Findings from our experience of setting up and running a 12-week Acute Respiratory Infection (ARI) Hub recently will feed into planning for next winter in other areas as well as our own.
Our ARI Hub – which offered nearly 3,000 appointments from early January – was praised as “fantastic work” by NHS England Regional Directors, who visited on the recommendation of the Kent & Medway Integrated Care Board (ICB).
In a letter thanking DGS Health for the visit to the ARI Hub clinic at the Fleet Health Campus – one of three sites offering the service, the regional directors said they would take back the messages we had shared with them about maintaining the legacy of the ARI Hub approach, planning for next winter and engagement with Public Health colleagues about predictive modelling.
Delighted
Our Head of Operations Jolyn Phillips said, “We’re delighted the regional directors will share our learning more widely. They were really impressed by the time it took us to launch the ARI Hub, by the number of appointments we were able to offer, and by the take-up of those appointments.
“As one of the only areas to get the service up and running for the full 12 weeks, we have valuable insights. We have already started to think ahead to next winter, and are building what we’ve learnt into our planning, to benefit both GPs and patients.”
DGS Health has experience in running winter services, during covid, we delivered at-scale covid vaccination programmes and kept patients safely at home under the Covid Virtual Ward services.
Some of the learning and experiences are already shaping operational decision-making. The ARI Hub highlighted a clear need for increased diagnostic respiratory services locally. Jolyn explained, “The hub clinics were always fully booked, and we found that some patients were returning to the hub because the demands on primary care meant they were not always able to see their own GP or health care professional at their registered practice.”
New services
To address this, DGS Health is launching two new services in early June: a Retrospective Spirometry Service and a Diagnostic Respiratory Hub.
The retrospective service will be for patients who have already received an initial diagnosis of conditions such as asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, but have yet to receive confirmation through a spirometry test. The Diagnostic Respiratory Hub will provide investigation, accurate confirmation of diagnosis and implementation of high-value interventions that will include onward referral to other services, as appropriate.
During their visit, Jolyn and our Chief Nurse Kate Bushell took the regional directors, along with ICB and Trust directors, to the ARI Hub at the Fleet Health Campus, Northfleet, at the end of March. They met Dr Mary Soyoye, who was running the clinic that day.
Dr Soyoye (pictured) said most people came in asking whether they had a chest infection or tonsilitis, but there was another group of people who had a pre-existing condition such as asthma or COPD and wanted additional advice as they were experiencing particular difficulties. Others had one of those conditions but had not yet been diagnosed.
“I have been doing these clinics for the past three months and they have always been fully booked,” she had said.
Dr Mary Soyoye also praised DGS Health for being able to offer this service at short notice and enjoys working for the GP federation.