Getting involved
New healthcare investment to bring care closer to patients’ homes
A new service launched by Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust will help more people get the care they need closer to home.
In April 2017 the Trust began to introduce new developments to the way care is delivered in the community and is investing over £1m to expand community services. This will double the number of outpatient appointments offered at some community hospitals, provide short term support packages to bridge the gap between home and hospital to over 3000 people and reduce hospital admissions, seeing 350 people through a new community assessment and treatment service (frailty assessment service).
These plans follow a series of sessions we held in April and May 2016 to explore what community hubs could look like and the services they would like to see. The reports from these engagement sessions can be found here.
The new developments include:
The launch of community hubs at Marlow and Thame hospitals
These bring community health services together and are close to the people they serve. They will help patients to access prevention services, primary care services and hospital services (such as outpatient appointments, links with the voluntary sector to provide new services and wound care or diagnostic testing) that they may have previously had to travel to.
Community assessment and treatment service (frailty assessment service)
A key feature of the community hubs is the community assessment and treatment service (frailty assessment service). This service now launched in Thame and Marlow, in addition to those already running at Stoke Mandeville and Wycombe hospitals, will help frail older patients avoid a visit to accident and emergency (A&E) or a hospital admission. Teams of elderly care consultants, nurses, therapists, paramedics and GPs can provide expert assessments, undertake tests and agree a treatment plan with patients. If required they can refer patients to the right community or hospital team to provide ongoing support or treatment. During the community hubs pilot, clinicians will not use the 20 inpatient beds at Marlow and Thame hospitals. Instead the space will be used to run the community assessment and treatment service (frailty assessment service), where more than 350 patients will benefit from this new service.
Locality integrated teams to provide joined up care
Integrated teams, including nurses, therapists and social workers linking with GPs and practice nurses, will provide 24/7 cover to manage those patients identified as needing the greatest health and care support, typically those who have long term conditions. As a result patients will receive better, more co-ordinated care in their homes.
Rapid response intermediate care
Therapists, care staff and community nurses will provide short-term packages of support in people’s own homes of up to six weeks to those who would benefit from a ‘jump start’ back to independence. These packages of care will help avoid a stay in hospital and help patients to leave hospital promptly once they are able to do so.
Community care coordinator
This will provide GPs, hospital clinicians and other health and social care staff with 24/7 phone and email ‘single point of access’ to organise specialist community services for their patients.
For further information on community hubs, you can download:
A public summary
The full project proposal
Frequently asked questions
Equality Impact Assessment: developing community hubs - a Trust report (from April 2018)
A Trust public board report on integrated health and care (from March 2017)
A Trust public board report on Your Community Your Care (from July 2016)
A Trust public board report on developing community hubs (from January 2016)
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