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Improving and Integrating Respiratory Services in the NHS (IMPRESS)

Welcome to the IMPRESS website; a joint initiative between the two leading respiratory clinical societies in the UK: the General Practice Airways Group (GPIAG) and the British Thoracic Society. The site contains all you need to know to commission or provide high quality patient-centred services, integrated between primary and secondary care. The focus is on long term conditions such as COPD, asthma and sleep apnoea that are the conditions most likely to require a mix of primary and secondary care over a person’s lifetime. The website is designed to equip commissioners with an understanding of the evidence-base, standards, workforce issues, and tricky issues such as interpreting data and coding correctly.  Equally, it offers clinicians practical tools; an appreciation of how their services might be commissioned in the future, and suggestions of how they best engage with the commissioning process.   We appreciate that each UK nation has a different structure and ways of planning and procuring health services.  Since the changes that have created most desire for guidance and support have been in England, some of these pages are specific to England (the Commissioning pages in particular). However, we hope that colleagues in Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland will find resources that help them too.  We also acknowledge that each nation has its own respiratory strategy in draft or published.  For further information and links please go to NHS Policy. 

This website is now getting about 300 visits a week of which at  least two-thirds are from new visitors.   Please let your clinical, managerial and commissioning colleagues know of the site.

18 JUNE NEWS  IMPRESS 1st conference  was held on 28 April 2009 London with over 120 clinicians, service managers and commissioners attending. Feedback has been extremely positive about the relevance of the agenda and the consistently high quality of presentations.  Webcasts now available.  

LATEST! Information about the IMPRESS awards for 2009: Displaying Innovation in Integrated Primary and Secondary Respiratory Care is now available. Click here.

Publications

The documents listed below are available to download (pdf format)

 

Service Specification for Investigation and treatment of Obstructive Sleep Apnoea Syndrome

 


 

IMPRESS response to Department of Health (England) End of Life Care Strategy: Quality Markers Consultation

 


Best practice guidance on developing a respiratory service specification

 

 


Delivering Respiratory Care Closer to Home

 

 


Commissioning a community COPD service
Based on a case study in Somerset PCT by IMPRESS

  


A Vision for Respiratory Care
Our response to Lord Darzi.

 


NHS Jargon Buster (updated January 2009)
An essential glossary of NHS jargon. (Online version updated January 2009 available here)

 


Guide to respiratory coding
Published by the British Thoracic Society and compiled by Dr Steve Connellan, this guide to respiratory coding is an essential reference and includes HRG4 codes to be used from April 2009

 


Workforce standards

 

 


Consultant Physicians in Integrated Respiratory Care

 

 


Principles, Definitions & Standards for Pulmonary Rehabilitation

Supported by IMPRESS in consultation with BAOT, ARNS and ACPRC

 


BTS statement on criteria for specialist referral

 

 


Referral letter

Latest News

18 June -  IMPRESS  conference webcasts now available here.

18 June - two new documents from the NHS  recommended by IMPRESS: Junior Doctor Guide to the NHS and Public and Patient Engagement.

9 June 2009 Acorn Awards. Please consider applying for the NHS Alliance Acorn Awards to demonstrate how respiratory care can be improved. For more details click here.

6 June 2009 The 2009 IMPRESS Award – Displaying Innovation in Integrated Primary and Secondary Respiratory Care. Applications are invited from teams and units rather than individuals. Further details can be found here

March 2009

Service Specification for Investigation and treatment of Obstructive Sleep Apnoea Syndrome

OSAS is a very common condition with a major impact on health and society, but its importance has been recognised belatedly and services for the investigation and treatment of affected individuals in the UK have developed slowly and patchily. This document explains the nature of the condition, its impact on health and social functioning, the principles and details of investigation and treatment and the requirements for long term support and management.

This service specification represents the views and recommendations of the British Thoracic Society (BTS), Association for Respiratory Technology and Physiology (ARTP), General Practice Airways Group (GPIAG) and the Sleep Apnoea Trust Association (SATA). We hope that it will help to achieve improvements in the availability of services and in the quality of care for individuals with OSAS.

A copy of this document can be downloaded here


 Living and Dying with COPD is an educational package from IMPRESS consisting of a DVD and CD of PowerPoint slides. Free copies are available now and have been sent out to those people who registered an interest. For further information including a short film clip and to order a copy click here.  February 2009: We have also submitted a response to the end of life care quality markers consultation.  For a detailed explanation of the particular challenges of providing high quality end of life care for people with COPD click here.  June 2009: we have now issued over 3400 copies of the package, and it has been extremely well received. We are now working with a local clinical network led by NHS Bristol to understand how to embed  it in practice.

Dec 11 2008: NHS England Operating Framework published including details of PCT allocations, priorities for the next two years 2009/2011, the Vital Signs framework, the framework for CQUINs (see Jargon Buster for new terms) and the standard NHS contracts for acute, ambulance and community services.

4 December 2008: an 18-week breathlessness pathway (for obstructive lung disease) has been launched. Click here. This will provide opportunities for commissioners and clinicians to work together as part of a well-established pathway programme.   IMPRESS will discuss what it might need to do to support its implementation.

IMPRESS presented a session at the NHS Confederation's PCT Network Conference World Class Commissioning, World Class Health on 22 January 2009 at the Building Design Centre, London. Click here for presentations.

National COPD Audit 2008. The findings were released on 19 November 2008. The participation rate in acute trusts was an incredible 98%. Data were collected about general aspects of COPD care and specific Quality Indicators for COPD services, namely: non-invasive ventilation (NIV), pulmonary rehabilitation (PR), early discharge schemes (EDS) and oxygen services. Also, information about palliative care services for people with COPD was collected.  Click here for the summary report and here for more information.

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IMPRESS is grateful to AstraZeneca, Boehringer Ingelheim/Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline who have provided sponsorship grants for this independent programme of activity
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