UHUK Awards 2023

The UHUK Annual Conference and Awards convened this year with over 150 leading healthcare professionals, policy-makers, academics, and pioneers from across the UK. The focal point of the event was to delve into the complexities and prospects within NHS primary care and community services.

UHUK is a partnership of social enterprise healthcare providers covering a staggering 64% of the UK population. These providers of NHS services divert millions of patients away from overstretched ambulances, A&E departments and GPs via services including out of hours and clinical assessment, urgent primary care, NHS 111, virtual wards, palliative care, and A&E triage and treatment.

A highlight of the conference was a celebration of the work of UHUK members, with awards presented in seven categories from over 50 entries.

2023 Award Winners:

Innovation (sponsored by Ummanu) – Brisdoc’s Frailty-ACE (Assessment and Coordination of Emergency and urgent care) team.

They remotely assess and manage frail people’s urgent health and care needs, including support for carers, in their own home. During the 6-week pilot, Frailty-ACE managed 222 patients at risk of admission, enabling an unprecedented 65% to be treated at home.

Partnership (sponsored by Lantum) – NHUC for the North Hampshire Integrated ARI Hub

A collaborative service including 15 practices, community providers, NHS Trust, virtual wards and 111CAS/999 services and covering 230,000 respiratory patients. It implemented a ‘no wrong door’ for patients, who could access the Hub from several entry points using a single, joined up clinical pathway.

Addressing Health Inequalities (sponsored by Content Guru) – Primary Care 24 for urgently mobilising a treatment and vaccination programme to support Asylum Seekers and the wider community.

In the space of one week they completed an assessment, treatment and vaccination programme to prevent a local diphtheria outbreak in the asylum population and in the wider community.

Patient Engagement (sponsored by Advanced) – DHU Healthcare for their Experience Insights platform.

This is a Cloud based, multi-channel data collection platform for patient experience across their services in the East Midlands, enabling reporting on emotions, themes and sentiments.

Social Impact (sponsored by RotaMaster) – Cumbria Health on Call for the Alston Medical Practice Social Day Care Unit.

The Unit provides a way to reach vulnerable groups in the area such as housebound patients, the elderly, patients living alone or isolated, and people struggling with the cost of living, to come together to support their health and wellbeing. It provides a warm, safe space and is open for anyone to attend.

Quality and Safety Initiative (sponsored by Lockton) – Kernow Health CIC’s Shift Lead Clinician Demand Management.

This innovative initiative combines a new Shift Lead Clinician (SLC) role, an auto-populating dashboard that informs the clinician and shift managers of the level of escalation within the service and associated actions, and auto-dispatching protocols to help streamline the patient journey.

Chair’s Award (sponsored by CLEO) – NEMS Community Benefit Services Clinical Management Team (CMT).

NEMS provides around 1.1 million people in Nottinghamshire with urgent primary care based out of four locations. Over the past two years, through a focussed and integrated workforce development and diversification drive, it has seen a doubling in permanent clinical staff, substantially reducing its dependence on agency workforce, thus reducing risk and improving quality.

Conor Burke, CEO of UHUK commented, “Our award winners, and the quality of all of the submissions, illustrate how this often under-recognised sector is leading local implementation of best practice in urgent and integrated care, and working with partners every day, to keep people well, independent and at home.”