The idea: How it came about : SEQOL ( a not for profit Social Enterprise www.seqol.org) provide a multi-disciplinary community team within the local acute hospital in Swindon to ensure the safe discharge of Swindon patients with complex needs. However, Jill (Senior OT in the team) realised that with growing demand on the hospital from other geographical areas, the wards were confused about what services were available for discharge in which area. This was leading to delays in discharge and a rise in out of area delayed transfers of care.The challenge: Who’s it for? Why would they be interested? This service contributes to faster patient flow – reducing length of stay and reducing excess bed day payment. Faster discharge reduces the risk of patients being discharged with care packages or early admission to residential care.
The goal: What are they each trying to achieve: Jill and the team aimed to simplify the discharge process for the wards so they didn’t need to think about where patients lived, they just followed one pathway.
The solution: What will make this difference for them: Jill worked with the hospital patient flow team and developed a discharge assessment and referral team that front ended discharge processes (from the point of admission), streaming patients to the right service. The team consists of Occupational Therapists, Physios, Social Workers and Nurses.
The difference: What we’ve achieved: Following a successful pilot, Jill developed a business case and secured funding to roll the service across ten wards within the hospital. Within the first three months, the service had reduced length of stay across the wards by an average of 2.5 days, trained and supported ward staff to describe needs rather than prescribe services and reduced the number of referrals to request Local Authority funded services by 50%.