Evergreen PR MD on ‘The Future of Personalised Care’ and the health system
I recently had the opportunity to present a health campaign that we developed with our client, the Personalised Care Institute, at their ‘Future of Personalised Care Conference’ in London.
It was a brilliant event that brought together subject leaders like Professor Alf Collins, the former NHS England Clinical Director for Personalised Care, Rachel Johnson, Associate Professor of Primary Care at the University of Bristol, and Mari Carmen Portillo, Professor of Long-Term Conditions at the University of Portillo.
Personalised care means that patients are given choice and control over how their healthcare is planned and delivered. As Alf Collins so brilliantly articulated:
“Healthcare is designed for populations but delivered to individuals, and our approach to healthcare right now is primarily disease/condition centric, not primarily person-centric.”
It was clear from Alf’s opening keynote that something needs to change. So I was delighted to present our campaign ‘Making Personalised Care a Priority’ to a packed to the rafters conference room.
The goal of this campaign is to push personalised care back up the health agenda and to support the PCIs sustainability goals by helping the organisation to generate revenue for its bespoke ‘at-scale’ training solution for NHS Integrated Care Boards, Trusts and Training Hubs.
Following our MERTO Map planning process we identified and prioritised our audiences and undertook detailed desk research to inform our understanding of their barriers, drivers and external landscape.
The research was clear that given such major and fundamental challenges being experienced by the NHS at this point - and this was launched before the abolition of NHS England was announced - that it could be a challenge to cut-through and attract support. Especially with many waiting for direction from the next NHS 10 Year Plan.
Some priority insights emerged and I saw a lot of nodding heads as I described:
An NHS that’s overwhelmed with challenges and that may be distracted by concerns with waiting lists, costs, health outcomes, patient satisfaction, workforce retention
Evidence suggests that if personalised care were embedded at scale, it could help with many of the existing challenges
Our research, which comprised surveys and conversations, suggests that there is evidence that personalised care is being de-prioritised right when it is most needed
Our campaign for change was about bringing these facts to the surface and empowering an already motivated group of personalised care advocates to drive this message home.
Our strategy was to ‘make personalised care real’ by using new data and real life stories to take it from a theoretical construct to something that is very much needed to prevent healthcare outcomes and experiences from continuing to get worse.
Our research of health and care professionals and the general public uncovered some startling statistics:
2 in 3 people with long-term conditions are given advice they can’t or won’t follow due to a lack of personalised care
The ‘inevitable consequence’ of this has been poor adherence to advice, worsening conditions and extra GP and A&E appointments - further increasing service pressures
Many health and care professionals say that personalised care is being de-prioritised in their organisation
We created
A striking campaign identity
A 30 page policy report
Media materials, based around data and real stories/opinions
Stakeholder content
The research is kickstarting a conversation, with numerous media articles landing and a wide array of influential organisations backing its findings.
We are starting to see some meaningful results:
18 articles or mentions
1,500 web visits
400+ webinar attendances
7 immediate meeting requests to discuss at-scale training in NHS or other organisations
The campaign also informed the PCI’s submission to the 10 Year Plan which is due in June.
I really enjoyed the Future of Personalised Care Conference, which was organised by Convenzis - who did a great job promoting it. I was a little nervous that in a room of healthcare professionals looking for insights into how they can improve their daily practice of personalised care, my presentation might not land, but it really inspired people to want to make a difference in their own area.
Lots of people came up to speak to me afterwards to see how they could support the campaign and Convenzis shared that I received a very good speaker rating, with the majority rating the talk as ‘excellent’. I know you shouldn’t care about those sorts of things really, but I was pretty pleased with that!
About the author:
Leigh Greenwood is the founder and managing director of Evergreen PR, the healthcare PR agency that makes health happen. He is a chartered PR professional who has been working in healthcare PR, public affairs and communications for the last 20 years. He has worked across the whole spectrum of healthcare and has won more than 40 industry awards for effective health campaigns that generated measurable outcomes.
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