What is the challenge your project is going to address and how does it connect to the theme of 'How can improvement be used to reduce delays accessing health and care services'?

The management of persistent pain in young people can be very complex. Services in rural locations do not always have access to specialist advice and it is unhelpful if young people have to travel for miles to a tertiary care service rather than being helped in their local context. This project would look at how a virtual MDT could support local services working across health, social care and education to provide support close to home and at the same time have access to highly specialist advice. The aim would be to move care away from hospitals into the communities and contexts that the young person engages with every day. Local support would be delivered by trusted professionals who have established relationships with the young person and their family but the local professionals would have full support allowing for the upskliing of local workforces rather than taking expertise to the centre.

What does your project aim to achieve?

The aim is to scope models for using specialist expertise in non-specialist settings. The project will also explore different workforce models that mean specialist expertise isn’t always concentrated in a single physical location by looking at developing matrix teams which draw together a virtual MDT from across a number of different organisations. To do so there will be an exploration of different hosting models with reference to the different health economies across the UK

How will the project be delivered?

The funding will be used to pay for project support to ensure an evidence based approach to project management is used. The initial vision and mandate will be generated at a workshop organised by WHSCC who commission specialised services in Wales. The mandate will then be turned into discovery stage activities leading to a proposal for an initial team model. This initial model will be tested for 6 months. Clear objective measures will be decided at the beginning of the initial phase to provide a framework for evaluation and a baseline for benefits realisation. at the end of the first 6 months the outputs will be evaluated in order to determine whether changes to the service model are needed. There will then be another 6months of testing following which a proposal for Business as Usual will be developed as a basis for future funding applications.

How is your project going to share learning?

Conference publications

Blogs on the Q community website

Posts on social media

Case studies in National publications

Award applications