Evaluating case studies of community-oriented integrated care.

This paper summarises a ten-year conversation within London Journal of Primary Care about the nature of community-oriented integrated care (COIC) and how to develop and evaluate it. COIC means integration of efforts for combined disease-treatment and health-enhancement at local, community level. COIC is similar to the World Health Organisation concept of a Community-Based Coordinating Hub - both require a local geographic area where different organisations align their activities for whole system integration and develop local communities for health. COIC is a necessary part of an integrated system for health and care because it enables multiple insights into 'wicked problems', and multiple services to integrate their activities for people with complex conditions, at the same time helping everyone to collaborate for the health of the local population. The conversation concludes seven aspects of COIC that warrant further attention.

How primary care can contribute to good mental health in adults.

The need for support for good mental health is enormous. General support for good mental health is needed for 100% of the population, and at all stages of life, from early childhood to end of life. Focused support is needed for the 17.6% of adults who have a mental disorder at any time, including those who also have a mental health problem amongst the 30% who report having a long-term condition of some kind. All sectors of society and all parts of the NHS need to play their part. Primary care cannot do this on its own. This paper describes how primary care practitioners can help stimulate such a grand alliance for health, by operating at four different levels - as individual practitioners, as organisations, as geographic clusters of organisations and as policy-makers.

Passing the baton of trust.

Proactive, shared decision making between key professionals and sensitive communication with patients, and those important to them, can never be overestimated. Projected annual deaths in England and Wales are set to rise, highlighting the increasing need for high quality palliative and end-of-life care. The Royal College of General Practitioners and Marie Curie have worked in partnership to develop the Daffodil Standards, an evidenced-based, structured approach for practices using quality improvement methodology to help improve care for patients at an advanced stage of serious illness or approaching end of life.

'Difficult Conversations': evaluation of multiprofessional training.

OBJECTIVES: Evidence-based communication skills training for health and social care professionals is essential to improve the care of seriously ill patients and their families. We aimed to evaluate the self-reported impact of 'Difficult Conversations', a multidisciplinary half-day interactive workshop, and gain feedback to inform future development and evaluation. METHODS: Service evaluation using questionnaire data collected before and immediately after workshops from February 2015 to August 2016 regarding participant self-assessed confidence, knowledge and skills. Qualitative free-text comments provided feedback about the workshop and were subjected to content analysis. RESULTS: Of 886 workshop participants, 655 completed baseline questionnaires and 714 postworkshop questionnaires; 550 were matched pairs. Participants were qualified or trainee general practitioners (34%), community nurses and care coordinators (32%), social care professionals (7%), care home staff (6%), advanced practice/specialist nurses (5%), care workers (5%) and allied health professionals (3%). All groups demonstrated significant increases in mean self-assessed confidence (2.46, 95% CI 2.41 to 2.51; to 3.20, 95% CI 3.17 to 3.24; P<0.001), knowledge (2.22, 95% CI 2.17 to 2.27; to 3.18, 95% CI 3.14 to 3.22; P<0.001) and skills (2.37, 95% CI 2.32 to 2.42; to 3.09, 95% CI 3.05 to 3.12; P<0.001). Qualitative findings showed participants valued role play, the communication framework acronym and opportunities for discussion. They commended workshop facilitators' skills, the safe atmosphere and interprofessional learning. Suggested improvements included more prepared role play and greater coverage of the taught topics. CONCLUSIONS: 'Difficult Conversations' workshops were associated with improvements in participants' self-assessed confidence, knowledge, and skills. Our findings identify workshop characteristics that are acceptable to multidisciplinary trainees. Further testing is warranted to determine effectiveness and accurately identify workshop components leading to change.

Providing end-of-life care in general practice: findings of a national GP questionnaire survey.

