The Health Service Excellence Awards: Ophthalmology Project is a Clear Winner

The award for Overall Best Project at the Health Service Excellence Awards which took place this week was presented to the Ophthalmology Service being delivered by Sligo University Hospital and Sligo, Leitrim and West Cavan Community Health Organisation (CHO) Area 1 for the project ‘Having The Right People With The Right Skills In The Right Place, At The Right Time’. The Ophthalmology Service in Sligo University Hospital joined forces with colleagues working in the community to create an improved model of care for patients.  The project also recently won an award at The Irish Health Care Centre Awards 2016 which were held in the Royal Marine Hotel in Dublin where it came first in the category 'Healthcare Department Initiative - Cost Saving Measure.

Congratulating the winners Tony O’Brien, Director General of the HSE, said: The Health Service Excellence Awards 2016 are designed to identify, recognise the real value we place on excellence and innovation across all of our health service. The Awards process enabled us to identify great service developments that can be shared and implemented, as appropriate, in different parts of our health system.  
 
Seven projects were selected to compete to be the Overall Winner of the 2016 Health Service Excellence Awards. Teams representing the final seven projects attended an Awards Ceremony in Farmleigh House in the Phoenix Park, Dublin yesterday, April 27th.  The final seven projects were selected from an original entry of 426 projects.  They were chosen by the Selection Panel after 39 projects were invited to make presentations detailing their projects aims and objectives.

Congratulating the team, Grainne McCann General Manager Sligo University Hospital said, “I would like to congratulate everyone involved in this project. The improvements have been realised as a result of a strong commitment on the part of the hospital and community teams including clinicians, nurses, administration, IT professionals and management in an integrated approach to continually improving the service to patients.  This new model of care, which provides a better service for our patients has resulted in 1,400 additional outpatients seen in 2015 alone, reducing the numbers of patients waiting by 45 per cent. In addition, the change in focus from the Community Ophthalmic Physicians and freeing up the Consultant Surgeons has resulted in 850 additional day cases being treated in the service”.

Frank Morrison, General Manager, Primary Community Continuing Care, Sligo/Leitrim/West Cavan added, “This new way of working together has streamlined the ophthalmology service. The Ophthalmic Surgeons are able to deal with the surgical side of things and our Medical Ophthalmologists are able to deal with the medical side. Because of this project significantly more patients are being treated by the service”.

The Awards are designed to encourage and inspire our healthcare staff to develop better services that result in easier access and high quality care for patients and to promote pride among staff in relation to our services, said Director General of the HSE, Tony O’Brien, presenting the awards.

He continued: “The Awards are not simply about those projects selected as being winners and finalists but about all of those that have been submitted and are contributing to the continuous improvement of health and social care services. The on-going commitment of staff throughout the public health service contributes in a very significant way to the quality and satisfaction levels acknowledged by our service users and the members of the public.  The Health Service Excellence Awards afford us the opportunity to take pride in our services, recognise and celebrate staff commitment and dedication and to say thank you to our staff for their contribution to the provision of health and social care services”.
 
This short video sets out the excellence standard of innovation and co-operation that the service has achieved. Video can be viewed here.