The care of hospital, the comfort of home
It was great to visit an impressive virtual ward set up in Oldham, Greater Manchester yesterday and hear from the clinical team running it what a difference it is making to their patients.?
On a snowy day, the welcome was warm as I visited the Hospital at Home team based out of the Royal Oldham Hospital with Professor Emma Vardy, consultant geriatrician and clinical lead for hospital at home and frailty at NCA and Becky Towns, directorate manager for hospital at home and specialty medicine.?
We met the dynamic Hospital at Home nursing team, some of whom are pictured below, visited the Acute Medicine Unit (AMU) and joined the Respiratory Hospital at Home virtual MDT which gave insights into how this busy service works so hard to keep people well at home, with great compassion and personalisation.?
About the Northern Care Alliance NHS Foundation Trust?
The Royal Oldham Hospital is part of the very large Northern Care Alliance NHS Foundation Trust , the Trust has over 20,000 staff and serves a population of over one million people across Oldham, Salford, Rochdale and Bury as well as providing specialist services from across Greater Manchester. It includes four acute hospitals at Salford Royal, the Royal Oldham, Rochdale Infirmary and Fairfield General Hospital and runs very substantial community services too.?The chief executive is Dr Owen Williams OBE .
Celebrating innovation in Greater Manchester?
It was very good to meet Rafik Bedair , chief medical officer at Northern Care Alliance and talk about the potential of digital home care, work going on locally and that we are advancing in long term conditions such as COPD, in other parts of the country. We met the day before the visit, at the Cambridge Health Network event, held in Manchester to celebrate the 20th year of this vibrant meeting place for health leaders and innovators.?Great to catch up too with Laura Rooney who has been instrumental in the successful scale of the virtual ward model across Greater Manchester and beyond and Gareth Thomas leading a range of digital programmes.
We heard at the session from Mark Cubbon , chief executive of Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust and Ben Bridgewater , chief executive of Health Innovation Manchester about the impressive joint work to advance and scale innovation across Greater Manchester. It's clear, from conversations with them and others, that there is a shared aim to have real impact including reducing health inequalities, being forward thinking in the use of digital to improve health care and to get innovative new medicines to those who have the most to gain. There was a sense of genuine partnership to drive these changes forward across the Greater Manchester population as well as great pride in the amount of innovation, spin outs and entrepreneurial talent in the region.
Hospital at Home services in NCA?
Northern Care Alliance also has a particularly good hospital at home website for patients, it is clear and simple and well worth a look?-
It includes a useful patient film that was made by Greater Manchester Integrated Care to help encourage the public to use Hospital at Home and Virtual Ward services, that has been promoted through a range of routes.
There are also terrific resources available on the Health Innovation Manchester microsite -
Professor Emma Vardy has led the development of overarching Hospital at Home policies across the whole of NCA, working with a range of clinical teams.
Emma said that this requires
“a balance between the adherence to fundamental principles as well as personalisation to the organisation, which is really important for garnering engagement from local health and care professionals while maintaining excellent clinical standards.”?
While this work has been intensive, it means that patients receiving Hospital at Home care will receive the same model regardless of which part of the Trust takes care of them, and is an important part of scaling with quality of care at the heart.
领英推荐
Becky Towns, divisional manager, outlined the benefits they are seeing of having tech enabled home care in place.?
“Our hospital at home service provides a great alternative to acute hospital care and allows patients to recover in the comfort of their own home. It avoids deconditioning and infection risk and allows patients to be more autonomous with their own care”.?
The service has expanded to eight clinical pathways and runs at around 60 patients a day with the Trust seeking to increase this to 100 at any one time.?
The Northern Care Alliance partner with Doccla for their tech enablement and I visited with Dr David Rassam . David, a former doctor, now works as one of Doccla’s delivery managers, supporting NCA and other Trusts introduce these new care models and helping them scale.?
I asked David about the patient feedback on the NCA service and he explained it is extremely positive. David took me through the results - 81 patients have responded to the patient survey to date and 98% score the service as very good or good.
98% patients have rated the service as very good or good
There are some great comments too, in answer to the prompt “what could we do better?” several patients have said “nothing, it was perfect!” with one commenting that they “felt safer, because someone is there, asking you how you are”.?The team have much to be proud of with this very high level of patient satisfaction.
Virtual Wards across Greater Manchester?
There’s a really useful case study on the experience of setting up virtual wards across Greater Manchester on the NICE website. This features one of Emma’s colleagues, Dr Bushra Alam, acute medicine consultant at Salford Royal, and Greater Manchester ICS Clinical Lead for Virtual Wards.
Within it Bushra says
“The health and care system is changing. We are already seeing more care taking place outside of hospital in virtual wards. Virtual wards are incredibly important as they allow patients to get the care they need safely and conveniently in their own home rather than being in hospital.”
The NICE case study continues - “The virtual wards project in Greater Manchester started in 2022. The aim was to treat adult patients with acute episodes in their own home supported by technology. In autumn 2023, the project began supporting the increased use of virtual wards across 10 regions in Greater Manchester, to build up capacity ahead of winter pressures.
It is currently focusing on virtual wards for acute respiratory infections (ARI) and frailty but has expanded rapidly to include heart failure and general medicine. Some teams are working with The Christie NHS Foundation Trust to look at deterioration in patients who have received chemotherapy and how these patients can be supported in their own home using virtual wards.
Virtual ward teams in Greater Manchester are also working on improving end-of-life care for patients who prefer to be at home. This work is being carried out jointly with the GM palliative care network, and provides medical interventions and remote monitoring in home settings.”
For more, see the full case study here.
I left the visit with the sense of an impressive service within a region that truly sees the potential of digital home care and is collaborating to make that a reality for more and more patients.
#royalweeks