Innovation will be at the core of our activity as we move into phase three of Operation FLOW – Transform, Reform & Perform.
Key to that will be our new “interface” directorate, streamlining the links between primary and secondary care through its management of an enhanced version of our Flow Navigation Centre (FNC) – called FNC+Plus.
At the helm of the new initiative is Trudi Marshall (pictured), who’s excited to be taking secondment from her role as nurse director of University Health & Social Care North Lanarkshire to become interface director, setting up the FNC+Plus team in their new home at Kirklands HQ.
Trudi said: “This is a great opportunity to be part of the innovative thinking at the heart of Transform & Reform. I’m really looking forward to the challenge of providing clinical and managerial leadership for change and improvement across the interface between primary and secondary care.
“Transform & Reform will have an emphasis on supporting our patients to access the right services to meet their clinical needs at the right time, and to evolve our systems to use our finite resources in the most creative way.”
Trudi will be aiming to:
- Improve access to primary care services, linked to assessed clinical need;
- Develop new pathways to address simple demand locally;
- Assess how “hub” services can support demand for primary care (GPs/pharmacy/dentistry);
- Establish “virtual wards” – using remote monitoring of devices worn by patients – and looking for new options to support patients to be at home and not within acute services (our three university hospitals – Hairmyres, Monklands and Wishaw);
- Design a model to join up FNC+Plus, GPs, emergency departments (EDs), Scottish Ambulance Service, “virtual beds” and our leading Hospital@Home service, which offers acute-level care in patients’ homes and uses virtual wards;
- Decrease ED attendances;
- Shift GP admission requests and scope and develop options for a GP triage service;
- Reduce length of stay in hospitals by helping patients to get home and into a virtual ward.
Trudi added: “The vision is for care to be person-centred and delivered as close to home as possible, with all the pathways safely maximising the use of digital technologies and applying the principles of realistic medicine.
“I’ll be ensuring co-ordination of these goals across NHS Lanarkshire and through collaborative work with Lanarkshire’s two university health and social care partnerships, to develop consistent and co-ordinated innovation.”
