Meeting health management priorities

Many GPs have not known exactly what consultants want before referring them. The Map has bought everyone to the same table to discuss how to manage patients properly, so they can be assessed and examined properly and sent to the appropriate musculo-skeletal team member for treatment. It provides a robust referral mechanism that will help reduce referral to treatment times and meet waiting time targets.

Mr Amit Sinha, Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon, Conwy and Denbighshire NHS Trust, outlines how the Map is helping achieve waiting-time targets (4:51)

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Transcription

Amit Sinha: The vision for the knee care pain pathway was to bring the primary care physicians and us, the muscular skeletal team which comprises of orthopaedic surgeons, anaesthetists, pain management consultants, my rheumatology colleagues, physiotherapists, to bring them together on the same table and discuss how to manage our patients appropriately so that each knee pain condition could be assessed appropriately, examined properly and sent to the appropriate person for treatment. That would bring about a timely referral, a structured referral to the appropriate person so that the correct treatment is done at the right time and this would bring about a lot of patient satisfaction and bring down waiting times. My colleagues in my own department and in my other muscular skeletal medicine team, they are quite happy and pleased with the progress that we have made so far.

Interviewer: What have the GP's said about using the map and why it's been useful to them?

Amit Sinha: I think the most important issue is communication because for years and years our GP colleagues do not exactly know what we want from them before referring a patient and we often get letters from GPs, a brief letter about a patient's knee condition with no other appropriate information about the rest of the patient's medical conditions or their, in fact even their knee condition is not appropriately explained. So what we would like from them is information of assessment which would help us in deciding the appropriateness of the referral and I think that is a very important understanding of the communication process that the Map of Medicine as initiated.

Interviewer: Are GPs finding that it's beneficial in cutting down the amount of time it's taking them to make these referrals?

Amit Sinha: Yes it will cut down the journey the patient takes from referral to treatment because they will be hopefully assessed more appropriately, hopefully they would be referred to the appropriate consultant of the muscular skeletal team and hopefully patients would appreciate their condition a lot more even prior to referral because all that information is already in the Map of Medicine framework which would be accessible to our GPs. So in that condition a robust referral mechanism will help referral to treatment time.

Interviewer: As a management tool then, is the Map useful?

Amit Sinha: I think so because I think if we have a robust referral mechanism then it will help in achieving the Access 2009 targets and therefore from the management point of view, yes it is going to be very useful.

Interviewer: Quite often speaking to health professionals there is a different language between the clinicians and the deliverers of care and the management at the NHS, do you think that the Map in a way forms a bridge between those two groups and helps them to communicate what they need to achieve?

Amit Sinha: It's interesting you say that and the answer to that question is yes because they have been quite interested in how this is going on and right from the Chief Executive level to our business manager they are very interested to find out how this is progressing because it will in the long term, help in creating a bridge between the two, the whole Map of Medicine is a dynamic process where we have put in as clinicians, guidelines and protocols, assessment tools which we have provided or rather we could probably help our primary care physicians to gather all that information before they are referred to the secondary care and I think that's a useful tool which our managers are quite happy with in terms of reducing the waiting time targets. Of course this process design will carry on and help us in the future.