Community Parkinson’s team wins two national patient-safety awards

A community Parkinson’s therapy service working across Middlesbrough and Redcar and Cleveland has won two national patient-safety awards after receiving almost 700 referrals since it began in 2024.

The Parkinson’s Outreach Advanced Community Therapy team, known as PROACT, won Improving Safety for Older People Initiative of the Year and Neighbourhood and Community Health Safety Initiative of the Year at the HSJ Patient Safety Awards. The ceremony took place on 28 September, with University Hospitals Tees reporting the local results on 15 October.

Specialist therapy closer to home

PROACT provides physiotherapy and occupational therapy in people’s homes. Its work is intended to help people manage symptoms, keep their independence and reach specialist support earlier, without every contact depending on a hospital appointment.

The service works with the wider Parkinson’s team and neuro outpatient physiotherapy service. Parkinson’s UK says a monthly referral-triage meeting helps decide who should see each patient, when they should be seen and which setting is most suitable. The charity also reports that, during the team’s first year, waiting times for physiotherapy and occupational therapy fell below four weeks, with the average patient seen in under two weeks.

That early development was supported by pump-priming funding from the Parkinson’s UK Excellence Network. The charity identifies physiotherapist Charlotte Smith and occupational therapist Tuesday Miller as the two members of the PROACT service, with Claire Ward, Debra Gallant and Dr Neil Archibald involved in securing and supporting the posts.

The two awards recognise the same community-led service from different angles: safer care for older people, and neighbourhood health support delivered closer to where people live. The award organisers’ 2026 shortlist confirms that South Tees Hospitals entered PROACT in both categories.

Recognition across three specialist services

PROACT was one of three University Hospitals Tees teams recognised nationally. The home haemodialysis team at The James Cook University Hospital received a high commendation in the Patient Safety Education and Training Award category for its contribution to the DAYLife mentoring programme.

That programme links kidney centres experienced in shared haemodialysis with teams seeking to expand the approach. The UK Kidney Association says five experienced centres mentored five developing centres through training, quality-improvement support and practical knowledge-sharing. Shared haemodialysis allows patients who wish to do so to learn about and take part in aspects of their treatment.

James Cook’s team mentored staff at Russells Hall Hospital in Dudley during a 12-month programme, meeting online each month. University Hospitals Tees says the work helped the Dudley service build patient-centred dialysis practice and give more people an active role in managing their treatment.

A pharmacy team at the University Hospital of North Tees was also shortlisted in the Improving Medicines Safety category. Its TIMELY approach redesigned frontline processes for time-critical medicines when patients are admitted to hospital. Unlike PROACT and DAYLife, the pharmacy project was shortlisted rather than named as a winner or highly commended entry.

What the evidence shows

The awards confirm national recognition, but they are not a full independent evaluation of long-term patient outcomes. The referral total and local descriptions of service impact come from University Hospitals Tees, while Parkinson’s UK provides additional detail about staffing, waiting times and its role in funding the posts.

For local patients, the practical significance is a specialist service designed around care at home and earlier intervention. University Hospitals Tees has not announced a new referral route or expansion alongside the awards, so people seeking support should continue to use their existing Parkinson’s or NHS care contacts.