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Showing results for tags 'Community care'.
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News Article
‘Low priority’ community cases to be deferred as staff redeployed
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
NHS England has told local systems to defer ‘low priority’ cases across 11 community services, because of the pressures created by the omicron wave. NHSE has issued guidance for the prioritisation of the community health workforce “given the increasing pressures on the health system due to the omicron wave of COVID-19 this winter and the need to provide booster jabs as quickly as possible”. It is hoped the guidance will encourage the redeployment of community staff to help reduce the strain on acute services. Staff working in musculoskeletal services are being asked to deprioritise some low priority rehabilitation work, with patients enabled to self-manage at home. It adds: “Where possible, provide capacity to support other community resources focused on rehabilitation and recovery for those discharged from acute care and those whose functioning is deteriorating at home, and/or the administration of vaccines.” A host of other services have been advised to continue, but with “prioritised” waiting lists and a deferral of provision considered for “low priority cases” to “free up workforce capacity”, including children’s therapy interventions, children’s community paediatric services and audiology services for older adults. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 11 January 2022 -
News Article
NHS pressures having ‘devastating’ impact on dying patients
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Patients are dying in hospital without their families because of pressure on NHS services, hospices have told The Independent. A major care provider has warned that it has seen a “huge shift” in the number of patients referred too late to its services. The warning comes as NHS England begins a new £32m contract with hospices to help hospitals discharge as many patients as possible this winter. NHS chief executive Amanda Pritchard said the health service was preparing for an Omicron-driven Covid wave that could be as disruptive as, or even worse than, last winter’s crisis. Hospices are already dealing with a “huge volume of death and patients needing support”, according to the head of policy at Hospice UK, Dominic Carter. He told The Independent that hospices had seen a huge shift in the number of patients referred to their services too late, when they are in a “very serious” state of health. He added: “We don’t really know what kind of support is actually out there for those people, while hospitals have difficulties and deal with challenges around backlogs and Covid. There are lots of people that have been in the community, where hospices are trying to reach them but aren’t always able to identify who needs that care and support. “They’re really important, those five or six final days, for the individual and their families. Yet this is spent in crisis rather than being helped as much as possible in a comfortable environment by the hospice ... [instead] an ambulance is called, and they’re having to be cast into hospital.” Read full story Source: The Independent, 26 December 2021 -
News Article
How hiring district nurses may reduce pressure in the NHS
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Is hiring more district nurses the smartest way to tackle the NHS care crisis as overstretched staff claim they are quitting hospitals due to intolerable pressure? District nurses are the unsung backbone of the NHS – going in to people’s homes to perform everything from wound dressings to support at the end of life. Yet what was once a thriving district nurse workforce has, over the past decade, been decimated. An ever-increasing caseload, limited resources and far more complex and challenging health needs have left them burnt out and fed up. As a result, they’re leaving in droves – at a time when we need them more than ever. The number of people dying at home is up by one third since before the pandemic, and those who do make it into hospital for care are discharged faster than ever to free up beds, long before they’ve made a full recovery. Ministers have tabled some ambitious ideas to address the vital need for at-home care, including a wave of new community health hubs, or more video appointments. But none are a quick fix, nor are they proven to solve the problem. Recruiting more district nurses could help alleviate these pressures, say experts, as well as tackling what threatens to be a spiralling crisis in community care. But this might be harder than it sounds. Read full story Source: Mail Online, 13 November 2021 -
News ArticleDying patients are going without care in their own homes because of a collapse in community nursing services, new data shared with The Independent reveals. Across England a third of district nurses say they are now being forced to delay visits to end of life care patients because of surging demand and a lack of staff. This is up from just 2% in 2015. The situation means some patients may have to wait for essential care and pain medication to keep them comfortable. Other care being delayed includes patients with pressure ulcers, wounds which need treating and patients needing blocked catheters replaced. More than half of district nurses said they no longer have the capacity to do patient assessments and psychological care, in an investigation into the service. Professor Alison Leary, director of the International Community Nursing Observatory, said her study showed the country was “sleepwalking into a disaster,” with patients at real risk of harm. She said the situation was now so bad that nurses were being driven out of their jobs by what she called the “moral distress” they were suffering at not being able to provide the care they knew they should. “People are at the end of their tether. District nurses are reporting having to defer work much more often than they did two years ago. What they are telling us is that the workload is too high. This is care that people don’t have time to do.” Read full story Source: The Independent, 29 November 2021
