Agenda item

Report of the Director of Adults and Housing

The Board considered a briefing note and presentation of the Director of Adults and the Head of Integration Strategy, UHCW, outlining the Improving Lives programme of work, the impacts the programme has had to date and was expected to have as it became fully implemented during 2024.

In January 2021, the local health and social care system embarked on a review of hospital admission and discharge arrangements to determine how improvements could be made that supported reducing admissions, length of stay and improvements to discharge, to reduce the volume of care and support required through enabling more people to be independent.

To progress this work, Newton Europe was appointed following a tender process as a delivery partner working across the City Council, University Hospital Coventry and Warwickshire, Coventry and Warwickshire Partnership Trust and the Integrated Care Board.

The aims of the programme were:

·  An improved and more responsive co-ordination and delivery of health and care within an individual’s own home when urgent and emergency care was required – this would help to prevent people making unnecessary visits to hospitals.

·  Where ongoing support (health or care or both) was required to enable people to continue to live independently, this would be reliable, sustainable, and responsive to change as people’s requirements changed.

·  Where people were required to visit hospital for treatment, this would be undertaken in a patient-centred and effective manner, with the focus on returning home as soon as possible.

·  Where people had a change in their health as a result of deterioration or a specific episode in their life, they would be supported to recover and re-able to maximise their individual outcomes.

As the programme rolled out over 2024, the service offer to patients/residents in the City would be locality based with the City divided into 3 areas.  The area teams (Local Integrated Teams) would support admission avoidance and urgent care requirements alongside hospital discharge pathways.

Members of the Scrutiny Board, having considered the content of the briefing note and presentation, asked questions and received information from officerson the following matters:

·  Physiotherapy was an important focus of the programme and the aim was for patients to be discharged from hospital back home with a level of mobility.

·  There were multiple reasons that hospital admissions could have been prevented.  Primary care capacity was stretched and teams were working over and above the capacity available.

·  Similar programmes were being rolled out in health systems across the country and there was networking to share good practice.

·  The intention was to reduce the number of patients presenting at hospital.  When case notes were looked at, 37% of patients should not have presented at hospital as primary care services could have supported them.

·  By taking those 37% of patients out of hospital, capacity was given back to hospital staff however, some services did not work 24 hours a day and there had not been the level of co-ordination in the community between Adult Social Care and the NHS to make that happen as yet.

·  There had been some positive outcomes from the trial and the work was now being scaled up across the city.

The Board requested the Improving lives presentation slides to be circulated.

RESOLVED that the Health and Social Care Scrutiny Board (5):

1)  Note the outline of the Improving Lives programme of work.

2)  Provide comment on the programme as described to support effective delivery.