Support for the National Burn Awareness Day on 19th Oct 2016 had a wide base and the range of activities were impressive. The Children’s Burns Trust (CBT) worked with the British Burn Association (BBA) to grow the momentum and reach an even wider audience exploring ways to work collaboratively with support from, amongst others: Child Accident Prevention Trust, Electrical Safety First, the Government’s Fire Kills campaign and the Chief Fire Officers Association. Many other agencies and charities were also involved in using iBID data to spread the message about the importance of burn injury prevention.
The conference of the Chief Fire Officers Association focused on the development of the Fire and Health initiative, presented by Geoff Harris as vice-chair of the Strategic Health Group. This was supported by evidence from an iBID presentation outlining the methodology for the identification of vulnerable subgroups of the population and the means of monitoring burn injuries in the community.
The second BBA National Burn Awareness Day was held on the 21 October 2015, and again the BBA Prevention Committee thanked iBID for providing site specific information to burn services and national overview of burn injury causation.
A more detailed report of the day is available from:
A presentation was made to the British Association of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeons meeting in London concerning the development of a Tele-referral system for burn injuries.
Pilot of an online burns referral system – by: Dr VE Ormston, Mrs C Reade, Mr R Hollingsworth, Mr KW Dunn
Introduction: An online burns referral system has been designed and produced on behalf of NHS England and the burn care Clinical Reference Group. It is being co-developed and piloted in Greater Manchester with the intention of being rolled out nationally. Referrals are submitted online by the referrer using an NHS Net web link the only requirement being the need to submit an NHS e-mail address. Clinical photographs and x-ray images can be attached to the electronic referral.
Material and Methods: The online burns referral system was developed with the software consultancy MDSAS (Medical Data Solutions and Services). It is being piloted within the Greater Manchester region to replace the current system of faxed referrals.
Key results: The benefits of the new referral system include: no requirement for pre-registration of the referrer, it avoids losing faxed referrals thus improving patient safety, confidentiality and security of information. There is improved referral information provided which is clear and typed and imaging sent with the referral will facilitate decision making particularly the need to transfer out of area. Login to the system can occur from any NHS computer and an auditable trail of the referral process is retained.
Conclusion: An online system for the referral of burns patients is being piloted. The system allows electronic referrals with clinical images to be sent by the referrer, without requiring registration of the referrer. The technique is applicable to other specialties where the review of imaging would be of benefit during the referral process.
It was opportune to present iBID data concerning the flame injury problem to the National Fire Sprinklers Network in Derbyshire on the same day as the National Burn Awareness Day 2015. Fruitful discussions were had concerning the utility of burn injury information to support the argument for a widespread use of water sprinklers in domestic residences.
The Fire and Rescue Statistics Users Group asked for a presentation of iBID data to better understand the possibility and utility of combined analysis in order to better understand the burn injury problem beyond the usual statistics produced by the Fires and Rescue Services via the Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG).
The first British Burn Association National Burn Awareness Day (NBAD) was held utilising data about each burn services’ activity from iBID provided in a series of reports. Details of the activities are available here:
An invitation to present to the All – Party Parliamentary Fire Safety & Rescue Group resulted in a productive meeting at Westminster with a presentation of epidemiological data from iBID and details of the planned BBA National Burn Awareness Day.
It was concluded that the APPFSRG would ‘continue to work closely with iBID and the BBA on this matter, with the Fire Sector Federation, the Chief Fire Officers’ Association and the Childrens’ Burns Trust, to ensure that Government takes account of the alarming statistics, which have been assembled, and which you continue to gather.’
Keynote lecture: Costs of burns and plastic surgery: The UK experience
Abstract: The growing cost of healthcare is of concern to every society globally. Its importance has been brought into stark relief by the economic crisis seen in many parts of the world and Europe in particular. A great many pieces of work have looked at healthcare costs and claimed to represent the cost of therapeutic interventions but a review of the global literature on this subject has revealed systematic errors of methodology in the majority. A common feature in the literature is confusion between charges made by a hospital and the true cost of the care provided if calculated by other methodologies.
A long-term programme of work in England has been focused particularly on burns and plastic surgery in an attempt to establish the true cost of care provided on a patient by patient basis. The findings of this work have indicated that some of the conclusions commonly held are indeed correct: Staff time and input to a particular patient is the single largest cost driver to the cost of the care that patient receives by that a surprisingly small contribution to the overall cost is made by disposables, be they implants, injectables, dressing materials etc.
By understanding the details behind departmental income and by breaking down burns and plastic surgery workloads into different clinical silos it is possible to identify those areas of work which are profitable to a department and a hospital while identifying some surprisingly important areas of work make a loss but may be acting as effective loss leaders. It can be concluded that clinician perceptions of cost are frequently inaccurate.
It is hoped this work will form the basis of a more rational and accurate understanding of the costs of surgical care in burn and plastic surgery and might hopefully lead in certain health economies to a more rational and accurate approach to surgical care remuneration and even service organisation and capacity.
This conference aimed to help make it clear about ‘what matters’ in preventing serious burns and scalds among young children. The epidemiological data came from iBID which included the main causes of such injuries, their impact and who are most at risk. Other presentations focused on up-to-date methodology of ‘what works’ – the most effective ways to reduce deaths and serious injuries caused by burns and scalds. The intention was for workers in prevention to pick up ideas and strategies.