28 Jan, 2026

Sheffield Health Partnership reports zero Out of Area beds

All Trusts recognise that placing service users Out of Area represents poor care quality because it dislocates the patient from their local care network.  It is also high cost, Sheffield Health Partnership (SHPU) was spending many millions on placements classed inappropriate because it could not find space within its own wards.  Money that cannot then be spent supporting others in need of care.

We are really pleased to share that SHPU has brought down its OOA bed overspill to zero partnering with VOT.  Acute OOA bed usage was averaging over 30beds a year ago.   The Trust has been a top-3 OOA inappropriate placement user during 2025, so this represents an enormous improvement in the design and management of its Acute pathway, without compromising patient safety.

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Case study coming soon

10 Dec, 2025

VOT Health facilitate Learning Disabilities service improvement for Sheffield Health Partnership

The Trust sought a partner to work with its Specialist Community Learning Disabilities Service to facilitate service design clarity and improved efficacy and efficiency.   The service needed to complete its evolution, following co-location of teams and the historic closure of the LD inpatient service. 

VOT led an all-staff workshop, which followed a period of weeks engaging staff, observing process, and facilitating a comprehensive bottom-up exercise to capture how staff spent their time.  This revealed a huge opportunity to release time to care, and a consensus to do so.  Staff voted on the high impact ways of working that they would take forward.

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Task and finish groups have been established to take forward the changes at pace, drawing in essential support from corporate functions, such as ICT.

A key focus is reducing time spent on administration, which far exceeded direct care time.   The group explored different drivers, some of which are entirely within their hands, such as the need to rationalise meetings. 

Ensuring everyone across the service’s different professional groups established a shared electronic record of service user support status and pathway progression – and thus move away from local and often duplicate record keeping – was voted the #1 high impact change.

21 Jul, 2025

How improved patient flow has meant no out-of-area placements for two years

CNWL’s COO, Graeme Caul, describes how it achieved long standing OOA placement cessation to HSJ.

Central and North West London utilised our market leading mental health visibility support. As Graeme describes “there is no shortcut to improving acute mental health care. But there is a formula: understand your demand, know your patients, and bring clinical and operational leaders together to act with purpose – every day of the year.” “We began by really understanding our data”

VOT staff developed the pathway visibility local decision makers needed at CNWL to “hold a weekly whole-system event that brings together clinical and operational leaders from across the trust to review data, examine trends, identify delays, and agree on the actions needed to keep the system moving. It’s a model that combines real-time responsiveness with strategic, cross-system insight.”

Read more via the HSJ article link https://www.hsj.co.uk/quality-and-performance/how-improved-patient-flow-meant-no-out-of-area-placements-for-two-years/7039421.article

23 May, 2025

VOT Health facilitate a Home Treatment away day for Sheffield Health & Social Care NHS FT

The Trust is committed to thinking and acting ‘Home First’, VOT Health is providing the visibility and additional change support to improve its Acute pathway.    Bringing ‘Home First’ to fruition will mean service users receiving care closer to home without the need for out of area placements.

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The VOT team have really enjoyed working with Home Treatment staff and others to determine collectively high impact ways of working changes that form one element of ‘Home First’ pathway improvement.

SHSC’s medical director, Helen Crimlisk, joined the day and was really impressed with the data-led approach and close ‘one team’ working on display between front line staff, clinical leads, PMO and VOT Health.

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/helen-crimlisk-HT away day

22 Nov, 2024

VOT Health partners with the HSJ Provider Collaborative of the Year

The VOT Health team began partnering the North West London CAMHS provider collaborative during the pandemic as its insight partner to leveraged data-driven insights to significantly improve patient outcomes and service efficacy.

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Children and young people in North West London are now much less likely to be admitted to a mental health ward – instead most are now cared for outside of hospital – with only 5% of children presenting to CAMHS in crisis going on to be admitted to Tier 4 inpatient care.

Key achievements of the partnership include:

  • A 40% admissions reduction on pre-pandemic levels, with ongoing admission-trend reduction.
  • A 31% length of stay improvement in general adolescent wards despite reduced admission numbers, meaning only the most acutely unwell young people will be on a ward.
  • An 18% reduction in crises requiring CAMHS intervention – the increase in presentations seen during the pandemic has been reversed, with the most recent yearly numbers now below pre-pandemic levels.

Mental health issues among children and adolescents have been a growing concern, with many young people facing prolonged inpatient stays and limited access to appropriate community-based care

Richard Lyle, Head of Commissioning & Contracting West London NHS Trust/the NWL CAMHS Provider Collaborative, stated, “By consolidating the collaborative’s scattered data and presenting it in a unique and user-friendly fashion, we now have the tools at our fingertips needed to work with clinicians and system partners to put resources where they will have the biggest impact improve our young people’s experience of care and deliver bold but evidence based change.”

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