Professionals show world town's finger is on the NHS medical pulse

OLDHAM hosted health professionals from Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand to learn how local NHS services are delivered

OLDHAM hosted health professionals from Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand as they visited the town for a prestigious visit to learn how local NHS services are delivered.

Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust, in partnership with Oldham Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) and local GPs, hosted the international delegates who were visiting the borough as part of a "three countries study tour", organised by the International Foundation for Integrated Care and supported by the NHS North West Leadership Academy.

The delegates visited a variety of health services and were shown examples of how Oldham teams are working together to improve care for patients.

This included a visit to the Oldham Urgent Care Alliance, which is made up of a number of local organisations that work together to improve urgent care services outside of hospital, helping to care for people closer to home and reduce pressure on the busy A&E department.

Caroline Drysdale, Chair of the Oldham Urgent Care Alliance and Oldham Community Services Director at Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust, said: "It was great to be invited to host such a prestigious event in Oldham along with our CCG and primary care colleagues.

"It was a chance to reflect on how far we've come in improving Oldham services by working together across the different local health and care organisations.

"We hope our international visitors found the visit useful and were able to take some learnings away to implement in their areas."

The international visitors also met with Oldham's first integrated 'cluster' team,which is made up of community health services, primary care, social care and voluntary community services working together alongside GPs to help patients have all their needs met by different services in a seamless way.

Deborah Davis, Managing Director of NHS North West Leadership Academy, said: "Having been involved with the International Foundation of Integrated Care for the last number of years and taking our North West participants to visit examples in other parts of the world; it was wonderful to be asked to host the England part of the International tour and be able to showcase the fantastic work happening with our colleagues in Oldham and other parts of the North West.

"It just shows you - sometimes great stuff is happening just around the corner!"