectiveness of the website during your Lottery funded period? If so what metrics did you use?
It might be useful to think about two different layers of measurement: one direct with users, where you ask their opinions of the resource and attempt to measure any changes in behaviour that may have resulted, and the other at a population level where you try and assess if there has been an impact on the number of admissions. The first layer could be done via user surveys - either a pop-up directly on the website, or recruitment of a sample of patients to answer a questionnaire (though of course you might get a biased sample, unless you do a proper RCT-style approach where you offer the intervention to one cohort and not the other and follow both up, obviously a tricky thing to do if there is reason to believe there will be a clinical benefit to use). The second layer might be done by assessing statistical data over a longer time period. Depending on how your roll-out goes, you might be able to compare areas with and without the tool.
I run TheHill (www.thehilloxford.org) from OUH NHS FT. I'm wondering if this might align well with work we are doing on remote monitoring across the ICS. Happy to chat if it might be useful!
Debbie Begent 11 Mar 2022
Megan
Thanks so much for your comments. Part of the funding is to develop the features of the web site for every region/service that signs up and to make national roll out, adapt and adopt, much easier. Your idea of a pop-up survey on the web site is a great one. If we are able to take the project forward I will definitely take you up on your offer to look at how we might use BOB-wide statistics.
Just submitting this application has already strengthened links with the Falls leads across BOB and I'm hoping we can build these relationships further.
Jo Scott 23 Feb 2022
Hi Debbie and Sophie
I was wondering if you've linked up with the Frailty QI online group? https://q.health.org.uk/community/groups/frailty-qi/ I recall there have been quite a few previous Q Exchange ideas related to frailty - it might be worth taking a look at any learning from them? https://q.health.org.uk/?s=frailty
It sounds like quite an ambitious project for 12 months - your aim 'to provide access to advice and guidance via the internet to cohorts of individuals who are not confident to access formal healthcare services', sounds like a project on its own. Of the aims you list above, which one do you think could most benefit from the opportunity for Q Exchange funding?
You may find some ideas in this insight summary that will prompt ideas for what the Q Exchange funding could provide particular value for. For example, how you go about building relationships or perhaps for bolstering some co-design and user testing activities?
Best of luck with the idea!
Jo
(commenting in a personal capacity, not in my capacity as a member of the Q team)
Debbie Begent 24 Feb 2022
Thank you so much Jo. I've joined the Frailty QI On Line Group and asked for their thoughts. I've also gone back to the original website author who would like to use this opportunity to add exercises to the web site - to see if this can be co-designed with a patient user group. The web site with self-assessment and advice will be provided to those referred to falls service who do not meet threshold for full falls assessment - but I am worried about the challenge of reaching those who do not access healthcare at all - letting the wider community know the website is available.
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