South Yorkshire NHS teams take top prize at 2024 HSJ Awards

NHS South Yorkshire ICB Medicines Management Team and The Rotherham NHS Foundation Trust, Nutrition and Dietetics Team were winners in the Place-based Partnership and Integrated Care Award category for their Care Homes Hydration Project.  

The Rotherham Care Homes Hydration Project was launched in 2022 to address rising rates of urinary tract infections (UTIs) and antibiotic use in local care homes, after it was discovered that care home residents were 10 times more likely to be dehydrated than residents from their own homes, showing the need for training and support.

For older people living in care homes, staying hydrated can help reduce UTIs which can sometimes lead to more serious complications requiring unnecessary antibiotics or an avoidable hospital admission.  

By providing education and training to care home staff on hydration interventions, the project successfully improved the hydration in older people, which decreased the number of UTIs, decreased the unnecessary use of antibiotics and even reduced the number of times ambulances were called.

Over 1000 care home staff received face to face training as part of the project which is now expanding across South Yorkshire.

“We are so proud of our teams who have worked together to achieve such amazing results. It’s incredibly rewarding to see the direct impact the hydration project has had on the health and wellbeing of care home residents in Rotherham,” said Cindy Storer, Deputy Chief Nurse at The Rotherham NHS Foundation Trust. “We are excited for the continued impact the programme will have across South Yorkshire and beyond.”

Chris Edwards, Executive Place Director for Rotherham and Deputy Chief Officer at NHS South Yorkshire said: “We’re delighted to be recognised as winners along with Rotherham NHS Foundation Trust at this year’s HSJ Awards. The initiative to improve hydration amongst South Yorkshire’s Care Home residents has had a huge impact locally and is a testament to the strength of our partnership working here in South Yorkshire.  

“Winning a HSJ award is a fantastic achievement and we’re incredibly proud of our colleagues at NHS South Yorkshire and The Rotherham NHS Foundation Trust. It’s a wonderful opportunity for our teams to be recognised for some of the great work they have been doing over the past year. What makes this project more special for us is that we are now taking the success in Rotherham and rolling it out across the rest of South Yorkshire, which is great news as we head into the busy winter period.  

“We’re also grateful for the platform to share our innovation with NHS colleagues from across the country, an initiative I hope inspires many other NHS teams to implement nationally.”

Primary Care Sheffield also picked up the Highly Commended honour in the Digitising Patient Care Award for their work towards maximising access in primary care using scalability and digital triage.

Dr Andy Hilton, Sheffield GP and Chief Executive Officer Primary Care Sheffield said: "We're delighted to be highly commended by HSJ in digitising patient care for our work in maximising access in primary care using digital triage and our scale. It demonstrates how innovation can improve patient care"

“Implementing a digital triage system across our 9 practices has seen our waiting times for patients go from well below to well above the national average. We’ve managed to do this without disadvantaging those who are not digitally literate. I’d like to thank the whole team, from receptionist through to triaging clinicians for their hard work."

There were 24 award categories in this year, covering mental health, partnership work, innovation, safety and efficiency amongst others. The nominees from South Yorkshire were:

• Digitising Patient Care Award - Primary Care Sheffield - Maximising access in primary care using scalability and digital triage.
• Mental Health Innovation of the Year - South West Yorkshire Partnership Foundation Trust - Perinatal peer support workers.
• Place-based Partnership and Integrated Care Award - NHS South Yorkshire Medicines Management Team - The Rotherham Care Homes Hydration Project
• Towards Net Zero Award - Sheffield Children’s Foundation Trust - Sheffield Children's Nitrous Reduction Programme
• Workforce Initiative of the Year – NHS South Yorkshire - Centralised recruitment for newly qualified midwives

View a full list of winners from the 2024 HSJ awards.

Press release issued in conjunction with NHS South Yorkshire Integrated Care Board.