MyPathway improves service efficiencies and patient experience in St Helens Musculoskeletal Service

85%

MSK-HQ PROMs completed prior to appointment

Reduced DNAs

for patients using MyPathway

30.8 million

working days lost

Challenge

The Primary Care Musculoskeletal Service in the borough of St Helens was commissioned to manage 14,000 new patients per year with rising demand and limited resources. The Service wanted to develop digital solutions that improved both efficiency in the Service and patient experience. Key drivers were to develop a patient centred solution that would encourage more patient self-care and increase the collection of outcome measures. The solution also needed to be ‘future-proof’.

Approach

St Helen’s Therapy Service developed a webpage containing a wealth of condition specific support resources, lifestyle and work related advice. In collaboration with ADI Health, the team mapped out a digital physiotherapy automated pathway to be delivered via the MyPathway app that provided patients with:

  • In app self-management resources and sign-posting to condition specific information on the Trust’s website at the point of referral
  • Online completion of patient reported outcome/experience measure questionnaires
  • Access to bespoke resources
  • Appointment details/reminders
  • Messages from the Service about their care

Via the MyPathway clinical portal, clinicians can view patient’s questionnaire responses, send additional resources from a pre-populated library, upload and send a bespoke resource, and message the patient.  Clinicians also view the patient’s app timeline.

At the point of discharge, patients are requested to re-complete the musculoskeletal health questionnaire along with the NHS Friends & Family and a Feedback questionnaire, enabling the Service to collect patient health and experience outcome data.

Results

  • Increased PROM returns: 85% of patient’s who register complete the musculoskeletal health questionnaire MSK-HQ prior to their appointment
  • Early capture of baseline health data: 90% of the completed MSK-HQs are completed within 6 days of patient registering for the app
  • Reduced DNAs evidenced for patients using the MyPathway app
  • Ability for clinicians to review patient’s health questionnaire responses digitally in appointment and send messages, condition specific resources and care/exercises plans to the patient’s app
  • Environmental benefits: reduction in paper-based questionnaires / resources
  • Automated post intervention outcome measurement data
  • Patient has the ability to revisit information in the app at any time

What happened next

Due to the success of the physiotherapy pathway, St Helens Therapy Service expanded MyPathway out to all musculoskeletal patients, with patients their Chronic Pain Management Service and their Clinical Assessment & Triage Service invited to use the app from early 2021. Video Consultation appointments have been added to the pathway to enable patients to link directly to the Services Attend Anywhere waiting room via the app. ADI Health provide access to real time data dashboard enabling the Service to view patient data and statistics at a service level.

"A great app with lots of easy routes to information and very easy to use"

St Helens MSK Patient feedback

"We are so excited by these digital developments in our service. Through the website and the app we will be able to support patients to self-care by directing them to a specialist online resource with bespoke advice and exercises, making our service more accessible and improving the quality of the care we give"

Consultant Musculoskeletal Physiotherapist in St Helens