Cambridgeshire Community Services NHS Trust (CCS) is proud to announce that an urgent community response (UCR) partnership project which is helping to reduce pressures on the ambulance service and emergency departments has been crowned the winner of the Improving Urgent and Emergency Care through Digital at the first ever HSJ Digital Awards 2023, recognising excellence in digitising, connecting, and transforming health and care.

Winners from a total of 19 categories were announced during a ceremony at Manchester Central on 22 June 2023, hosted by comedian and author Mark Watson, celebrating the achievements of a total of 162 shortlisted finalists, from across 120 individual Trusts and organisations.

The HSJ’s new digital awards are borne from a sector-wide desire to champion the power of digital, data and technology in revolutionising care delivery, enhancing efficiency, and overall, improving patient outcomes.

By shining a light on innovative digital projects and programmes taking place in NHS organisations across the UK, it’s hoped there will be a growing recognition of the value and benefits delivered to both staff and patients, and provide a springboard for widespread adoption of successful initiatives.

‘Access to the 999 stack’ is a partnership between East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust, NHS East of England and UCR provider teams across the region including CCS, which involves specially-trained rapid response teams accessing the 999 call stack and responding to less urgent 999 calls.

CCS has been offering the service in Bedfordshire and Luton since November 2022 and between 15 November 2022 and 14 April 2023, the team helped 135 patients, 85 of whom had suffered a fall. These patients were able to receive care much quicker than if they'd had to wait for an ambulance, preventing any further harm and avoiding a possible hospital admission.

In addition, a linked arrangement has been established with the technology providers behind personal alert buttons enabling the providers to come directly to our team, rather than entering the 999 system, for issues such as falls or blocked catheters.

By delivering care quickly in people’s own homes or care settings, our rapid response team is helping to prevent unnecessary A&E attendances and hospital admissions, which in turn is helping to free up emergency services to respond to the most urgent cases as well as improving patient flow through the whole health and care system and tackling wider capacity challenges such as discharging patients from hospital.

CCS’ rapid response team consists of nurses with dedicated equipment who are dispatched to respond to category 3 to 5 999 calls between 8am and 8pm 7 days a week. In the unlikely event they’re unable to help because a case is too serious, they can re-prioritise the call and add it back to the call stack, so it will be responded to by normal paramedic crews more quickly.

Pete Reeve, Service Director, Bedfordshire and Luton Adult Services, said: “We're delighted to have been named as winners of Improving Urgent and Emergency Care through Digital recognising the dedication and inspired efforts of our team to successfully implement access to stack. We're always committed to delivering improved outcomes for patients as well as striving to instil a sense of satisfaction and achievement for our staff and colleagues – and it’s wonderful to be able to do so through our shared knowledge of digital services and innovation.

“This is a fantastic example of partnership working and to be recognised in this way, at this pioneering event organised by the HSJ, is such an honour and really will mean so much to all those involved. This accolade will certainly encourage us to continue moving forward with the drive to do even better, taking real pride in the projects we’re developing and delivering.”

Categories in this first ever HSJ Digital Awards cover many aspects of the health and social care sector, demonstrating how digital initiatives can help to improve ‘hard to tackle’ issues such as reducing inequalities; improving mental health through digital services; assisting with the ongoing move to net zero and enhancing workforce engagement, productivity and wellbeing.

HSJ editor Alastair McLellan said: “There’s little doubt that digital services and tech innovation is important to the future of the NHS and brings with it much promise for improved patient experience as well as cost efficiencies and staff morale.

“For several years, we’ve noticed that more and more projects – with digitisation at their core – were being entered into other awards within the HSJ’s awards programme – and it increasingly felt that this emerging and important category needed an awards ceremony of its own.

“So, what better opportunity to launch the HSJ Digital Awards than in the follow up to NHS England’s recent Year of the Digital Profession. It was no surprise to us that the level and quality of entries in the inaugural HSJ Digital Awards were absolutely outstanding, presenting our panel of judges with some difficult decisions! It therefore gives me great pleasure to personally congratulate Cambridgeshire Community Services NHS Trust as winners in the category of Improving Urgent and Emergency Care through Digital at the 2023 HSJ Digital Awards.

"This initiative really did stand out amongst some tough competition, every one of which demonstrated incredible innovation and strategic thinking about how to navigate our health services through this current tech revolution. Well done CCS and I look forward to seeing how your project progresses and what else you go on to achieve.”

The winners were selected following a rigorous two-stage judging process by a group of 56 judges ahead of the HSJ Digital 2023 awards ceremony. The full list of winners and those Highly Commended for the 2023 HSJ Digital Awards can be found at https://partnership.hsj.co.uk/winners-2023.

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For more information / media enquiries relating to the HSJ Digital Awards 2023 please contact Jo Hudson or Katie Hinksman via jo.hudson@trinitypr.co.uk  /  katie.hinksman@trinitypr.co.uk  or 0207 112 4905 / 0770 948 7959

NOTES TO EDITORS

About HSJ Digital Awards:

HSJ Digital Awards 2023 have been designed to celebrate excellence in digitising, connecting, and transforming health and care

About HSJ:

Health Services Journal is the only title to cover all aspects of publicly funded healthcare, providing news, analysis and best practice information from some of the most powerful and respected figures in health. The HSJ audience is formed of healthcare leaders from both clinical and non-clinical backgrounds and both public and private sectors.

HSJ is published by Wilmington PLC, a company dedicated to providing information and training to professional business markets. Their publications across the health, risk and compliance, finance, legal and insight sectors are united by one common aim - to turn knowledge into advantage. Wilmington PLC enables professionals to enhance performance and innovation by providing high-quality, relevant and reliable information, education and knowledge.