BACKGROUND: With increasing numbers of people living with complex life-limiting multimorbidity in the community, consideration must be given to improving the organisation and delivery of high-quality palliative and end-of-life care (EOLC). AIM: To provide insight into the experience of GPs providing EOLC in the community, particularly the facilitators and barriers to good-quality care. DESIGN AND SETTING: A web-based national UK questionnaire survey circulated via the Royal College of General Practitioners, NHS, Marie Curie, and Macmillan networks to GPs. METHOD: Responses were analysed using descriptive statistics and an inductive thematic analysis. RESULTS: Responses were received from 516 GPs, who were widely distributed in terms of practice location. Of these, 97% felt that general practice plays a key role in the delivery of care to people approaching the end of life and their families. Four interdependent themes emerged from the data: continuity of care - which can be difficult to achieve because of resource concerns including time, staff numbers, increasing primary care workload, and lack of funding; patient and family factors - with challenges including early identification of palliative care needs and recognition of the end of life, opportunity for care planning discussions, and provision of support for families; medical management - including effective symptom-control and access to specialist palliative care services; and expertise and training - the need for training and professional development was recognised to enhance knowledge, skills, and attitudes towards EOLC. CONCLUSION: The findings reveal enduring priorities for policy, commissioning, practice development, and research in future primary palliative care.

Promoting Mental Health and Preventing Mental Illness in General Practice.

This paper calls for the routine integration of mental health promotion and prevention into UK General Practice in order to reduce the burden of mental and physical disorders and the ensuing pressure on General Practice. The proposals & the resulting document (https://ethicscharity.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/rcgp_keymsg_150925_v5.pdf) arise from an expert 'Think Tank' convened by the London Journal of Primary Care, Educational Trust for Health Improvement through Cognitive Strategies (ETHICS Foundation) and the Royal College of General Practitioners. It makes 12 recommendations for General Practice: (1) Mental health promotion and prevention are too important to wait. (2) Work with your community to map risk factors, resources and assets. (3) Good health care, medicine and best practice are biopsychosocial rather than purely physical. (4) Integrate mental health promotion and prevention into your daily work. (5) Boost resilience in your community through approaches such as community development. (6) Identify people at increased risk of mental disorder for support and screening. (7) Support early intervention for people of all ages with signs of illness. (8) Maintain your biopsychosocial skills. (9) Ensure good communication, interdisciplinary team working and inter-sectoral working with other staff, teams and agencies. (10) Lead by example, taking action to promote the resilience of the general practice workforce. (11) Ensure mental health is appropriately included in the strategic agenda for your 'cluster' of General Practices, at the Clinical Commissioning Groups, and the Health and Wellbeing Board. (12) Be aware of national mental health strategies and localise them, including action to destigmatise mental illness within the context of community development.

Out-of-hours special patient notes.

In 2011, an out-of-hours service in central London reviewed its system for special patient notes (SPNs) - a main mechanism to communicate valuable information about patients to the clinicians who cover two-thirds of the week when day-time general practices are closed. This revealed that: half of frequent callers did not have an SPNabout half of existing SPNs were out of dateday-time general practitioners (GPs) respond well to requests by out-of-hours doctors to provide an SPNproviding SPNs was low on the list of priorities of day-time GPs who were too busy reacting to everyday problems.

Electronic palliative care co-ordination system: an electronic record that supports communication for end-of-life care - a pilot in Richmond, UK.

Most people prefer to die at home, however, the majority die in an acute hospital. Supporting a patient in their preferred place of care may be aided by exchange of information across sectors. Richmond piloted an electronic palliative care coordination system (EPaCCS) to enhance interprofessional communication for end-of-life care. One such EPaCCS is the Coordinate My Care (CMC) hosted by the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, now supported across London. It focused clinicians on having advance care planning conversations with patients and their carers and then documenting the outcome onto an electronic web-based record that can be shared with key healthcare professionals.

Electronic palliative care co-ordination system: an electronic record that supports communication for end-of-life care - a pilot in Richmond, UK.

Most people prefer to die at home, however, the majority die in an acute hospital. Supporting a patient in their preferred place of care may be aided by exchange of information across sectors. Richmond piloted an electronic palliative care coordination system (EPaCCS) to enhance interprofessional communication for end-of-life care. One such EPaCCS is the Coordinate My Care (CMC) hosted by the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, now supported across London. It focused clinicians on having advance care planning conversations with patients and their carers and then documenting the outcome onto an electronic web-based record that can be shared with key healthcare professionals.