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News ArticleOne hundred people with learning disabilities and autism in England have been held in specialist hospitals for at least 20 years, the BBC has learned. The finding was made during an investigation into the case of an autistic man detained since 2001. Tony Hickmott's parents are fighting to get him housed in the community near them. Mr Hickmott's case is being heard at the Court of Protection - which makes decisions on financial or welfare matters for people who "lack mental capacity". Senior Judge Carolyn Hilder has described "egregious" delays and "glacial" progress in finding him the right care package which would enable him to live in the community. He lives in a secure Assessment and Treatment Unit (ATU) - designed to be a short-term safe space used in a crisis. It is a two-hours' drive from his family. This week, Judge Hilder lifted the anonymity order on Mr Hickmott's case - ruling it was in the public interest to let details be reported. She said he had been "detained for so long" partly down to a "lack of resources". Like many young autistic people with a learning disability, Mr Hickmott struggled as he grew into an adult. In 2001, he was sectioned under the Mental Health Act. He is now 44. In addition to the 100 patients, including Mr Hickmott, who have been held for more than 20 years - there are currently nearly 2,000 other people with learning difficulties and/or autism detained in specialist hospitals across England. In 2015, the Government promised "homes not hospitals" when it launched its Transforming Care programme in the wake of the abuse and neglect scandal uncovered by the BBC at Winterbourne View specialist hospital near Bristol. But data shows the programme has had minimal impact. Read full story Source: BBC News, 24 November 2021
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EventuntilThis King's Fund event brings together health and care professionals, community organisations and others to explore the role of communities in health and wellbeing. While the Covid-19 pandemic created significant pressure for existing health and care services, it also provided a springboard for organisations to work more closely with communities to deliver innovative new programmes and projects that had an impact on health and wellbeing outcomes. Topics: How can communities best connect with health and care services – and vice versa – to have an impact on outcomes? How can communities build on existing assets to improve health and wellbeing for local people? Successful approaches to involving communities in the co-creation and co-design of services and activities. Improving the health, wellbeing and social welfare of communities through social prescribing and community referral. Using asset-based community development models to create real change and impact. Register
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EventuntilAnchor institutions are large organisations, connected to their local area, that can use their assets and resources to benefit the communities around them. Health and care organisations, as well as providing healthcare services, are well-placed to use their influence and resources to improve the social determinants of health, health outcomes and reduce health inequalities. This King's Fund event will explore what anchor institutions are, what they look like in practice and how we can embed some of those ways of working within health and care. We will look at how health and care organisations, working in partnership with other local anchor institutions, are leveraging their role as large employers and purchasers of goods and services and playing an active role in protecting the health, wellbeing and economic resilience of their local communities. Register
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EventuntilRegister
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Content ArticleThis open letter from the Pharmacists' Defence Association (PDA) raises concerns about unnecessary full or part-day closures of community pharmacies throughout the UK by some large multiple pharmacy operators. The letter states that these operators are telling patients and the government that they have been unable to find pharmacists, citing an alleged national pharmacist shortage. However, the PDA's members report that this is not the case, and the letter draws attention to closures being planned four weeks in advance, and to locum pharmacists having agreed rates of pay reduced at the last minute. The PDA highlights the risk to patient safety caused by these closures, and calls for more regulatory action to be taken by the government and other regulators. The letter is addressed to: Government Health Secretaries of England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales Chief Executives of the National Health Service in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales NHS Chief Pharmaceutical Officers for England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales Chief Executive of General Pharmaceutical Council and Pharmaceutical Society of Northern Ireland.
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Content ArticleIn this briefing paper for the Social Market Foundation, Lord Norman Warner sets out a radical change programme that could reverse the decline in NHS services. It examines long-term issues that have been exacerbated by the impact of Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic—the care backlog, workforce issues and loss of public confidence.
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Content ArticleThe government has published a draft Mental Health Bill for pre-legislative scrutiny. The bill aims to modernise the Mental Health Act for the 21st century.
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Content ArticleThis survey conducted by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) explored the experiences of people who used community mental health services between September and November 2020. The results show that people are consistently reporting poor experiences of NHS community mental health services, with few positive results. Many people reported that their mental health had deteriorated as a result of changes made to their care and treatment due to the pandemic. Analysis also showed disparities in the experiences of people with different mental health diagnoses, and in the experience of people using different methods to access care, such as telephone consultations. On this webpage you can also access a benchmark report for each NHS trust, which provides detail of the survey methodology, headline results, the trust score for each evaluative question and banding for how a trust score compares with all other trusts.
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Content ArticleThis long read by The King's Fund aims to explain the reforms brought about by The Health and Care Act 2022, and what these changes will mean in practice. it gives short and long answers to the following questions: What are the main changes brought about by the Act? Is this an unnecessary top-down reorganisation? Will the Act lead to greater involvement of the private sector? Does the Act give ministers more power over the day-to-day running of the NHS? Will the Act make any difference to patients? Does the Act tackle the big challenges the health and care system currently faces?
