Understanding what helps people with hepatitis C successfully reconnect with health services and access treatment

🧪 What was the study about?

We wanted to look at what makes it easier and what makes it harder to deliver healthcare services to people diagnosed with hepatitis C. We wanted to find out what healthcare service providers and people with hepatitis C think about re-engagement with care, which is helping someone with hepatitis C who has stopped attending healthcare services to return. We will look at how we can improve the behaviour of people who use and provide healthcare services.  

❓ Why is this important?

It is important that people diagnosed with hepatitis C receive treatment and are seen by the appropriate healthcare services. To do this, healthcare services need to be able to successfully deliver care and treatment to people diagnosed with hepatitis C.  

🔍 What did we do?

We looked at UKHSA data from a national ‘patient re-engagement exercise’ which helped support people previously diagnosed with hepatitis C return to care and access treatment. The exercise involved working with Operational Delivery Networks (ODNs), which are healthcare services that provide treatment for hepatitis C, to reach out to patients diagnosed with hepatitis C to offer testing and treatment if appropriate. We carried out semi-structured interviews with 21 staff working in ODNs. This was to find out what makes it easier and harder to help with the re-engagement exercise.

📊 Key findings

· Staff working in ODNs found that limited staff resources and time and difficulty sharing data and accessing laboratory systems made it harder to help with the exercise.

· Staff working in ODNs found that knowing that the exercise was helping to reduce the spread of hepatitis C and death from hepatitis C and clear record keeping made it easier to help with the exercise.

· Staff working in ODNs suggested ways of changing the exercise to help contact people diagnosed with hepatitis C to re-engage them with care.  

💡 What do these findings mean?

These findings have shown ways to optimise how re-engagement exercises can be carried out, to improve the quality of the data and to make it easier to contact people diagnosed with hepatitis C to support their return to care. This will be useful for future re-engagement exercises, improving the number of people diagnosed with hepatitis C that are seeing healthcare services and receiving treatment.

Related publication not already linked to project: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/evaluation-of-the-hepatitis-c-patient-re-engagement-exercise