Salford Council Smoking Cessation Service Redesign

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Salford Council had historically commissioned a smoking cessation service from a variety of different providers, under different contracts and agreements, with varying data capture and recording methods and with multiple and confusing routes into the service for patients. When the council recruited a new Public Health Strategy Manager in 2020, they reviewed the existing convoluted set-up and took the decision to redesign the service for all providers in an attempt to simplify the service offering and allow more straight forward reporting of mandatory data into NHS digital.

As the experts in PharmOutcomes and community pharmacy services in Greater Manchester, CHL were well-placed to support the council with their ambition.

Salford Council commissioned CHL to:

• Support the redesign of the stop smoking service
• Review and update the primary care service specification to align with the GM specification
  
• Review all existing PharmOutcomes data capture modules & associated reporting and to propose a simpler solution
  
• Support the new service relaunch with primary care providers through an expression of interest (EOI) process, propose selection criteria and then to set-up new providers
  
• Create electronic referral routes into community pharmacy for the hospital stop smoking team (CURE) and the midwife team
  

A comprehensive review of existing processes, data capture and service specification requirements was conducted by CHL in order to map out the ‘as is’ process, before proposing the ‘to be’ process – a single set of PharmOutcomes modules, fit for purpose for each provider type (general practice, community service and community pharmacy) with NHS Digital reporting requirements enabled, along with other additional reports as required by the council. CHL worked closely with all key stakeholders, including the commissioner, community service, general practice, and community pharmacy representatives to ensure that the bespoke needs of each provider type were catered for.

Due to the tight timescales required to relaunch the service and the new PharmOutcomes modules before the primary care contract expired in November 2020, CHL turned this work around in a short 2-month period in September and October 2020. Workload was prioritised according to the needs of the council, with the midwife referral modules being initiated as a priority in early September. Salford Council’s Public Health Strategy Manager was delighted with the transformational outcomes delivered at great value to the council.

To read a testimonial about this work, please click here.