The long-term outcomes of the NHS Health Checks have yet to be measured. However, Dr Michael Soljak, Clinical Research Fellow at Imperial College London, kicked off the Forum by presenting encouraging early results from his team’s National Evaluation of the programme. These indicate that uptake has been greater in more deprived areas, suggesting the health checks had been targeted effectively to address those at highest risk from cardiovascular disease, stroke, diabetes, liver or kidney disease. The findings have been accepted for publication in the Journal of Public Health.
The Leadership Forum identified the ‘top five’ factors key to successful provision and uptake of NHS Health Checks:-
1. Flexibility to fit local needs
2. Complete quality assurance
3. Delivery of the check in a single session
4. A patient-focused IT solution
5. Seamless data transfer to patient records
Jayne Herring, Public Health Contracts Manager for NHS Tees, explained the need to be flexible and to fit local needs. Tees Public Health has carefully targeted the NHS Health Checks to over 65,000 local individuals, 20,000 of whom were found to be at high risk. Underpinning this project – which has achieved year-on-year DH performance targets – is reliable and efficient IT support. Herring went to lengths to say: “I cannot overestimate the importance of investing in good primary care informatics and IT solutions for the health checks.”
The need for total quality was underlined by panel member Jacqui Deakin, Quality and Health Improvement Lead for Durham County Council. In an article featured in the Guardian on 10th July, Deakin described her team’s approach as a ‘‘non-medical lifestyle intervention’’. Many of County Durham’s NHS Health Checks are carried out in community settings rather than surgeries or hospitals, making the quality of delivery essential if GPs are to trust the data landing on their clinical systems. Deakin also emphasised the importance of, “Doorstep provision, making every contact count (MECC), and offering choice so that individuals feel they ‘own’ their care pathway.”
Julie Evason, Managing Director of Health Diagnostics, drew attention to the advantages of delivering checks in a single session using Point of Care testing, (as opposed to asking patients to return to their GP to collect results). ‘‘Individuals can then be given brief opportunistic advice immediately after they’ve had a pin-prick blood test and received their health check results. This is about maximising every single intervention.’’ Similarly, a software programme which is patient-focused and designed for use during a consultation can enable individuals to conceive of their level of risk easily through the use of intuitive illustrations, graphs and imagery. Evason explained ‘‘Health Diagnostics have tried to incorporate all of these practical features into Health Options®.’’
Recent innovations in paperless data transfer to patient records were also announced. Evason stated, “If we’re not getting the data back, it simply won’t count towards local authority targets,” adding that data should be getting onto clinical systems within a matter of clicks. The paperless approach doesn’t require data to be re-inputted by GP surgery staff, therefore avoiding the potential for human error and reducing administrative costs to practices. Ultimately, it enables those at particularly high risk to be immediately flagged as the data is sent to the patient’s record quickly and securely.
As the Guardian Healthcare Network stated earlier this month, “We don’t need to wait around for technology to improve to meet this challenge, but instead use the technologies available to us now, to leapfrog our way closer to 2018, when Hunt wants the NHS to go paperless.”
