Improving care and best practice

If you have developed a way of providing better value care then we want to hear from you!

We want to share and spread the learning from projects that have strengthened relationships between professionals and patients by providing a more personalised approach to care, or have identified and tackled unwarranted variation in treatment.

Please fill out this form so that we can capture the key learning from your work and share it on our Realistic Medicine website. Guidance notes that will help you complete the form are included in the annex at the end.

    1. Project Title

    Please use a short, descriptive title


    2. Project Lead

    The lead for the project and the person able to provide additional information if required. If someone else is best placed to provide additional information about the project, please include their contact details as well.

    [text* project-lead-telephone placeholder "Telephone number][/text*]


    3. What funding was needed to set up and run your initiative/project/pilot?

    A breakdown of the costs – how much you spent and on what – and where the funding was sourced from (e.g. Value Improvement project fund, local funding, etc.) If there was no specific funding associated with your project, you may wish to talk about other resources you dedicated to it (e.g. staff time or equipment).


    4. Project Description

    Describe the rationale, aims, objectives, milestones/deliverables and timetable. What was the scope of your project? What you were trying to do, and by when? You may also wish to provide some background to explain how the project came to be.


    5. How did your project add value?

    We know that demand for health and care services is increasing and in order to meet that demand we must consider how to make optimal use of the resources we have to ensure the best possible care for our patients. Our shared aim is for health professionals is to deliver value-based healthcare. The definition of value based healthcare includes the provision of high-quality care. But it also includes person centred care; care where healthcare professionals work with their patients to provide care based on what matters most to them - not solely "value" based on cost, measurable outcomes, and efficiency metrics. Things to consider include:

    Costs
    What were the previous costs of care in this area, and how did you find better ways of deploying resources?

    Population benefits
    How many people benefited? What was the size of the benefit to people or services? Did your project help to avoid harm or uncertainty? Did your project help people to make an informed choice about their treatment or care?

    Health Inequality
    Did your project have an impact on health inequalities, such as health literacy or access to services?

    Feasibility
    How complex was the project to set up and run? Did it lead to an opportunity to move resources elsewhere? Was there a good evidence base to your project, or has the work led to some good evidence that the project could be replicated?


    6. How did you measure success?

    What was the baseline position/data? What measures did you use to gauge improvement? What data are available to demonstrate progress? What was the impact of this project? What were the improved outcomes or benefits?


    7. National Applicability

    How do the benefits of the project apply to the rest of Scotland?


    8. Sustainability and Spread

    How can the outcomes/ deliverables from your project be spread? What were the risks you envisaged before the project started, and what constraints did you come up against that you had not planned for? Who were your key stakeholders?


    9. Evaluation

    How was the project evaluated? What links did you make to the strategic goals of the organisation or your stakeholders (if applicable)?