Making sure patients receive their care in the most appropriate setting from the most appropriate clinician.
‘CASES’ stands for: Clinical Assessment Service, Education, Support and Self-management. This new elective care programme aims to provide a genuinely joined-up approach to delivering patient care, in order to achieve the best possible services for Sheffield patients.
NHS Sheffield Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), Primary Care Sheffield (PCS) and Sheffield Teaching Hospitals (STH) are working in partnership on this pilot, which commenced in July 2016 and will run for 2 years.
The model supports primary and secondary care to help make sure patients get the right treatment at the right time in the right place. It will initially focus on seven specialties – Cardiology, Dermatology, Ear Nose and Throat, Gastroenterology, Gynaecology, Respiratory, and Urology.
We are starting by piloting the ‘CA’ of CASES – providing a clinical assessment service to support clinicians. From this work we will quickly be able to start identifying the services we can re-design, the education we can provide to primary and secondary care clinicians and the support we can provide to help patients manage their own healthcare, including input the voluntary sector can provide to enhance this support.
How will it work?
Referrals (except for urgent cases) in the above specialties will be made by the practice via Electronic Referral Service (ESR), to the CASES team at PCS. Referrals will be peer reviewed by a GP who has received mentoring and support from specialist consultants from Sheffield Teaching Hospitals Foundation Trust.
The referral will either be forwarded to the hospital, or advice will be returned to the GP to consider managing the patient by other means. This process will take no more than 3 days, in order to minimise delay.
We expect to extend the range of specialties once the system is established.
Want to find out more? The three short videos below explain how the referral system currently works, why this is not sustainable and how CASES addresses the problem.
Sara’s journey – what currently happens?
Why do we need CASES?
How will CASES work?
CASES Standard Operating Procedures - information for Practices