After an appointment with a specialist or surgery it is often necessary to arrange follow-up outpatient appointments for ongoing care.

Personalised follow-up describes when a patient’s follow-up care is tailored to their individual clinical needs, circumstances and preferences.

This is sometimes called personalised stratified follow-up (as in cancer care).

Adopting a personalised approach makes it easier and more convenient for patients to receive care and support when they need it, whilst avoiding unnecessary trips to hospitals and clinics. This saves patients time, money and stress and means clinicians can spend their time with the patients who most need their support.

Recognised models of personalised follow up include:

• Patient Initiated Follow-Up – when a patient initiates an appointment when they need one, based on their symptoms and individual circumstances.
• Remote monitoring – when the clinical team initiate an appointment based on clinical information obtained through monitoring the patient’s condition. This might be through using wearable technologies, apps, clinical questionnaires or from test results.
• Personalised Timed follow-up – when a patient’s next appointment is agreed during an appointment, with the length of time between appointments based on the individual patient’s needs rather than set intervals.

These models can be used on their own, or in combination depending on the individual needs of the patient.

Further resources

We have developed a range of implementation support materials that are available on our FutureNHS workspace.

For more information on the national and local support on offer to help you implement personalised follow up approaches, please email nhsi.outpatient-transformation@nhs.net.

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