Sentinel Healthcare Southwest CIC is a community-focused organization owned by general practitioners and practice managers in Plymouth. It provides clinical assessment and treatment services through its Clinical Assessment Service and Clinical Treatment Services. Sentinel started using Patient Opinion to gather patient feedback and was surprised by how frequently the feedback was viewed. The feedback helped Sentinel make service improvements and identify cases that needed follow up. Sentinel sees potential for Patient Opinion to provide commissioners a dashboard on patient experience of services to help monitor quality.

1. Sentinel Healthcare Southwest CIC
General Practice Led, Community Focused
Patient Opinion – our journey
Neil Parsons, Sentinel Healthcare Southwest CIC Strategic
Manager
June 2011

2. Sentinel Healthcare Southwest CIC
General Practice Led, Community Focused
Introduction
• Background
• Our services:
•Community interest Company (CiC)
•Clinical Assessment Service (CAS)
•Clinical Treatment Service (CATs)
• Patient & Public
• Commissioning outcomes
• Questions

3. Sentinel Healthcare Southwest CIC
General Practice Led, Community Focused
Background
• Sentinel owned and run by GPs and Practice Managers in
Plymouth (233 shareholders from General Practice)
• Started April 2008
• Community interest Company (CiC) – ‘not for profit’
• Mission statement - 'To provide a proactive and
innovative leadership role, in the planning and delivery
of first class health and social care for the community'
• Wave 1 GP Commissioning Pathfinder
• Local vision ‘Healthy system’ – patients to people…..

4. Sentinel Healthcare Southwest CIC
General Practice Led, Community Focussed
Future Plans-The new “System”
MORE
community based
choices
Reduced
ROTT rate
SUSTAINABLE COSTSUSTAINABLE COST
Initial Case Mix
IntegratedIntegrated
““CommunityCommunity”” FilterFilter
Reducing
RTT
LESS reliance on
face2face
PreventionPrevention
and Maintenanceand Maintenance
Treating IllnessTreating Illness
Education + SupportEducation + Support MoreMore
PlannedPlanned
CareCare
UnplannedUnplanned
CareCare
Novel use of IT ToNovel use of IT To
provideprovide ““livelive”” datadata

5. Sentinel Healthcare Southwest CIC
General Practice Led, Community Focused
Clinical Assessment Service (CAS)
Initially set up Clinical Assessment Service (CAS) to
improve quality and introduce peer to peer review of
referrals
• Covers Plymouth, South Hams & W Devon and SE Cornwall
practices (66 in total)
• 20 clinical staff involved with sifting
•GPs, GPwSIs, Hospital Based Consultants & Nurses
• 88,000 (approx) elective care referrals per year
•350 (approx) per day – very variable!!
• Referral processing 99% patients contacted within 48 hours
•Approx 80% patients contacted first time, many within 24 hours
•Strong drive to continue improvement

6. Sentinel Healthcare Southwest CIC
General Practice Led, Community Focused
Clinical Treatment Service (CATs)
• Services provided at local community hospitals
• Dermatology and Minor Ops – ‘one stop clinics’ with
GPwSIs and GPs
• ENT – GPwSI
• Musculoskeletal – GPwSIs and ESP Physiotherapists
• Cardiology - GPwSI
• All GPwSIs supervised by secondary care clinicians

7. Sentinel Healthcare Southwest CIC
General Practice Led, Community Focused
Patient & Public – Getting Involved
Starting point
• Patient feedback surveys for all services – continual
• Lots of positive feedback
• Sense that it was very structured / choreographed??

8. Sentinel Healthcare Southwest CIC
General Practice Led, Community Focused
Patient & Public (1)
Then we found Patient Opinion and realised we had just
scratched the surface!
•Registered with PO Summer 2010 – money should not be the
driver on which an organisation decides whether it should do
this!?
•Started promoting service to patients – this takes time and
needs to be nurtured!
• Link on all our patient facing documentation
• Link on website
• Proactive targeting in our treatment services – at reception
• Targeted campaigns in month
- PO Team were really supportive

9. Sentinel Healthcare Southwest CIC
General Practice Led, Community Focused
Patient & Public (2)
We have been astounded by how often patient
feedback / comments are viewed on the website!
•We have used the feedback to implement service
changes
•Have also been able to contact through PO patients
where additional follow up seemed necessary
•Have used the feedback internally to promote
ongoing drive for excellence….and remind ourselves
that we are doing a good job!

10. Sentinel Healthcare Southwest CIC
General Practice Led, Community Focused
Patient & Public (3)

11. Sentinel Healthcare Southwest CIC
General Practice Led, Community Focussed
Clinical Commissioning – local context
•Believe PO could provide a commissioning
dashboard regarding patient experience of
commissioned services – quality marker / outcome
•Have a local interest in individual patient experience
across providers
•PO branding is strong – use this across the health
community to promote patient feedback
•Make PO mandatory for providers in the future (incl.
General Practice)??????

12. Sentinel Healthcare Southwest CIC
General Practice Led, Community Focussed
Questions ??