Take a look at last year’s winners to help you put together a winning entry

2009 Winner - Cardiff Local Health Board

While they might have had plenty to say about the positive impact of clinical case managers on patients with complex and chronic conditions, and data to back it up, the Cardiff team decided to keep its presentation punchy and concise.

“We were careful planning what we brought to the judging panel on the day,” says Nicola Hughes, clinical case manager lead at the reorganised Cardiff and Vale University LHB. “We opted for just a handful of slides to really get the key messages across - reduced length of stay, GP appointments and A&E attendances, reported improvements in quality of life and self management - and then supported these with a case study and video.”

Ms Hughes continues: “The case study explained the project and the role through a patient encounter and reflected the experiential data we collected both before and after the new service interventions. In the video, these views and evaluations were given further voice by patients, carers and GP colleagues.”

There was particular praise from the judges for the seamless and pragmatic integration of the clinical case managers with other providers.

“We are not a standalone service,” says Ms Hughes, “and made sure to build up the role in collaboration with our partners and around patient need, embedding it within the core primary care team.”

“Winning the award has been genuinely motivating for all the staff involved in what is a high quality, patient centred innovation,” she continues. “It has been encouraging them to try out new things and think differently.”

Enter now

What judges want

  • Action in response to specific NHS and public service agreement targets
  • Partnership working (such as multidisciplinary, patient involvement, public-private sector or working with local government)
  • Good use of information to help promote self management where possible
  • Effective working across the primary and secondary care interface to reduce emergency admissions
  • An imaginative approach to new staff roles and workforce planning
  • Evidence of care planning involving the patient and repeated at regular intervalsat judges want

Sponsored by Sanofi Aventis

Topics