Out-of-hours special patient notes.

In 2011, an out-of-hours service in central London reviewed its system for special patient notes (SPNs) - a main mechanism to communicate valuable information about patients to the clinicians who cover two-thirds of the week when day-time general practices are closed. This revealed that: half of frequent callers did not have an SPNabout half of existing SPNs were out of dateday-time general practitioners (GPs) respond well to requests by out-of-hours doctors to provide an SPNproviding SPNs was low on the list of priorities of day-time GPs who were too busy reacting to everyday problems.

Coordinate My Care: a clinical service that coordinates care, giving patients choice and improving quality of life.

INTRODUCTION: If palliative care is to lead the way towards a new model for integrated care, the ability to share information across the whole of health and social care is essential. Coordinate My Care (CMC) is a service dedicated to preserving dignity and autonomy at the end of life. Its care pathways enable health professionals from primary and secondary care to put the patient at the centre of health care delivery. This service is underpinned by an electronic solution. The CMC record can be accessed 24/7 by all health and social care professionals who have a legitimate relationship with the patient. PATIENTS AND METHODS: The record displays diagnosis, prognosis, advanced care plan, resuscitation status and patients wishes for end of life care patients across London. This article is a review of CMC use and outcomes from August 2010- March 2012. RESULTS: 1087 CMC patient records were analysed. The primary diagnosis was non-cancer in 52.3%, cancer in 46.3% and unknown in 1.4%, 42% of all patients were cared for by generalist only and had no specialist palliative care involvement. At the time of analysis 207 had died. Actual place of death was home 38.6%, care/nursing home 16.4%, hospice 12.1% and 30% in hospital. This equates to 55% of patients dying in their usual place of residence and reflects that 70% died outside of hospital. CONCLUSION: The CMC service has a well defined pathway underpinned by an electronic solution. It has been shown to change culture and deliver fully integrated, personalised end of life care. A pan-London CMC roll out will take place over the next 12 months.

Mechano-electrical interaction late after Fontan operation: relation between P-wave duration and dispersion, right atrial size, and atrial arrhythmias.

BACKGROUND: The growing population with Fontan operation surviving into adulthood has significant morbidity and mortality rates from recurrent atrial tachyarrhythmias. We hypothesized that the structural characteristics and electrical behavior of atria may differ in these patients compared with those without arrhythmias. METHODS AND RESULTS: We studied 33 consecutive patients (age, 25.4+/-9.5 years) with Fontan circulation, of whom 19 had a history of documented sustained atrial tachyarrhythmias. We analyzed their clinical and investigational data, including echocardiographic assessment of atrial dimensions and surface 12-lead ECG measurement of the P-wave duration and its dispersion between leads. Twenty age- and sex-matched healthy control subjects were also studied. First, patients who had the Fontan procedure overall had longer P-wave duration (144+/-33 versus 100+/-7 ms, P<0.001) and greater P-wave dispersion (74+/-33 versus 34+/-9 ms, P<0.001) than control subjects. Among the patients who had the Fontan procedure, those with atrial tachyarrhythmias had longer P-wave duration (159+/-28 versus 123+/-28 ms, P<0.001) and greater P-wave dispersion (91+/-30 versus 50+/-19 ms, P<0.001) than those without. Second, the patients with atrial tachyarrhythmias who had the Fontan procedure had larger right atrial dimension than those without arrhythmias (6.4+/-1.4 versus 5.0+/-1.0 cm, P=0.01). Third, both P-wave duration and dispersion were significantly correlated to right atrial dimension within the Fontan group (r=0.55, P=0.002, and r=0.56, P=0.002, respectively). CONCLUSIONS: Patients with atrial tachyarrhythmias late after Fontan operation have longer P-wave duration and P-wave dispersion and larger right atrial dimension than those without the arrhythmias; these abnormalities are interrelated. This observation represents an atrial mechano-electrical remodeling phenomenon in parallel to an increase in arrhythmia propensity in this vulnerable population and warrants further investigation.