NHS Birmingham East and North partnered with independent provider Healthcare at Home to set up a suite of new services designed to improve care for patients while making cost savings.
How the service works
NHS Birmingham East & North and Healthcare at Home set up a Family Liaison Service. The service comprises a team of community based nurses, a 24 hour Care Bureau telephone triage service and family liaison co-ordinators, who work with patients, GPs and wider healthcare teams to plan care. The services have been designed to reduce hospital length of stay, provide more efficient care for patients at the end of their lives and to reduce unplanned admissions.
Achievements of the service
The service is on target to save more than £700,000 in its first year. It has already released £234,000 of savings in its first five months of operation. During the same five month period, only four of the 179 patients on the end-of-life care pathway were readmitted to hospital.
Ninety-eight per cent of calls to the Care Bureau have been answered within 30 seconds and all callers requiring a rapid response have been visited within one hour. There have been no patient complaints.
A parallel scheme, Enhanced Supported Discharge, designed to reduce hospital length of stay, has resulted in a saving of 597 bed days so far during the same November to March period.
Further information
If you would like further information on this case study please contact Elizabeth Wade, Head of Commissioning Policy and Membership at elizabeth.wade@nhsconfed.org.