Bringing healthcare communities together

Map of Medicine has worked very well for the healthcare community of Wirral in north west England. It has been an overarching bridge helping clinicians and managers to work together and create a 'gold standard' of care for patients. Wirral now has localised Maps for COPD and AMD and is using Map of Medicine to redesign services and engage the whole healthcare community in tackling issues

Dr Shyamal Mukherjee MBE (Medical Director) and Cathy Gritzner discuss the Map's role in improving services in Wirral (3:22)

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MPEG-4 Video File, Interview with Dr Shyamal Mukherjee MBE & Cathy Gritzner | 13mb, mp4
Windows Media File, Interview with Dr Shyamal Mukherjee MBE & Cathy Gritzner | 7mb, wmv

Transcription

Shyamal: The Map of Medicine has gone very well for us, it’s given us an opportunity for Clinicians and Managers to work together and as Cathy will explain to you how it has gone forward.

Cathy: We identified areas we wanted to tackle for the benefits of the patients and working together with our Acute Sector colleagues and our PCT colleagues to ensure that we are working up to a gold standard of service provision for the patients, but working, using the Maps to help us achieve that goal.

Interviewer: So in practical terms, what has the Map done for you?

Cathy: We have Maps for COPD now, we have it for AMD, and we have used it to service redesign and to engage all the whole health community in tackling some of these problems.

Shyamal: It has helped us to address needs that have been identified in commissioning and in patient care so it has been like an overarching bridge which has helped to move clinical care and commissioning forward together on the Wirral.

Interviewer: What have you learnt in moving towards implementation of the Map in your area, which you can pass on as a tip almost to anyone else who is thinking of adopting it?

Shyamal: I think the most important thing is engagement. It’s engagement between Managers, Clinicians, Primary, Secondary Care and Patients, they are very, very important. We have patients on every group and I think it’s this total engagement that gives it the value and that gives it the power and it gives it the ownership of the people and that’s the way it happens.

Interviewer: You had to get all of your Health Professionals to sign up to it presumably for it to be most effective Cathy?

Cathy: Yes we had an awareness raising event and from there the modernisation teams we have on the Wirral all signed up, they wanted to use the Map and that’s how we rolled it forward.

Interviewer: What do you think is the best way of assessing how successful it’s going to be?

Shyamal: I think when we assess patients; we can do it at three levels. One is to look at from the commissioning level as we analyse the productivity matrix and see things change. From the patient level when we look at the patient satisfaction survey and see how the field services have improved and from the Clinician level when they actually feel that the quality of service and the care in the community or the pathways have improved and that’s Clinician in the Primary and Secondary Care.

Interviewer: So is it a project that takes short term pain for a long term gain kind of thing, it seems to take a lot of work to actually get it to a stage where it can be useful?

Cathy: Yes I suppose you could look at it like that but the long term gain is to actually address the health needs of the people in the Wirral and so the short term pain is well worth it.

Shyamal: I wouldn’t say there is any pain, it’s like a wonderful tool that one needs to engage to and it does deliver. So it’s a matter of getting in there, getting stuck in and carrying on to make sure it delivers.