Partners: Novartis, Interface Clinical Services
Alignment with three shifts: Sickness to prevention, hospital to community
High cholesterol affects more than 800,000 residents in NWL and is one of the most significant risk factors for CVD. Between August 2023 and August 2024 ICHP supported delivery of The National Lipid Programme Workforce Support Solution, funded by Novartis.
The programme was open to Primary Care Networks (PCNs) nationally to apply, with the following aims:
• Improve patient access to treatment in primary care
• Reduce risk of CVD events in those living with CVD
• Support practices to sustainably adopt and implement national lipid management pathway
In NWL 123 practices across 19 PCNs and six boroughs took part in the programme. Over 12 months:
• ICHP funded and facilitated weekly virtual lipid multi-disciplinary teams with consultant and pharmacist colleagues from four NWL Trusts to support local practices and PCNs with discussion of complex cases.
• Trained pharmacists from Interface Clinical Services provided temporary capacity to each practice or PCN, delivering lipid clinics as well as educational resources, mentoring, and hands-on facilitation towards embedding proactive lipid management into routine care.
• The lipid clinics delivered pharmacological and lifestyle interventions, in line with the national lipid pathway.
• The programme supported bespoke searches run on primary care systems to identify patients at risk requiring treatment optimisation (with a focus on existing CVD and uncontrolled lipid levels).
As a result:
• 6,231 patients were identified as at-risk and invited to a lipid clinic
• 2,957 patients seen (and delivered intervention in line with the national lipid management pathway)
• 242 lipid clinics delivered
• 246 staff members trained
• ~£122k cost savings for the system
• Almost 100% primary care colleagues surveyed said they felt more confident in managing patients along the pathway
ICHP’s support of PCN applications in NWL resulted in our local system securing the second-largest amount of support nationally.
As part of the CVD Mission – specifically prevention and treatment optimisation workstreams – NWL is using learnings from this programme to shape what further iteration and scale could look like. This includes sustainable models for holistic, proactive care of lipids and related conditions in primary care.
