Project Initiation messaging

Connect NENC (North East North Cumbria) – Referral project initiation

Following the first project board meeting for the Regional Collaboration Project, we are pleased to announce a regional agreement to engage with the supplier and agree a contract, which is fully funded by NHS England. The new referral system, titled Connect NENC, will be delivered over the coming year and will be hosted by Newcastle Hospitals on behalf of the North East and North Cumbria ICB. The web-based system will be supplied by Patient Pass, who have worked with other regions to standardise their referral processes.

Benefits to the NENC region

Connect NENC will unify and streamline the referral and transfer of patients between the region’s hospitals. By replacing fragmented and inefficient practices with a standardised single web-based system, it will significantly reduce the time and resources currently required for inter-hospital patient referrals. This will improve the efficiency of healthcare delivery and ensures better management of patient information, safeguarding its integrity and accessibility. Collaboration between healthcare organisations will be key within the system. It facilitates a two-way exchange of information, enabling discussion and consultation between clinicians and multidisciplinary teams. This will ensure patients receive the most appropriate treatment, at the most appropriate location, based on their needs and the availability of clinical skills, equipment, and capacity.

Direct patient benefits

The most important patient benefits will be the consistent referral route used by hospital staff, logging data more securely than the current various referral routes used. It will also reduce the delay in the delivery of care provided through referrals. Connect NENC will provide clear visibility of waiting times and referral patterns, to improve equity of access and reduce delays in treatment pathways. It facilitates summary documents and images into the medical records of Trusts, and their visibility to all regional clinicians looking after the patient, through the Great North Care Record.

Project Governance

This project will have a full governance structure with a project board represented by all organisations to support decision making, cost, quality and time and will manage any issues that require escalation within the NENC ICB structure. The project board is chaired by Nikhil Premchand, who is the CCIO in Northumbria Healthcare Trust. The structure of the Board is shown below.

Information Governance

Information Governance for the project is being managed via the NENC regional Strategic Information Governance Network (SIGN). This is so all Trust IG departments are linked and have approved the framework and agreed appropriate governance documentation.

Phase 1

Six specialties have been identified to start this process. Each speciality will have its own Specialty Design Authority (SDA) with its own clinical leader chairing the group. If you wish to be involved in one of the SDAs, please contact the relevant SDA lead shown below.

Speciality	Lead/Organisation	CCIO
Cardiology	Sam Nath – Northumbria Healthcare	Nikhil Premchand
Renal	Alex Wood – NENC Renal Network Manager	Jonathan Murray
Neurosurgery	Nitin Mukerji – South Tees Hospitals	Andrew Adair
Spinal		TBC
Vascular	Rachel Bell – Newcastle Hospitals	Chris Plummer
Hepato-Biliary-Surgery	Rohan Thakkar – Newcastle Hospitals Steven Foster – Newcastle Hospitals	Chris Plummer

If you have any questions in relation to the project, please contact your named Trust representative below.

Trust / Organisation	Contact
North East North Cumbria ICB	Graham Evans
County Durham and Darlington NHS FT Trust	Darragh Twomey
Gateshead Health NHS FT Trust	Paul O’Loughlin
Newcastle Upon Tyne Hospitals NHS FT Trust	Chris Plummer
Northumbria NHS FT Trust	Nikhil Premchand
North Cumbria Integrated Care NHS FT Trust	Laura Parkinson
North Tees and Hartlepool NHS FT Trust	Jayesh Vasani
South Tees Hospitals NHS FT Trust	Andrew Adair
South Tyneside and Sunderland NHS FT Trust	Kevin Joisce
CCIO Regional Network Chair	Jonathan Richardson (CNTW)
CIO Regional Network Chair	Nick Black
Primary Care Representation	Mark Dornan

If you have any questions or would like us to schedule a briefing meeting to discuss this further, please let us know and I will make sure to schedule this as soon as possible.

To find out more about the project, you can email the team (nuth.connectnenc@nhs.net) with any queries.