At the Health Innovation Network (HIN) South London, we developed a local programme across south London in response to the nationally commissioned Medicines Safety Improvement Programme (MedSIP).
The Patient Safety Collaboratives (PSCs) across England have worked with over 50% of Integrated Care Boards (ICBs), with the aim to collectively achieve the ambition to improve care for people with persistent (chronic, non-cancer) pain by reducing opioid analgesic use by the end of March 2025.
Through the programme, 414 lives have been saved nationally by reducing use of opioids. Data from September 2022 to July 2023 shows 7,217 fewer people per month were prescribed high-dose opioids compared to the 2021 baseline. As a result of improved care, patients report: a better quality of life; less pain; and less disability.
Our local programme
The HIN worked with various stakeholders to drive improvement in reducing harm for people who are prescribed opioids for their chronic pain (non-cancer). We worked with clinicians across south London through our Opioid Stewardship Quality Improvement Collaborative (2022/23) to deliver projects to make local improvements.
Quick access – resources
Resource pack – “Reducing harm for people with chronic pain by reducing the prescribing of opioids”.
The masterclasses were delivered to consolidating learning. The focus was on how to support patients prescribed long—term opioids to manage their chronic pain.
Innovation Sprint
We planned an Innovation Sprint in collaboration with colleagues from the South East London Integrated Care Board and across the system widely. We helped identify the key issues they were looking to address within chronic pain, and supported the development of short “Test and Learn” projects to address these.
Working in partnership with people living with chronic pain
Using opioid prescribing data for system audit-feedback
At the HIN, we seek to understand, design, and improve the experience of health and care for staff, service users, and patients. We believe that this requires a deeper understanding, using people’s personal experiences to improve things.
Experience-based co-design
As part of this work, we facilitated an experience-based co-design project using the Point of Care Foundation methodology. The project aimed to improve chronic pain management by bringing patients and staff with lived and learnt experiences together to prioritise and co-design solutions as equal partners.
Find out more about the project.
Read the reflections, on year on.
We also created an Experience-based Co-design poster. It provides guidance on how social prescribing link workers can support patients in dealing with persistent, chronic pain.
Download the poster.
Get in touch
Find out more about reducing harm for people with chronic pain by reducing the prescribing of opioids.
One year on: how can working in partnership with people living with chronic (persistent) pain improve care?
One year on from the launch of our Chronic Pain Experience-Based Co-Design (EBCD) project, Natasha Callender, Senior Project Manager at the Health Innovation Network South London (HIN), and Natasha Curran, HIN Medical Director and Consultant in Pain Medicine share reflections on their learnings from working with people living with chronic pain. The EBCD project provided an opportunity to gather views about participants’ lived and learnt experience. From getting a diagnosis to practical daily challenges which informed the approach to co-designing improvements for chronic pain management. In modern healthcare we conceptualise treatment as a linear pathway, starting from diagnosis to treatment.
Feb. 03, 2023
Working with patients as equal partners to improve chronic pain management
Natasha Callender, Senior Project Manager and Medicines Workstream Lead at the HIN, writes about how we are using co-design to expand our work to improve chronic pain management and reduce harm from opioids. Improving chronic pain management by reducing harm from opioids is a priority for the NHS. That is why in October 2022 we launched a Quality Improvement Collaborative, in response to the NHS England Medication Safety Improvement Programme (MedSIP) workstream. The Collaborative is helping to reduce harm from opioids by speeding up the adoption of innovative harm prevention initiatives and improving care of people living with chronic pain
Nov. 25, 2022
Medication Safety: How patients and healthcare professionals make safety work
Medicines are the most common healthcare intervention in the NHS. It is increasingly important that healthcare professionals work collaboratively with patients to minimise harm from medicines. Natasha Callender, Pharmacist, and Medicines Workstream Lead for Patient Safety shares some reflections on what the opportunities are. Key stats: 54% of errors occur in administration, 21% in prescribing and 16% in dispensing 72% of medication errors have little or no potential for harm, and only 2% have potential to cause severe harm Source: Prevalence and economic burden of medication errors in the NHS in England More than 200 million medication errors occur in
Nov. 17, 2022
Medication Without Harm: Improving care for people living with chronic pain
The HIN’s Ayo Chike-Michael writes about the part we are playing to address the harmful over-prescription of opioids.
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