New figures published last week found that care home residents in Rushcliffe, Nottinghamshire had 23 per cent fewer emergency admissions and 29 per cent fewer A&E attendances compared to people in other parts of the country.

The figures were part of a report published by the Health Foundation, which looked at analysis carried out by the new Improvement Analytics Unit – a partnership between NHS England and the Health Foundation.

The care home residents in Rushcliffe receive an ‘enhanced’ care package as part of the Principia Partners in Health multispecialty community provider vanguard, which includes regular visits from a named GP and independent support from Age UK Nottingham and Nottinghamshire. Greater support for care home managers and community nurses is also provided, for example through a peer-to-peer network.

The Health Foundation report says the positive results in Rushcliffe are likely to be the result of higher quality care being provided to the care home residents by the vanguard.

The analysis compared the health outcomes of 588 care home residents in 23 care homes in Rushcliffe between August 2014 and August 2016 with those of 588 care home residents living elsewhere in the country who did not receive an enhanced care package. The two groups were carefully matched to ensure they were as similar as possible – including in terms of age, gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic deprivation, health conditions and the type of care home they lived in.

Adam Steventon, Director of Data Analytics at the Health Foundation and one of the report’s authors, said: “In Rushcliffe, the analysis showed that care home residents in the study were significantly less likely to attend A&E, or be admitted to hospital in an emergency than residents in other similar care homes. These results are good news for the Rushcliffe residents and good news for Principia.

“By enabling clinicians, care home staff and the charity sector to work together across organisational boundaries, Principia has helped achieve better care for care home residents, including fewer emergency hospital admissions. They have also achieved greater integration between health and social care services.”

Samantha Jones, Director of the New Care Models Programme, said: “The team at Principia vanguard are working very hard to improve the care they deliver to local people, as well as to prevent ill health and save money. This report offers significant encouragement at a time when our NHS is witnessing increased demand for services.

“Combined with other results from across the country, we can see that the new models of care being tested and implemented by the 50 vanguards are making steady progress in reducing the pressure on GP and hospital services. These models are the foundations for transformation across health and care, including the sustainability and transformation partnerships (STPs).”