At East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust, the Future Hospital development site team are delivering improved, personal and effective care for frail older patients closer to home, where safe and appropriate.
Care closer to home
The East Lancashire team are improving services for frail, elderly patient by supporting their care closer to home. The team are particularly focused on improving care for older people in the last 12 months of life and measuring and learning from the experiences of frail older patients.
This is being achieved in collaboration with:
- a ‘front door’ team
- integrated neighbourhood teams
- intensive home support service
- a dedicated discharge service.
The East Lancashire Team discuss their FHP activities in March 2016.
Successes
- Reduced hospital admissions: between January and July 2016 the front door team assessed over 2,556 patients and of those 894 admissions to hospital were avoided. The integrated neighbourhood team service, provided by a multiprofessional team, is also reducing the number of patients who attend hospital.
- Patient satisfaction: patients and their families have given positive feedback.
Patient experience is valued as much as clinical effectiveness
Challenges
- Rota gaps: Workforce limitations have put significant strains on the team. This has made developing certain aspects of the project difficult to achieve.
- Effective communication: The team has the complexity of working across two clinical commissioning groups and two local authorities with different community teams which can make communication challenging.