TRANSFORMATION IN ACTION: The Urgent Community Response Team
Where: Mid and North Hampshire
Who: Abbie Barkham, Consultant Nurse for frailty (Mid Hants)
Naomi Purdie, Consultant Nurse for frailty (North Hants)
What is the project?
Urgent Community Response is admission avoidance service, based on a pilot of the frailty admissions avoidance service model tried a number of years ago with the primary aim to keep patients in their own home and avoiding admission to hospital.
With Hampshire’s ageing population we need to keep people out of the emergency department – we know that patients with frailty are at higher risks of being admitted but also having more adverse outcomes if they are admitted. Working with hospital colleagues and community colleagues they know that some patients need not be admitted and could be treated at home with the right clinical support.
This service is aimed at identifying and treating those patients at home, and supporting their recovery before they get to the stage where they need to be admitted.
In order to deliver this service, we will work as a joined up service alongside adult social care, under Intermediate Integrated Care and give patients a seamless journey through the care system – providing advanced clinical support and therapy experts services at home, but also adult social care support so that the patient is seen by the right person at the right time and by the right service. Patients have their acute illnesses treated at home by the right clinician that would otherwise have been treated in hospital.
The frailty car is the latest development in the Trust’s urgent community response team service. Responding to 999 category 3 and 4 calls, a paramedic from South Coast Ambulance Service (SCAS) and frailty specialist from Southern Health are dispatched in a fully equipped car to assess, diagnose and treat patients in their own homes.
Set up during the pandemic to treat those vulnerable patients who were falling at home, and were being instructed to shield due to their risk of catching covid, this service has seen over 600 people between Nov 2020 and October 2021 and in over 85% of its cases, avoided the need to be admitted to hospital. Where a patient has had to go to hospital via this route, the effective partnership working between acute, ambulance and community services has ensured this is as seamless as possible.
Hear from Naomi Purdie, consultant nurse specialising in frailty, who has been instrumental in setting this service up.
Listen to our latest podcast with Naomi Purdie on the frailty car service in Hampshire
Listen to Abbie Barkham and Naomi Purdie discuss the urgent community response team project on our podcast