Effective March 2023, Midlands Partnership NHS University Foundation Trust (MPFT) is the third Trust within Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent ICS to contract with Patients Know Best (PKB), joining University Hospitals of North Midlands NHS Trust and University Hospitals of Derby and Burton NHS Foundation Trust. This will provide all citizens interacting with these Trusts a single place to access their health and care information as well as use digital tools and resources to support self-care and self-management of conditions. Patients will also be able to contribute to and share their records with others.
Through implementing PKB’s patient centric solution, MPFT aims to:
- Enable service users to access their data. An important focus here is to support the Trust’s services to share Professional Record Standards Body (PRSB) compliant collaborative care plans from the Trust’s EPR,
- Empower service users to make positive changes to their physical and mental health and wellbeing and,
- Improve communication between service users, carers and healthcare professionals.
Together with enhanced care management, MPFT expects to make direct cash-releasing savings and reduce its DNA rates through sending correspondence digitally, such as appointment information and documentation.
Chris Ibell, MPFT Chief Digital Information Officer, and Chief Digital Officer, Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent ICB said:
“One of the key ambitions of the Trust’s Digital Strategy is to connect our service users to secure and reliable systems that are flexible, accessible and offer more choice in how care is accessed and delivered. The Patients Know Best (PKB) portal provides a secure way for our service users in Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent to access their health and care information in a quick and easy way, and we are delighted to be working with PKB to offer this service to people receiving our services.”
The Trust plans to use PKB to underpin its “Making Every Contact Count” (MECC) programme. Through PKB, MPFT hopes to support service users to make sustainable changes to their lifestyle through on-demand access to educational material and resources aimed at self-care. Alongside this, people will be signposted to local services that can offer interventions for smoking cessation, physical activity and weight management.
MPFT’s other aim is to support the Trust’s severe frailty service as well as individuals who are approaching the end of their lives. PKB will be offered as an alternative form of direct communication and consultation to service users and their families, providing a more efficient way of reviewing patient needs. The service also sees PKB as a great way of sharing educational information at an earlier stage in an individual’s journey.
As Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent ICS has already enabled PKB inside the NHS App, any information that MPFT shares with patients in PKB will be visible directly within the NHS App in addition to PKB’s browser-based platform.
Sally Rennison, Chief Commercial Officer at Patients Know Best said:
“One of the intentions behind ICS/ICB formation is to unify and improve working across the health and social care sector. It’s particularly exciting therefore to not only contract another trust in the Staffordshire and Stoke on Trent ICS, but to expand beyond acute to include mental health services. We are delighted to support the ICS in providing a more cohesive patient engagement portal experience for residents and hope it will provide a useful blueprint for others exploring their plans in this area.”