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Content ArticlePeople with living dementia or mild cognitive impairment and their family carers face challenges in managing medicines. This review, published in Age and Ageing, identifies interventions to improve medicine self-management for people with dementia and mild cognitive impairment and their family carers, and the core components of medicine self-management that they address.
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Content ArticleThis is the final report of the stocktake undertaken by Dr Claire Fuller, Chief Executive-designate Surrey Heartlands Integrated Care System and GP on integrated primary care, looking at what is working well, why it’s working well and how we can accelerate the implementation of integrated primary care (incorporating the current 4 pillars of general practice, community pharmacy, dentistry and optometry) across systems.
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Content ArticleThere are an estimated 3.8 million people with a wound being managed by the NHS, which is equivalent to 7% of the UK population. The impact of wounds on patients is significant and can lead to deteriorating mental health as well as further physical health issues. In addition, the cost to the NHS of providing wound care services is around £8.3 billion annually. This report by Mölnlycke and the Patients Association provides an outline of the state of wound care services in England by mid-2021. It features patient stories and data analysis on the following topics: Wound care in the health service The impact of Covid-19 Supported self-care Getting wound care right first time What next for wound care?
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Content ArticleDuring the 20th century the locus of care shifted from large institutions into the community. However, this shift was not always accompanied by liberation from restrictive practices. In 2014 a UK Supreme Court ruling on the meaning of ‘deprivation of liberty’ resulted in large numbers of older and disabled people in care homes, supported living and family homes being re-categorized as ‘detained’. Placing this ruling in its social, historical and global context, this book presents a socio-legal analysis of social care detention in the post-carceral era. Drawing from disability rights law and the meanings of ‘home’ and ‘institution’ it proposes solutions to the Cheshire West ruling’s paradoxical implications.
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Content ArticleThis mixed methods study in BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making explored approaches to implementing Electronic Patient Record systems (EPRs) into NHS acute, mental health and community care hospitals throughout England. It also looked at the challenges and benefits of implementing EPRs. The authors conducted an online survey and semi-structured telephone interviews with chief information officers at NHS trusts. The study found that there was no single approach taken to implementing EPRs among participating English NHS trusts, who cited various benefits and challenges. The authors conclude that policymakers and researchers need to provide clearer guidance for trusts at various stages of implementation and ensure that intelligence is shared across England’s NHS trusts.
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Content ArticleThese Quality Standards have been developed by the Resuscitation Council UK. They enable healthcare organisations provide a high-quality resuscitation service, with guidance tailored for different settings including acute care, primary care, dental care, mental health units, community hospitals and in the community.
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Content ArticleM R Rajagopal (known to all as Raj) is an internationally renowned Indian anaesthetist and palliative care physician who is one of the founders of a system of palliative care in Kerala that is admired the world over. The Lancet Commission on the Value of Death said that societies everywhere could learn from the Kerala innovation, which is a system led by the community with health professionals as supporters rather than leaders. Raj has now published his readable, insightful—and at times funny—autobiography, Walk with the Weary: Lessons in humanity in healthcare, which is both a severe critique of modern healthcare and a prescription for transformation and highlighted by Richard Smith in this BMJ article.
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Content ArticleThis guidance is for Integrated Care Boards, NHS trusts, foundation trusts and NHS England. It supports effectively partnership working with people and communities to improve services and meet the public involvement legal duties.
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Content ArticlePersistent Covid-19 illness following an acute infection with SARS-CoV-2 can have both a physical and psychological impact. Pharmacists in community and primary care should be able to provide patients with appropriate advice and support to manage their symptoms.
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Content ArticleThe NHS and social care systems need more money. If there is anything else that they need as much, it is honesty from the government. Post-Covid, the UK’s health systems are in a perilously fragile state. As analysis by the Guardian showed this week, logjams created by delayed discharges appear to be getting worse. An average of 13,600 hospital beds in England are occupied by patients with nowhere else to go. As well as making new admissions impossible, unnecessarily long stays can make it harder for people to regain their independence after leaving. So far, a £500m emergency fund promised by ministers to ease the pressure has failed to materialise. It is a symptom of the social care crisis that hospitals find it so hard to discharge people who are well enough to leave.
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Content ArticleThis National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guideline covers the components of a good experience of service use. It aims to make sure that all adults using NHS mental health services have the best possible experience of care. It includes recommendations on: access to care assessment community care assessment and referral in crisis hospital care discharge and transfer of care assessment and treatment under the Mental Health Act
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Content ArticleThis is a bite-sized session to give health and care professionals an overview of health disparities and health inequalities - including key evidence, data and signposting to trusted resources to help prevent illness, protect health and promote wellbeing.
