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HVV Policy

Monday 7th August 2017

​Later this year, Heart Valve voice will be hosting a South Coast Summit in Southhampton. The summit will ultimately work to establish examples of best practise as well as successful and innovative patient pathways for the diagnosis, treatment and management of heart valve disease.

Later this year, Heart Valve voice will be hosting a South Coast Summit in Southhampton. The South Coast Summit will be a meeting chaired by Counsellor David Shields, City Council’s Cabinet Member for Health and Social Care and Chair of the Southampton City Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) Health and Wellbeing Board, involving clinicians, heart valve experts, patients and political figures brought together for a discussion that will provide a more detailed picture of the challenges and blockages heart valve disease patients experience in the UK. The summit will ultimately work to establish examples of best practise as well as successful and innovative patient pathways for the diagnosis, treatment and management of heart valve disease.

Southhampton has been chosen as the ideal location for our first summit as it is home to our key patient demographic meaning a higher than average age range of residents. In addition, they run a number of excellent cardiothoracic services and TAVI centres. We will be working closely with clinicians from Southhampton General Hospital including Heart Valve Voice supporters Dr Benoy Shah, Consultant Cardiologist and Christina Bannister, Nurse and Case Manager for Cardiac Surgery.

“Southampton is the ideal location to hold our first ever summit.” said Heart Valve Voice CEO Wil Woan, “Because of the concentration of people over the average age range in the area and the number of large centres specialising in cardiac care it is the perfect place to discuss and explore the complex referral processes that heart valve patients face.”

The summit will also be an opportunity to involve local MPs and councillors to provide them with a better understanding of the difficulties faced by many in their constituencies and the importance of raising awareness amongst the local populations. In addition to policy makers, patients will be given a platform to express their thoughts and concerns and will be a sounding board throughout the process.

“It’s really important to have a thorough understanding of what the heart valve patient is dealing with in the UK, particularly in areas like the South Coast where the population has a higher-than-average age range", said Dr Shah, “I think it’s very important that Heart Valve Voice is organising this event to identify best practices in the area. We are very happy to be hosting the meeting and working in partnership with other clinicians, healthcare professionals and patients to improve further the diagnosis and treatment of valvular heart disease.”

The objectives for the summit will be to explore the different pathways for valve disease patients in order to help establish the best quality options for care. The summit teams will discuss why some patients aren’t receiving the diagnosis they need in time, aren’t accessing the services they need and aren’t having the required treatment they need in order to regain their quality of life back. While investigating this, the teams will also work to provide examples of the best practice of care and discuss innovative and high quality options for treatment.

Heart Valve Voice is excited to be hosting such a ground breaking event and are determined to host more events like this in the future all with the end goal of improving and advancing the quality of life of our patients. Watch this space for more details.