Living With have had a number of bladder and bowel service evaluations; three of them are brought together below with a summary of their findings.

Problem

Although pelvic floor muscle exercises are NICE recommended first-line treatment for women with stress urinary incontinence, and bowel retraining is a key part of specialised management for faecal incontinence, adherence is chronically low. Anecdotal clinical evidence from clinicians suggests that normal patient adherence to pelvic floor exercise programmes is less than 20%.

Furthermore, patients not following their treatment plans when they are out of hospital leads to more expensive treatment, including pads, meds and even surgery. Other impacts include:

Solution

Living With Pelvic Health consists of a digital clinician dashboard and an outpatient app. The dashboard enables clinicians to monitor pelvic floor exercises, bladder and bowel diaries, and ICIQ outcomes on their patient’s Squeezy app—between appointments from the web-based dashboard. It is distributed to patients via a connected version of the Squeezy app (Squeezy Connect), which allows a service provider to make Squeezy available to all of its patients via a free download.

The Squeezy Connect app is designed to reduce patient worry, stress and anxiety, and to improve their understanding of their condition. It is also designed to support active self-management in the period between appointments through content and resources, and to improve motivation to follow the clinician-directed plans to achieve improved outcomes.

Outcomes

Detailed data from 3 NHS Trusts and several hundred patients provides clear evidence of the substantial quality and cost benefits that Living With Pelvic Health provides.

Patient outcomes

Clinic outcomes