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Improving and Integrating Respiratory Services in the NHS (IMPRESS)

IMPRESS is a joint initiative between the two leading respiratory clinical societies in the UK: the British Thoracic Society and the Primary Care Respiratory Society (PCRS) UK (previously the General Practice Airways Group). 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 because these 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 400 visits a week. Please let your clinical, managerial and commissioning colleagues know about the site.

SHA Respiratory Leads - See here for more information. North West - closing date 12 March.

BOOK NOW! CONFERENCE: 11 May 2010, Birmingham ICC. Building on our highly successful first meeting, this will have both plenary and parallel workshop sessions for clinicians, commissioners and those with an interest in advanced and end of life care. It will reflect the themes of the National Strategy and provide ideas, evidence and experience to support its implementation. In addition we are introducing a poster session to allow delegates to share good practice, and an Ask the Coding Expert stand to help with all coding and information queries. We will keep the registration costs as affordable as we can and offer special rates if clinicians and commissioners attend together. Click here for further information.

Webcasts from 2009 meeting.

3 December 2009: IMPRESS Award winners announced for Displaying Innovation in Integrated Primary and Secondary Respiratory Care click here for more information

Publications

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

IMPRESS Social Care and Housing Jargon Buster

Shaping the Future of Care Together The Big Care Debate - Response by IMPRESS

Bidding for Community COPD Services - A second case study

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

IMPORTANT! 23 February 2010 - Consultation on a Strategy for Services for Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) in England launched with six week consultation period. Both BTS and PCRS-UK will be submitting responses on behalf of their members

22 February 2010 - A smokefree future: a comprehensive tobacco control strategy for England - summary and useful table showing respiratory deaths attributable to smoking.

IMPORTANT! 5 February 2010 - Consultation on Services for COPD in England and plans for implementation
The Department of Health, in partnership with the 10 SHAs in England and NHS Improvement and supported by BTS, PCRS-UK, BLF and AUK, is holding a series of regional events for healthcare professionals to hear more about the content of the Strategy and to feed back views. To find out more, and to reserve a place please look here.

3 February 2010 - Personalised care planning - new information

IMPORTANT! 2 February 2010 Your ideas and experience required
We are asking for your clinical help in producing ideas and examples of changes made in your locality that have made a difference. Click here for further details

19 January 2010 updates on national strategies including DH England Strategy From Good to Great, and Operating Framework for England.

Good practice pages updated.

10 December 2009 Joint Respiratory National Clinical Directors appointed, Lung Improvement Programme launched in England and calls for examples of good practice in asthma and COPD. More

8 December 2009: free spaces still available on the national training workshop for the Living and Dying programme February 4th and 5th 2010 in Manchester. Click here for more information. WAITING LIST NOW IN OPERATION (Jan 2010).

3 December - IMPRESS Award announced Displaying Innovation in Integrated Primary and Secondary Respiratory Care. More

13 November 2009 IMPRESS responds to the Big Care Debate. The Green Paper Shaping the Future of Care Together sets out a vision for a new care and support system. IMPRESS responded to the consultation, with advice from DH Long Term Conditions Delivery Support Team.

23 October 2009 - update on procurement and do's and don'ts of procurement

October 2009 - updates on commissioning - World Class Commissioning adds competency 11: Ensuring efficiency and effectiveness of spend and competency 6 requires priortisation of investment in line with different financial scenarios

October 2009 - New pages added on networks and spirometry!

September 2009 - IMPRESS responds to the Health Select Committee Inquiry into Commissioning

11 Sept - see the SEESAW report, Shifting the Balance of Healthcare to Local Settings from the King's Fund. Tony Davison, who attended, says clnicians should take note of its key messages. For further information see here.

11 Sept - 2 articles in the BMJ on the impact of Payment by results are highlighted in the Jargon Buster: see Jargon Buster "Tariff".

4 Sept - DH England has issued a short film capturing the range of perspectives from some of the 16 Integrated Care Pilots (ICP). See www.youtube.com/wcccomms

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.

IMPRESS is grateful to its corporate supporters - AstraZeneca, Boehringer Ingelheim/Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline who provide grants for this independent programme of study

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