Networks have got Talent

This last week has not only been memorable for the climax of Britain’s Got Talent 2012, it has also seen the successful conclusion of our Cardiac Network’s specialist heart attack centre project.

In 2008, results from the Myocardial Infarct National Audit Programme showed significant variation (0-100%) in the percentage of eligible patients receiving primary angioplasty within England. At this time no heart attack patients were receiving this innovative treatment in Derbyshire, Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire whilst Leicestershire, Northamptonshire and Rutland reported delivery for just 17% of their cases.

Since this time the East Midlands, in keeping with the rest of the country, has made the step change and now has specialist heart attack centres (providing primary angioplasty) for all our population.

Dr John Perrin, former president of the British Cardiology Interventional Society, who joined the region’s cardiology teams and myself at our learning event on Thursday, said he wasn’t aware of another NHS change project which has been implemented with such speed and success across the whole of the country. John isn’t the first to comment on this service transformation, which got me thinking about the factors that have contributed to our achievement including:

·         The development of specialist heart attack centres has been one of a small number of regional priority projects in the East Midlands, with commissioners and providers coming together in a collective, improvement effort;

·         We have had strong leadership including a proactive chief executive sponsor, well respected clinical leads together with external support from national cardiac clinical experts;

·         Our clinicians have influenced and been engaged in every stage of the project particularly the development of the new pathway, model and standards of care;

·         We put robust project and programme management arrangements in place and communicated at length;

·         Where required providers have funded additional cardiac catheter laboratories and an increase in members of the specialist cardiology multi-disciplinary team in order to be able to meet the required standards to provide the service.

It’s estimated 75% of NHS change projects fail to achieve their objectives and as such it’s not surprising the new NHS Commissioning Board will soon be publishing a change model to guide quality improvement. The learning derived from cardiac networks in changing the face of heart attack services should not be lost though as it seems it’s not only Ashleigh and Pudsey that have got talent!