Straight to diagnostic pathways
Bleepa® is pioneering an enhanced process – diagnostic enhanced advice and guidance – to significantly speed up the time from primary care referral to diagnosis and to either retain patients in primary/community care or refer into secondary care, using existing staff and resources.
It enables patients to progress straight to diagnostic, multi-disciplinary pathways. Tests, if required, are carried out sooner to enable better and faster clinical decisions to be made on the basis of diagnostic evidence. The need for outpatient appointments is also reduced – categorised as a ‘diversion’ from the traditional pathway – optimising the use of clinician time and reducing waiting lists.
- Access to key data for those who need it
- Share and discuss information in a patient-centric chat
- Facilitate specialist advice and guidance across teams and individuals
- Enable better, more efficient clinical decisions
ERF reimbursements for ‘diversions’
Diagnostic enhanced advice and guidance diversions achieved through Bleepa® are eligible for reimbursement under the Elective Recovery Fund (ERF) and any integrated care board (ICB) or hospital in England can use this funding, by local agreement, to reimburse expenditure on the Bleepa® platform.
Diversions away from traditional outpatient appointments, such as those achieved by diagnostic enhanced advice and guidance pathways, are eligible for a single payment of £206 per patient from the ERF. There are no limitations on the number of patients or pathways that are eligible and, the more activity delivered and diversions achieved, the more an ICB will be reimbursed.
Based on our existing programme at Queen Victoria Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, up to 90% of referrals could achieve diversions away from outpatient appointments using the diagnostic enhanced advice and guidance approach. This could result in a significant revenue uplift for the participating ICB or trust while achieving service delivery efficiencies and, most importantly, benefits to patients.
“The vision from the beginning was to redesign the model of care so that once referred, patients went straight to diagnostics, thereby reducing the need for a first outpatient appointment and reducing the risks of bouncing patients back to GPs for further referrals to different specialties.
“With Bleepa as the technology enabler, this has optimised and automated multiple steps on the pathway with greater visibility of where the patient is on their care journey to multiple people across the clinical teams.”
Faster decision making
The new pathways optimise the use of existing resources, so that less time is taken on unnecessary activities and appointments – freeing up more time to be directed to where it is needed most and enabling faster decision making. View a comparison of the existing outpatient pathway compared to the diagnostic enhanced advice and guidance pathway here.
The model has been in place at Queen Victoria Hospital in Sussex, as outlined in the all-party parliamentary group for diagnostics report on community diagnostic centres – where Bleepa delivered an 88 per cent reduction in outpatient appointments and a 45 per cent reduction in referral to diagnosis times for a breathlessness symptom-based pathway.
“As part of the QVH Breathlessness Pathway steering group, we provided the GP’s perspective to the team from the beginning. Our feedback was key to shaping the end-to-end process which is now streamlined, straightforward and well executed.
The pathway coordinator schedules the tests for patients on one day, meaning less trips to hospital and less time to reach a diagnosis. We receive a clear and concise summary of the outcome at the end of the patient episode, informing decisions for ongoing care. The pathway process is more efficient without any additional workload.”
Facilitate patient pathways
Patient pathways can be configured to speed up the referrals process:
- Straight to diagnostic tests
- Referral back to the general practitioner, where appropriate, reducing outpatient appointments
- Referral to multi-disciplinary teams in secondary care for treatment discussions
- Referral onward to specialist care for treatment, where needed
Bleepa® supports assessment of patient needs and is fully auditable, making it easy to quickly show that safe, effective care has been provided. It also ensures that the care team has all the information they need for a holistic view of the patient’s needs, supporting the creation of timely treatment plans and capturing ongoing care requirements.
