News

The North Mersey Clinical Reference Group (CRG) represents NHS Knowsley, NHS Liverpool and NHS Sefton. The CRG has set up an online community forum that allows healthcare professionals from different care settings to review and comment on the clinical content used to develop local pathways on the Map of Medicine.

The aims of CRG are:

• To identify a clear approval process where the approvers take medico-legal responsibility for the locally developed pathways;
• To take responsibility for the coordination, support and development of local pathways and electronic referral forms for use in the three Primary Care Trusts (PCTs);
• To ensure wide clinical engagement and buy-in is achieved prior to the publication of the local clinical pathways.

The group consists of Medical Directors from each hospital, community trust and PCT, Practice Based Commissioning Chairs and senior primary care clinicians. It is chaired by a primary care clinician. Pathways to be developed are identified by the North Mersey QIPP clinical workstreams or through agreement of the Practice Based Commissioning groups in the three PCTs.

The two approvers for each of the pathway include the Chair of the QIPP clinical workstream and an appropriate member of the CRG. The approvers are responsible for confirming on behalf of North Mersey Health Community that the pathway developers have complied with governance arrangements and that the pathway is suitable for use by that healthcare community. They use a quality checklist template to make sure that the clinical governance process has been followed.

The online review and approval process begins by using the Map of Medicine pathway as a starting point, adapted by an authored specialist and other key stakeholders that are relevant to the topic the pathway will cover. A PDF of the draft pathway is posted on the online CRG forum for comments. All members of the CRG are then notified by email to review the pathway within the next two weeks. Another email reminder is sent to the same group a week later and then two days before the deadline to remind approvers of their last opportunity for content review. All comments are then collated from the web forum and presented to the authors’ group for inclusion and redraft where necessary. Once the content has been signed off, it is incorporated in the Map of Medicine pathway and published on the North Mersey view.

Having an online forum allows CRG to invite multidisciplinary participants from a cross community environment to contribute to the development of the local pathway, improving the quality of information added to the pathway, reducing repeating or conflicting responses. Financial savings can also be made through a reduced number of face to face meetings and associated overheads being required.

UK | 13 Sep 10