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Exemplar Programme In response to the Out of hours Review, the Department of Health established an Exemplar programme for “single number access” to out-of-hours care through NHS Direct. Thirty-four such Exemplar services were selected and in addition, four pre-existing integrated out-of-hours provider services which fell outside the initial selection have been supported in the development of an action plan to bring them up to “exemplar standard” of functioning and service. Thus the population coverage of the Review model of service is approximately 10 million patients, involving 38 out-of-hours provider (OOHP) services (ranging in size from a single practice covering 8,000 patients to much larger schemes of up to 1,000,000 patients) and 20 NHS Direct provider units.
An OOH Implementation Project team of significant and wide-ranging insight and skill was established. The team comprised an NHS Direct project manager, NHS Direct network managers, Clinical Assessment System (CAS) suppliers, out-of-hours software providers (Adastra and Owl) and the Department of Health Implementation Team. This consortium of organisations with complementary skills has worked successfully with local stakeholders to ensure the consistent and timely implementation of the NHS Direct/OOH Provider interface in the absence often of sufficient local in-house expertise or capacity.
The OOH Exemplar Programme now extends to full or part-time out-of-hours support by NHS Direct of GP services covering approximately 20% of the population of England.
The Exemplar Programme has succeeded in demonstrating the effectiveness of single-number access to patient requests for unscheduled care, and in promoting a co-ordinated approach between NHS Direct and OOHPs.
Click here for a list of exemplar sites.
From the outset of the exemplar programme, it was acknowledged that there was a need for some form of evaluation to draw out the lessons learnt by the exemplar sites and to share good practice across the system. To meet this aim, we have commissioned a programme of work through the University of Southampton to evaluate the exemplars. Interim reports from the National Exemplar Programme Evaluation will feed into the exemplar programme. Details of the evaluation and research team can be found on the University of Southampton website via this link: National Exemplar Programme Evaluation.
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