Trust wins prestigious award

Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust has won a prestigious national award for the work it has done to help patients with chronic respiratory conditions.

The HSJ Awards 2016 were held at the O2 InterContinental London Hotel last night.

MISSION-Asthma and COPD, a collaborative project between the Research and Innovation team at Queen Alexandra Hospital and Wessex Academic Health Science Network, were crowned winners of the Primary Care Innovation category.

The Trust designed the MISSION projects to identify patients on GP registers at risk of asthma, and then chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), so they could receive swift community-based assessment.

Results from the asthma scheme included a 67 per cent cut in emergency department visits, while the follow-up COPD project, supported by a grant from the Health Foundation, slashed such visits by 97 per cent in month five.

Judges hailed the “patient-focused” scheme, which also won an award in July at the HSJ Patient Safety Awards.

Professor Anoop Chauhan, Director of Research and Innovation at PHT, and mastermind behind the project, said: “It is clear that this project has improved, and potentially saved, many lives locally. He said: “Over the last 35 years, the HSJ Awards have grown to become the largest celebration of healthcare excellence in the UK – and very probably the biggest healthcare awards in the world.

It has done so for one reason above all: the dedication of NHS staff from every discipline and every sector to drive improvements which benefit patient care and strengthen a service which has become the defining characteristic of this nation.”

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