Karen Haw Head, Leeds NHS Stop Smoking Service and Healthy Lifestyle Service
Abstract
In April 2012 Leeds Community Health Trust began to develop processes to enable all community services to make referrals to healthy living services. This would include smoking cessation, weight management and alcohol reduction.
Historically services had referral systems in place for all healthy living services but further analysis showed that very few referrals were actually made. Many practitioners found the systems time consuming and identified the criteria for each service was often too detailed.
The organisation embarked on a three phased plan:
• To train each healthcare professional in how to deliver a brief intervention and how to make a simple referral;
• To develop systems to ensure we were able to provide a single point of access for all healthy living services making referral easy for all health care professionals within the organisation; and
• To develop a process to triage and refer to appropriate levels of intervention.
We identified three large services to participate in the first phase of the plan, they would provide us with learning regarding the barriers and enable us to test new ways of working. By the end of December all identified staff had been trained in how to make a referral to the ‘HUB’. Following this we have received over 300 referrals do date, with many referrals converting to a positive outcome.
