To start, lets look at an overview of what ECIST is all about:
The Emergency Care Improvement Programme (ECIP) is a clinically led programme that offers practical help and support to the 27 urgent and emergency care systems across England that are under the most pressure. (I just love this approach, departments under the most pressure, not failing departments.......) It supports rapid and sustained improvements in quality, safety and patient flow. The programme will help improve care for patients, with a particular focus on improving system performance across the winter months, when emergency departments are working under additional pressure. ECIP will focus on helping local systems implement evidence based tried and trusted improvements that are proven to work. The success of ECIP will be measured against better patient outcomes and experience as well as improvements to the emergency care four hour waiting time standard.
How are ECIST going to do this? Well the support programme has four interdependent constituent elements:
1. An enhanced ECIST function. The Emergency Care Intensive Support Team (ECIST) team already works with local health systems around the country to help diagnose problems and identify and implement appropriate solutions. This programme will build on the work of this team by increasing it in size and combining it with experts from other parts of the system such as local authorities, the Local Government Association, the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services, the independent and voluntary sectors.
2. Four large-scale learning collaboratives. The programme will set up four clusters that will bring together senior clinical and professional, operational and managerial staff from challenges systems with colleagues from high performing systems and subject matter experts, to share expertise and build peer support relationships.
3. Buddying of systems. This will expand the existing programme of buddying in healthcare – such as for Special Measures trusts – and in local government. Systems will be matched up so that areas can provide each other with bilateral support and advice.
4. Programme management support for leaders in challenged systems. To ensure that improvements are sustained into the longer term, the programme will also offer programme management support that will be embedded in local systems. This support will be intended to help leaders in the most challenged systems to drive and embed improvement and ensure promised actions are implemented.
We like the collaborative way in which this programme has been set up, its about buddying up, providing hands on support and expertise to help departments meet the growing demands on their service.
ECIP is a joint programme between Monitor, NHS TDA and NHS England, together with the Department of Health.
Timelines and next steps
The programme launched on Thursday 3 September and the intended timeline is as follows:
August/September 2015 - programme design and recruitment, initial engagement with systems affected, wider stakeholder engagement.
October-December 2015 – Deep Dives on most challenged systems, identification of risks and initial interventions, first set of collaborative events.
January-March – further learning collaborative events, continued on-site support, development of tools and resources for the wider sector.
April 2016 – programme evaluation and decision on future work.
The following 2 papers are clearly written, no pointless jargon or annoying political spin, so do have a read of this one on priorities for discharging older people and this on the priorities within acute hospitals - they are both worthy of a cup of builders and a chocolate hobnob!
So this is definitely a 'one to watch' programme and we will be keeping you up to date with all their work and outcomes. A big thank you to the fab ECIST team for sharing and collaborating with us. This is an issue for us all, not just the few and yet again, FabNHSStuff sharers and collaborators, you have a huge part to play in learning from this initiative and running with its findings - I'm counting on you.