In May 2025, we launched a 16-week pilot in Bury to improve how we plan and manage the care of people with serious mental illness.
We're trialling a new treatment approach called DIALOG+, which aims to assess patient satisfaction with their health, quality of life, treatment and experience and develop a care plan focused on goals and what's important to them.
The pilot includes new patients referred to Bury community mental health teams (adults and older people) Bury early intervention team, Bury living well service, Bury secondary care psychology services and our trustwide community rehabilitation team.
What does DIALOG+ involve?
DIALOG+ involves patients answering 11 questions.
Eight of the questions focus on life domains - e.g. mental and physical health, their job situation, accomodation, leisure, and relationships. Three of the questions focus on their treatment e.g medication, practical help and meetings with clinicians.
For each area, the patient will rate their satisfaction using a scale of one to seven and state whether they'd like more help in this area.
Their responses will create a personalised care plan, which will be discussed by the patient and their key worker during appointments. Together they'll agree a small number of areas to focus on and agree some goals, based on what's most important to the patient.
The questions will be repeated at various points throughout their treatment, allowing the clinician to measure their recovery progress and experience of care.
Key workers are currently using a digitised version of the questionnaire and care plan on Paris (our electronic patient record) which involves manually inputting information.
From September, a new patient engagement portal will be trialled by Bury’s community and outpatient services.
This will allow patients to answer the questions via an app on their smartphone, tablet, or computer, before or during appointments, see their care plan online and track progress and share this information with family or carers, if they choose. Patients will be supported to use the portal if needed.
Key workers will benefit from a simple digital dashboard where they can view patients’ responses, track progress, and easily update their care plan.
Investment in the new portal was possible thanks to £705k funding we received in early 2025 from NHS England.
The wider capabilities of the portal means lots of our services will also use it for appointment reminders, patient letters and other online forms.
If the pilots are successful and funding agreed, we’ll expand DIALOG+ and the patient engagement portal to all Pennine Care’s community services.
Historically our community services have used a clinican-led care programme approach. This involves a key worker planning and overseeing the care of several patients at one time. A review is usually done every six or twelve months.
There are lots of benefits to the care programme approach, but a fresh approach was needed to ensure care is personalised, high quality, more flexible and better meets people’s needs.
This new approach will ensure care is led by the patient and focuses on goals and what’s most important to them.
Benefits include:
- Instead of people's care being led by a clinician, the patient is in charge! Their care plan will be focused on goals and what’s important to them.
- Better consistency when patients are being supported by more than one service or moving to a different service.
- Better quality of care and experience
- More flexibility, as the patient's key worker can easily see how their recovery is progressing and make regular tweaks to better meet their needs.
- Easier access to care and safety plans, via the patient engagement portal.
- People's feedback about their experience and treatment will help us continue to make positive changes
- It’ll help inform our decision making, reduce admin time, help us be more productive, improve how we plan and deliver services and reduce waiting times.
If you’re an existing patient, please speak to your key worker if you have any questions.
Click here for an online version of our DIALOG+ patient information leaflet.
If you'd like a printed copy, please speak to your key worker.