National lead, Professor Tim Briggs, visits Plymouth

Staff from Plymouth Hospitals NHS Trust welcomed leading Orthopaedic Surgeon and National Director at NHS Improvement (NHSI) for Clinical Quality and Efficiency, Professor Tim Briggs, to Plymouth to talk about his national programme on Monday (20 February).

This programme is called Getting It Right First Time (GIRFT), which seeks to tackle ‘unwarranted variation’ across the NHS.

Started by Professor Briggs as a pilot in late 2013, GIRFT was initially set up to look at where improvements in clinical quality and efficiency could be made in orthopaedic surgery.

Nationally, the GIRFT pilot has already managed to reduce the scale of variation with clinical delivery and helped improve the outcomes of thousands of patients. Key areas in focus include procedure selection, infection and readmission rates, clinical costs, and litigation.

Professor Briggs said: “It was an excellent opportunity to visit Plymouth today, a large acute teaching Trust, and provide a briefing on GIRFT. The Trust was extremely engaging and I welcomed the discussions and involvement from Clinical colleagues, and Trust Board.”

Dr Phil Hughes, Medical Director of Plymouth Hospitals NHS Trust, added: “We were very pleased to welcome Professor Briggs to Plymouth, and raise the profile of GIRFT within and across the Trust. The outputs of the GIRFT programme will be used to drive continuous improvement in the clinical delivery of services for our patients.”

Professor Briggs briefed the Trust on the recent announcement by NHS Improvement that an additional £60m of funding is being invested in GRIFT to roll it out to a total of 30 surgical and medical specialities, each led by a national clinical expert in that field.

Pictured: Huw David, Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon and Service Line Director, Plymouth Hospitals NHS Trust, Dr Phil Hughes, Medical Director, Plymouth Hospitals NHS Trust and Professor Tim Briggs, National Director at NHS Improvement (NHSI) for Clinical Quality and Efficiency