In a recent speech at the Blair Institute, UK Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Wes Streeting remarked: “One of the things I've said to my department and to the NHS is we need to rethink our role in government and in our country at large. This is no longer simply a public services department. This is an economic growth department, and the health of the nation and the health of the economy are inextricably linked.”
This sentiment underscores the NHS's vital role in our national economy—not only as an employer and a hub for cutting-edge research and discovery, but also as a driver and adopter of new innovations.
We need to rethink our role in government and in our country at large
Delivering innovation is not just about having the right idea and a clever product; it's about ensuring these ideas can be effectively utilised and disseminated for the benefit of patients and the teams that care for them.
As an innovator in digital health, Capture Stroke has been instrumental in providing a live stroke registry that enables better patient care and helps stroke teams optimise their services.
Now, with our latest advancements in therapy, we are extending this care to cover more of the patient journey, aligning with the new requirements placed on our customers—the stroke teams—to the ultimate benefit of patients.
The Sentinel Stroke National Audit Programme (SSNAP) is a major national healthcare quality improvement programme
Meeting new SSNAP changes
The Sentinel Stroke National Audit Programme (SSNAP) is a major national healthcare quality improvement programme. The organisation measures how well stroke care is being delivered in the NHS in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and then advises on how to improve this.
With the upcoming changes to the SSNAP dataset effective from 1st October 2024, there will be a significant shift in how therapy data is recorded. These changes aim to prioritise patient-centric care by focusing on therapy based on patient rehabilitation goals and treatment types rather than by discipline.
Capture Stroke’s early collaboration with customers has ensured that clinical and data teams can confidently meet these new requirements.
The new guidelines will move from the current 45 minutes per therapy discipline per patient per day to three hours of motor therapy per patient per day. This approach encourages group work among therapists, leading to more intensive rehabilitation for stroke patients, as outlined by the new NICE guidelines.
Enhancing therapy reporting
CaptureStroke is a digital clinical pathway for stroke care.
Our customers have emphasised the importance of continuing to report on the disciplines engaging with stroke patients, a task made more challenging without systems like CaptureStroke. We’ve addressed this by providing system changes ahead of the SSNAP deadline, giving customers ample time for User Acceptance Testing.
CaptureStroke is a digital clinical pathway for stroke care
These updates include additional questions in CaptureStroke and new activities driven by patient rehab goals in Capture Therapy, allowing clinical teams to trial changes before the official switchover.
Supporting multidisciplinary teams
One significant impact of the new dataset requirements is the encouragement of more group work among multidisciplinary therapy teams (MDTs) to achieve the three-hour/five-day therapy goal.
Capture Therapy allows for the recording of both direct and indirect therapy, providing therapy leads with precise data on time spent with patients.
This data is crucial for resource management and can support cases for additional staff or beds.
Continuous improvement through feedback
Since the SSNAP changes were announced in December 2023, we’ve held numerous meetings to understand our customers' needs and concerns, build necessary dashboards and reports, and create a better product for stroke teams and their patients.
Configurability has also been important. No two NHS trusts are the same, and therapy activities will vary between teams. Being able to customise activity lists and have CaptureStroke automatically handle the mapping of activity to treatment type will be a significant time saver for therapists entering the data.
No two NHS trusts are the same, and therapy activities will vary between teams
Innovating for better outcomes
CaptureStroke manages around 10% of all strokes annually and has overseen the care of over 180,000 stroke patients in its ten years of operation.
This extensive data collection not only meets SSNAP audit requirements, but also provides broader insights requested by stroke and therapy teams.
These insights enable innovative approaches to care and help improve patient outcomes.
Big picture thinking is what’s required to improve stroke care in the NHS today.
SSNAP have already made significant steps in this direction by splitting out the core and community datasets – and the new shift to patient-focused therapy delivery is another important milestone. CaptureStroke continues to support this evolution by providing a clear, accurate and continuous record of the patient’s journey along the entire care pathway.
