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Well Cared For Community – Well Worth It

Hospital is a dangerous place to be if you don’t need it. Risk aversion and misunderstandings result in unnecessary unplanned attendances. This project helps care homes reverse the trend.

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  • Idea
  • 2018

Meet the team: Improvement Bridge

Also:

  • Vicky Marshall
  • Ruth Colville
  • Erica Daley
  • Tracey Meyerhoff
  • Matt Storey
  • Dr Katie Athorn

A joint effort between CCGs, Mental Health and the Acute Trust which aims to listen and engage with care homes about what worries them about those they care for and pick apart those human factors that result in unnecessary, unplanned acute hospital attendances. On the back of that learning, take a collaborative approach to provide better education and support to care homes, reducing fears, equipping them to know when to act and what they can do to keep those they care for in the comforts and safety of home, avoiding unnecessary acute attendances and bridging the relationships between providers.

The project will concentrate on care homes for the elderly (test cohort). The bid will support the development, evaluation and roll out of an engagement and support model that if effective can be rolled out to other population cohorts in care. The funding would cover:

£10k for one PA of a clinician over the course of a year

  • Attend care home engagement events

  • To develop education materials based on above and evidence re: avoidable attendances

  • Deliver educational sessions direct to care homes

£20K to cover:

  • someone to liaise with care homes

  • time to support the clinician/ care homes in developing the training, evaluation measures

    • engagement events

    • training delivery

    • evaluation of outcomes (more confident care home staff, understanding of conditions that can be managed in a non-acute setting, measure of engagement between care homes and acute – shared learning informing both)

  • a data analyst time to compile data on effectiveness of the  education and support model (care home staff behaviour shift, confidence/competence shift); and

  • monitor ED attends (a reduction in “unnecessary attends” – defined criteria)

  • agree priority areas for future collaborative learning / sharing lessons and the model


How you can contribute

  • Expert advice from people within the care home sector
  • Expert advice in achieving behavioural change
  • Expert advice in framing messages to create urgency, ownership and buy-in (illuminating the status quo as an intolerable state)

Comments

  1. It would be really interesting to use the Achieving Behaviour Change toolkit to identify the barriers, but also the facilitators to sending residents to ED. It may also help to assess the safety culture in the homes you work with to see if this has an impact. The Improvement Academy has experience of using culture surveys in this sector.

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