Welcome to our Clinical Strategy page. The information you will find here is designed to provide information about our Clinical Strategy, our twice yearly Clinical Senate and our monthly Clinical Transformation Group.
Our Clinical Strategy was developed in partnership with people who use our services, their families and carers and our colleagues across the Trust. It focuses on the delivery of clinically excellent services across the Trust and should be read in conjunction with our Operational Plan. It describes our model of care and our focus on population health and prevention, integration and supporting the clinical development of our staff to deliver outstanding, integrated, compassionate and safe care across our services. Our Clinical Strategy can be found here.
Our Clinical Strategy outlines our strategic aims and the foundations and principles to reach our ambition of achieving clinical excellence by focusing on prevention and integration in our clinical services and supporting the clinical development of our colleagues to attract and retain the best people in our workforce. Our aim is to strive for perfect care by delivering outstanding, integrated, compassionate and safe care across all of our services ensuring that these are compassionate, kind and caring and go beyond what people expect.
Achieving clinical excellence means delivering outstanding clinical care and the best clinical practice to the people we serve. Across all of our services, people will receive care and support that is consistently safe and is timely, effective, efficient, equitable and person centred. We will do this through focusing on prevention to protect people’s health and integrate our services to achieve better health outcomes whilst supporting the clinical development of our colleagues to ensure they have the right skills and knowledge to deliver excellent care.
Prevention: We want to prevent problems from arising and reduce the impact of ill health by dealing with the causes and risk factors, not just treating the symptoms of illness once they occur. To do this we will work with people from birth to end of life and identify children, young people and adults who are most at risk from deteriorating health and wellbeing so that we can target earlier interventions and provide preventative and proactive care to minimise rising levels of ill health. We will enable people to stay healthy and independent for as long as possible. We will work with people early to protect their health, improve health inequalities and deliver health promotion. Where people do have long-term conditions, our aim is to prevent deterioration and to support recovery and self-management.
Integration: This means enabling better coordinated and more continuous care and support for people of all ages, care that is person-centred. Throughout our services and with our local partners we will integrate care across mental and physical health and across health and social care to best meet the needs of the people we serve. We will work effectively across and within organisations to share resources and improve care pathways across the lifespan. We will treat more people in the community rather than in hospital by working with our partners.
Supporting Clinical Development: To deliver clinically excellent integrated services focussed on prevention in our new clinical model, clinical colleagues need the right skills, experience and knowledge. We are enhancing clinicians ability to navigate change and deliver the highest standard of clinical practice by establishing and embedding new clinical roles and growing our own workforce to address the challenges in shortages of professionals faced not only locally, but also nationally. We will support continuing professional development (CPD) for all our colleagues. The ongoing process of maintaining and developing professional skills is key to achieving clinical excellence. These skills may be gained informally or formally, through courses or training, and may lead to the establishment of new roles.
Our Model of Care has been designed to support and care for people throughout their lifetime in a way that meets their holistic needs and empowers people to have greater control over their care, this is summarised below.
Wellbeing:
- Shared responsibility to promote and support people to have healthier lifestyles
- Recovery focused, personalised care will support people to take control of their own health, maintain independence and connect with their communities
- Provide self-help guidance and advice
- Support children and young people through education on how to prevent ill health
Community Based Care:
- Proactive care provided in the community in people’s homes rather than hospital
- Have an integrated care system that provides holistic person-centred care and supports the management of long-term conditions
- Close working with primary care, social care and others to identify people early, providing preventative support and timely access to care
- Retain and develop specialist expertise, working differently to maximise value and reach within populations
Step Up and Step Down Care:
- Care stepped up or stepped down to prevent deterioration, reduce risk and support recovery in the right place at the right time
- Comprehensive and intensive support provided to those at risk of hospital stay
- Crisis services will operate pre-emptively and in partnership with people who use our services, families and carers, the voluntary sector and statutory bodies
- Innovations in care will be identified and shared
- A strong focus on population health will ensure the delivery of care is adjusted to meet individual needs
Specialist and Inpatient Bed Care:
- Specialist assessment and inpatient care provided for those who need it
- Beds stratified to get maximum benefits and better outcomes for people
- Inpatient care is part of a planned episode of care with fluid care pathways
- Specialist inpatient services provide an enhanced therapeutic and safe environment for as short of a time as is needed
To support the delivery of the Clinical Strategy, we have established a Trust wide Clinical Transformation Group. This forum oversees the implementation of the clinical strategy to ensure services are clinically led and focus on clinical quality to improve quality of care and clinical outcomes across all clinical services as outlined in the Clinical Strategy.
The group is chaired by our Executive Medical Director, Dr Noir Thomas and plays an important role of:
- Supporting the development, implementation and delivery of the Trust’s Clinical Strategy to:
- Contribute to strategic planning by identifying key questions and challenges, key strategic questions to be addressed and recommending how success would be measured.
- Provide expertise on data and trends to forecast future need and demand.
- Support the identification of high impact initiatives to address priority areas, particularly in relation to clinical excellence, prevention and integration.
- Identify clinical leadership to influence change in support of the delivery of the strategy ensuring professions voices are key to the development and delivery of new models of care.
- Connecting patient safety, patient experience and patient engagement in the delivery of the clinical strategy.
- Monitoring the key measures and outcomes to support the implementation of the clinical strategy.
- Engaging with the Clinical Senate and provide leadership and stewardship to clinicians across the Trust working with the Clinical Senate to:
- Coordinate the Clinical Senate’s business,
- Facilitate the Clinical Senate’s advisory role by drawing on the Senate’s views and expertise.
- Act as the public face of the Clinical Senate.
- Leading the development of the Clinical Senate’s work programme and conduct an annual review of its effectiveness.
- Supporting the Clinical Senate by acting as an engagement and development group, undertaking work to support the priorities of the Senate.
- Guiding how integration can be implemented within clinical services, enabling clinical excellence at the core.
- Supporting new models of care to be developed across clinical pathways with identified clinical outcomes.
- Communicating the developments and changes to the delivery of clinical services.
Mersey Care’s Clinical Senate has been established as a source of clinical advice, guidance and leadership that will contribute to and support the Trust to enhance its quality and safety and deliver its strategic aims. The Clinical Senate is a broad, diverse and multi-professional forum of health and care professions representative of the Trust.
Membership of the senate encompasses the full spectrum of the services provided by the Trust. The aim of the Clinical Senate is to have an empowered and informed forum of clinical leaders who by working collaboratively will add significant value and support to delivering the Trust’s Clinical Strategy.
Our latest Clinical Senate took place on 25 June, 9.30am to 4.30pm at The Village Hotel, Knowsley.
Our previous Clinical Senate took place on on 18 April from 9am to 4pm.
Our virtual Clinical Senate took place on 15 November, 1pm to 5pm via Zoom.
Our first face-to-face Clinical Senate since 2019 took place on Tuesday 20 September.
To Clinical Senates are hosted on a regular basis and avialable for all staff to attend.
Please confirm your attendance, please email Christy
More information about the senates is avialable by emailing: Fran Cairns, Deputy Director of Therapies, Psychological and Allied Health Professionals: Francesca
or Christy Ryder, Events Manager: Christy