Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic Crisis – special category for 2021

Summary of work

NCHA is the UK trade body for the Clinical Homecare Industry representing the majority of organisations providing Clinical Homecare Services. Currently, approximately 463,000 UK patients receive Clinical Homecare Services. Homecare patients receive hospital-led care in community settings and many patients choose to be treated at home rather than in hospital or as outpatients. Clinical Homecare is often associated with high-cost drug treatments and in 2019 - 20 accounted for £2.1bn or 30% (Pre-COVID) of the NHS secondary care medicines budget.
The NCHA is at the forefront of ensuring high standards are applied across the industry working closely across NHMC, and the NHS.
NHMC is a national committee comprising of NHS and Industry representatives. The key aim of NHMC is to act as the national focus for developing and improving processes for homecare medicines services. It advises the NHS on matters relating to homecare and collaboratively works with industry to support best practice.
Homecare medicines service is defined as a service that delivers ongoing medicine supplies, and where necessary, associated care, initiated by the hospital prescriber, direct to the patient’s home with consent. The purpose of the homecare medicines service is to improve patient care and choice of their clinical treatment.

Judges' comments

This entry from NCHA and NHMC was superb! It was highly collaborative, innovative and very quick off the mark. The feedback from the NHS was impressive and the execution was outstanding. The scale was impressive, whilst working in a very flexible and agile way with lasting changes. It quite simply changed the game in terms of how many patients are managed going forward.