Forget Mulberry on your Christmas Wish List - isn't this exactly what we would wish for every Care Home resident?
Sutton Clinical Commissioning Group is now leading the way nationally on improving care in residential and nursing homes as a newly-appointed Vanguard site (part of the NHS England New Care Models programme). They will receive extra support that will enable them to deliver a number of new nitiatives, including:
- Developing a “ward round” in care homes that is similar to those on hospital wards
- Creating a care model that is holistic - meaning multi-disciplinary teams of medical, nursing, social care and voluntary sector professionals working together to meet the care needs of each individual resident
- Establishing new local standards for care which will encourage improvement
- Strengthening our monitoring of quality and safety across Sutton’s care homes, alongside more rapid responses to signs that care delivery may be falling below our new standards
- Raising the skills and expertise of care home staff and managers so they can deliver care that is genuinely centred on each individual resident as part of multi-disciplinary teams
- Developing new technology to support professionals in separate organisations to work more effectively together as a single team for the benefit of residents
The Sutton “Homes of Care” Vanguard is a great example of how joined up working is delivering higher quality and more patient focused care for our most vulnerable patients.
The Sutton Vanguard has as started to formally host “Joint Intelligence Group” meetings whereby partners from across health and social care meet in a monthly forum to discuss data trends and possible interventions for care home residents. Through this forum an initiative called the “Red Bag” scheme has been rolled out. It follows the same principle of expectant mothers who have an “overnight” bag ready to accompany them should they need to be taken to hospital for birthing. The “red bag” has a sleeve that contains a simple checklist to ensure that all considerations for the patient’s care have been made prior to transport between health or care organisations. This list includes an older persons assessment form, an escalation record and a “this is ME leaflet” (containing personal information about the patient). The healthcare professional is then guided to “pack” the bag with a change of clothing for the resident, toiletries, personal aids (glasses, hearing aids and dentures) and their medicines.Healthcare professionals from across the local ambulance service, care homes, social care, the local hospital and GPs buy-into the scheme and ensure that whenever an ambulance is called to transport a patient to another care provider a red bag accompanies the patient and the assessment process is completed. The scheme has been rolled out since October and Sutton CCG are reporting improvements in a reduction in ambulance conveyances to hospital when comparing data from the same period last year.
You can find out more here http://www.suttonccg.nhs.uk/vanguard/Pages/default.aspx