Project Name: Primary Care ASCVD Capacity Support Collaborative Working Project
Project Summary:
The main objective of this Collaborative Working Project (CWP) is to improve the quality and equity of care for patients with atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD) who are at high risk of cardiovascular events and are not achieving lipid targets set out in national and/or local guidance. This will be achieved through earlier identification, review and medical optimisation.
Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital NHS Foundation Trust (LHCH), as the CW Partner, will contract Inspira Health as a third-party service provider to deliver targeted improvement work across Brownlow Health Primary Care Network (PCN). The project is intended to address inequities in care and optimise outcomes for secondary prevention lipid patients at high risk of cardiac events.
The CW Partner will develop the delivery protocol for the new pathway, which Inspira Health will implement. All final prescribing decisions will remain at all times with the General Practioner practice and each patient’s named GP. The 3rd party relationship will be managed by the CW Partner, under the oversight of the Consultant Cardiologist.
This project will assess whether the use of a third party with expertise in pathway optimisation can deliver a timely and scalable improvement in the identification, review and optimisation of patients within selected PCNs. The programme has been designed in response to the needs of the CW Partner. Inspira Health has been selected because it operates within the LHCH digital environment, ensuring secure, governance-aligned access to NHS systems, and has demonstrated proven capability to deliver large-scale, consultant-led primary care optimisation services in atrial fibrillation and heart failure across NHS systems.
The CWP will be led by the CW Partner’s Consultant Cardiologist and aims to:
- Identify patients who would benefit from specialist NHS Consultant Cardiologist review
- Review lipid-lowering therapy in line with national and local guidance
- Counsel and educate patients on cardiovascular (CVD) risk and treatment options
- Initiate and optimise lipid-lowering therapy where clinically appropriate
- Embed long-term recall systems for ongoing medicines management
- Reduce low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) levels in line with relevant guidance and improve cardiovascular outcomes
- Provide education to patients and primary care healthcare professionals
The outcomes of this project will serve as an exemplar and may inform future strategy within the ICB.
Expected Benefits:
Anticipated Benefits for Patients
- Improved patient outcomes and experience
- Improvement in waiting times.
- Earlier identification and access to ASCVD diagnosis and treatments.
Anticipated Benefits for CW Partner
- Strengthen workforce capacity and capabilities.
- Improvement in capacity for HCPs in ASCVD services through improved referral processes, treatment pathways, and better-informed patients.
- Identification of sub-optimally treated ASCVD patients who are at high risk of cardiovascular events and who otherwise may have been missed or left untreated.
- Establish a proven, scalable third‑party delivery model enabling rapid protocol implementation with sustained impact across healthcare systems.
- Upskilling of primary care in the treatment of ASCVD patients.
Anticipated Benefits for Novartis
- Better understanding of overall customers’ and patients’ needs within ASCVD.
- Ethical, professional, and transparent relationship between Novartis and the Healthcare Organisations.
- Enhanced reputation supporting Novartis' vision to provide high quality Collaborative Working with healthcare organisations, to help address some of the issues surrounding health inequalities.
- Working with healthcare organisations which addresses the problem of health inequalities.
Start Date & Expected Duration: July 2026 for an estimated 9 months
FA-11737786 | July 2026