Personalising outpatient care
NHS England supports providers in rolling out Patient Initiated Follow-Up (PIFU) to give patients and their carers the flexibility to arrange their follow-up appointments as and when they need them.
PIFU is crucial for personalising outpatient care, enabling patients to have control over when they receive care, reducing unnecessary follow-up appointments and optimising clinical time.
As a personal health record platform established to help patients manage their health, PKB is optimally designed to deliver PIFU, giving patients the understanding to make informed decisions and the tools to engage:.
Mobilise patients to monitor symptoms (with guidance) to understand when it’s appropriate to initiate appointments and travel/ not travel for appointments.
Combine data to create tailored care plans for each speciality or pathway, personal to each patient for self-management.
Communicate remotely with messaging and exchange information of medical importance to be securely viewed, stored and archived along with the contextual narrative.
Why is PIFU important?
PIFU empowers patients to manage their care and health conditions. It plays a pivotal role in enabling shared decision making and supported self-management in line with the personalised care agenda.
Allowing patients to decide if and when they need to make a follow-up appointment reduces clinical time and unnecessary appointments. It also prevents patients from having to take time off work and make avoidable journeys to healthcare facilities for a ‘just in case’ appointment.
How PKB supports PIFU pathways
PKB’s secure messaging functionality allows patients to initiate a message to discuss a follow-up appointment - the critical capability to successfully deliver PIFU. Our system provides the patient with all the interactive tools and knowledge to manage their health, ensuring they have the correct and most up-to-date information, alongside, the ability to initiate communication with their clinical team when needed.
Other key PKB capabilities to support the PIFU pathway include:
A central library
Remote monitoring care plans with RAG status
Symptom tracking
Test results, letters and appointment management
PIFU Questionnaires
Organisations successfully using PIFU models with PKB
Swansea Bay University Health Board
Swansea Bay Dermatology Service at Singleton Hospital is using PKB to make it more convenient for patients to access ongoing care and treatment. The service supports patients diagnosed with a range of skin conditions including chronic eczema and psoriasis. Often, these patients will need regular blood monitoring and new prescriptions from the hospital as conditions progress or exasperate. Prior to using PKB, patients would attend their pre-booked outpatient appointments every 12 weeks for routine blood tests. This would be the only interaction these patients had with their specialist clinical team between appointments.
“It puts patients in the driving seat when managing their chronic skin disease.” Dr Sharon Blackford, Consultant Dermatologist and Clinical Lead for Dermatology
Capability used:
Access to test results
Messaging with the team to get an update from their clinician. This resulted either in the need to book a follow up appointment or if all was well a prescription was issued for collection.
Reported outcomes:
75% reduction in face-to-face outpatient appointments (reduced from 4 quarterly to 1 annual appointment)
264 appointments saved from 88 patients
Empowering patients to take control and self-manage Patients empowered with the information and tools to:
- communicate with clinical teams when needed
- manage medication reviews and prescriptions remotely
- understand the importance of blood monitoring for their dermatological condition.their condition with remote support.