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North east London projects

Map of the boroughs in North East London including Barking & Dagenham, City of London, Hackney, Havering, Newham, Redbridge, Tower Hamlets and Waltham Forest

Read about our north east London-wide projects

Engagement with people with long-term conditions

We engaged with members of the public to support two workstreams within NHS North East London:

  1. Long term conditions outcomes framework for primary care
  2. Long term conditions priority within integrated care strategy

This piece of work supports all teams working on long term conditions across North east London and at a place partnership level. The North East London (NEL) LTC programme focuses on developing a set of outcomes for delivery across all NEL general practices for:

  • Atrial Fibrillation
  • Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)
  • Asthma
  • Diabetes
  • Cardiovascular Disease (CVD)/Risk
  • Hypertension
  • Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD)
  • Care Planning and Multimorbidity

The aim is to invest in general practice to deliver the outcomes across North east London there is a consistent offer to patients with those long-term conditions and that patients across north east London have access to similar services that enable them to achieve the outcomes for their disease/s. These long-term conditions have been chosen as they represent those affecting the greatest number of patients. In future, other long terms conditions may be added to the set of outcomes.  

The NHS NEL engagement and communications team worked with the long term health conditions team leading on the development of the outcome’s framework and strategy. A number of stakeholders, including clinical staff and Healthwatch, were involved in co-designing the questions for a survey.

  • 234 surveys completed
  • 4 focus groups with 26 people in total
  • 3 one to one telephone interviews.

In July 2022, the north east London communications and engagement team supported our primary care networks to seek the views of their patients to feed into their enhanced access service offer. The team wrote a patient survey which was sent out via text message to patients and received almost 40,000 responses. Members of the communications and engagement team then sat in on panel meetings where their proposed plans were presented. This gave the organisation the opportunity to challenge how they had considered patient feedback within their plans

Read the survey results below:

In September 2022, the communications and engagement team worked alongside partners to support a London-wide Polio campaign. The campaign was encouraging parents and carers of all children in London aged 1-9 to receive a polio vaccine following the detection of the virus in London sewage. Engagement leads across north east London used their networks to spread the message including working with faith leaders and GPs to produce videos in different languages to reach diverse community members.

In July 2022, the ICB heard some powerful personal insights on accessing services from two profoundly Deaf residents. Their experiences include:

  • Lack of deaf awareness amongst frontline staff
  • Being unable to access reliable BSL interpreters
  • Assumption that appointments / assessments / interventions could go ahead despite the lack of a BSL interpreter
  • Lack of understanding about the range of communication needs within a family
  • Lack of ownership of issue across the system

Their experiences were mirrored across primary care, acute and Mental Health Trusts and at local authority level. They described their frustration, their concerns that their physical and mental health were being directly impacted and the sense that, locally and nationally, the deaf community’s needs are not being recognised.

To address this, each place-based partnership was asked to review its borough and make plans to improve the experiences of deaf people. This work now continues at borough-level.

Engagement leads are drafting a response to the Bishop of London’s Faith, Place and Health Harnessing the power of faith groups to tackle London’s health inequalities report in line with the NHS NEL Working with People and Communities Strategy. Working better with faith partners will support NHS NEL ambitions in reaching those most impacted by health inequalities.

In August 2022, a group of 12 residents, representing a range of ages, ethnicities, gender and disabilities took part in a facilitated workshop to support the procurement of a community diagnostics service for north east London (with the exception of City and Hackney). Participants were talked through the service specification and the procurement process. It was explained that NHS North East London wanted feedback on four areas that are key to the service specification and procurement evaluation:

1.         Patient dignity and privacy

2.         Complaints process

3.         Access to support

4.         Patient consent and confidentiality

Attendees were split into two groups and given the four areas to discuss. Conversations were rich, with lots of helpful feedback, and we themed their comments as follows:

  • Access to scans, tests and results in a timely and appropriate manner for all
  • Good communication in a form that works for them with a warm welcome that is flexible around their communication needs
  • Protecting patient data and confidentiality
  • To be treated as a person, not just a ‘patient’
  • For it to be easy to make a complaint

This feedback informed the final service specification and shaped questions that bidders were asked as part of the formal tendering process. This meant prospective providers were tested on their commitment and experience in supporting and involving patients, maintaining confidentiality and making complaints. This will be further tested when the new provider is in place as part of the performance management and monitoring of the new contracts.

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