The optimal sleep pathway provides an end-to-end pathway for patients with sleep disorders that is informed by best practice and clinical experience. It is designed to support sleep services in designing and developing their services to meet current and future demands, and to enable improvements in the quality of services for patients with sleep disorders.
Changes to the pathway have the potential to improve patient experience and access to care, reduce outpatient attendances and health inequalities, and to meet NHSE targets.
It aligns with objectives highlighted in the NHS Long Term Plan and the National Outpatient Recovery and Transformation Programme targets, to make sleep services more efficient and raise the profile of sleep medicine.
NHS Long Term Plan:
- Remove the need for up to a third of hospital outpatient attendances a year by 2023/24
National Outpatient Recovery and Transformation Programme targets:
- 25% reduction in follow up appointments
- expansion of PIFU to 5% of all outpatient attendances by March 2023
- increase SA requests to minimum of 16 per 100 first outpatient appointments
- increase virtual outpatient appointment delivery to minimum of 25%