A CHP building in Derbyshire is helping to reduce hundreds of hospital and GP visits for housebound, disabled and frail patients by providing multi-disciplinary services in a local neighbourhood setting. Hosted at Long Eaton Health Centre, the ‘Team Up’ initiative uses a collaborative approach to deliver services including GPs, Paramedics and Advanced Community Practitioners.
Long Eaton Health Centre hosts two General Practices, x-ray and ultrasound, podiatry, dental, physiotherapy, lymphoedema and community teams alongside a variety of other services. CHP works with partners from Derbyshire Community Health Services NHS Foundation Trust, University Hospitals of Derby and Burton NHS Foundation Trust, NHS Derby and Erewash Primary Care Network (PCN).
As part of the government’s strategic left shift agenda, the focus is on providing services with a focus on prevention, diagnostics and treatment in the community, moving healthcare activities out of hospital. CHP’s estate is flexible and enables healthcare to be delivered in neighbourhoods with high health need. The clinical team at Long Eaton work alongside colleagues from Ilkeston to support housebound patients through phone calls, visits to care homes and providing proactive support to nearly 2000 people.
This level of care has up to now often required a GP appointment and, after assessment, a trip to hospital. By delivering early intervention in this way, the team have managed to reduce pressure on the NHS. The services based within Long Eaton Health Centre have saved 1000 hospital attendances and 700 admissions as well as 3500 hours of GP time saved per month.
The provision of end-of-life palliative care alongside low-risk ambulance calls, including falls, grazes, minor injuries and illnesses and infections, enables patients to be comfortable at home where they would usually choose to attend a healthcare facility.
The East Midlands Ambulance Services (EMAS) colleagues who operate from the building are often the first to attend a patient who may need help at home rather than requiring an ambulance. Paramedics aim to be with patients within 30 minutes, with a 2 hour target, a distinct improvement on a possible 8-hour wait for an emergency ambulance.
In a lot of cases, EMAS can transfer cases to their Team Up colleagues where a call out is a lower risk incident, allowing them to deal with other more urgent or life-threatening calls. GPs in the area also have a high caseload of care home visits; the Team’s activities mean fewer of these visits for them as well as creating up-to-date information and earlier warning signs for infections and illnesses.
More recently, CHP, through their corporate responsibility fund, have replaced waiting room seating where previous seating was uncomfortable. Another example of how CHP are able to adapt their buildings to create comfortable, state-of-the-art spaces for patients.
Long Eaton is an example of a CHP building that is already helping to deliver neighbourhood health services. Creating a space for the Team Up teams to work from is another example of how our buildings are not just designed for healthcare, they are hubs within the heart of their community. We will continue to work with partners and promote the LIFT portfolio in the Midlands region to get the right services in the right place, closer to home, for those who need it most.
People aren’t bothered about who it is giving them care. They just want you to meet their needs. Patients are in hospital when it is not the right place for them…we remove the need for an ambulance and a trip to A and E.
Patients and their families find NHS services difficult to navigate and the team can assist in doing much of this work for them by sharing information between different bodies and raising issues where necessary.
The team helps provide care to the right people, in the right place, at the right time. It also helps massively reduce inappropriate healthcare admissions.
Non-CHP quotes sourced from Derbyshire Live article.
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