Changes being made

Public and staff engagement

  • The partnership has been keen to hear a wide range of views from local people and has ensured that local partner boards, councillors, staff, the voluntary and community sector, and citizens understand and are fully engaged.
  • Over the last few years the partnership has worked with public and patient representative groups across the area on the design of future services, and to consider how to tailor plans to meet local needs. The partnership’s plans were updated as a result of the feedback. This will continue as they move forward with their plans.
  • The partnership has been communicating with their 50,000 frontline staff working in health, care and housing using existing communication mechanisms within individual organisations.

Primary care

  • Multi-disciplinary teams are coming together with GPs and other colleagues to discuss the needs of individual patients, joining up health and care services for patients who may have suffer from one or more complex condition.
  • A new service to streamline healthcare for patients with stomach, nutrition, and liver diseases has combined day case and outpatient appointments and increased the number of nurse-led clinic appointments which has reduced the average time from referral to first clinic appointment.

Urgent and emergency care

  • King’s Mill Hospital in Sutton-in-Ashfield is operating a ‘single front door policy’ so patients visiting the emergency department are seen by a qualified specialist who decides whether they need acute or primary care. Over six months to October 2017, almost 22 per cent of patients were directed to the primary care service.
  • A Call for Care service is helping health and social care professionals make best use of local services available to patients through a single telephone number. Professionals are able to access urgent and crisis support for those at risk of admission to hospital so that more people can be supported in their own homes, often within two hours, where a full assessment of their ongoing needs can be established and a comprehensive care plan put in place.

Mental health

  • Let’s Talk Wellbeing, a talking therapies service to help people deal with the psychological effects of long term physical health conditions is now being provided by Nottinghamshire Healthcare. The service sees trained therapists supports patients to better cope with their condition and manage symptoms.
  • A 16-bed ward has opened for adult mental health patients to ensure they can be treated closer to home.

Consistent standards of care and treatment

  • The ‘MSK (musculoskeletal) Together’ service in mid-Nottinghamshire oversees GP referrals so they are triaged by specialist physiotherapists so that patients with musculoskeletal conditions are seen more quickly than a traditional referral, with their care often taking place in the community or primary care.
  • Closer working between Nottingham University Hospitals and Sherwood Forest Hospitals is leading to improvements in care that is closer to home. More joined-up services are also meaning that those patients have to make fewer trips to hospital for diagnosis, treatment and after-care.

Care at home

  • The discharge to assess scheme in Greater Nottingham is helping to ensure that patients can be assessed for their longer-term needs in the right place. This may be via Home First, community beds, or continuing health care assessment. The scheme is helping to reduce delayed transfers of care and thereby free up beds for people who need to be in hospital.
  • A new service has been launched to support end-of-life care for patients across Nottinghamshire whose preferred choice is to remain at home. An in-reach matron supports patients who are at end-of-life while in hospital, and co-ordinates the patients’ discharge to home safely. Since the start of the scheme, the service has improved patient care and enabled more than 95% of these patients to remain in their own homes.
  • An outreach services for blood diseases, run by Nottingham University Hospitals, has delivered more than 1,800 home visits in its first year. This has reduced the waiting for treatment, avoided patients having to travel to hospital for treatment, and saved more than 350 outpatients clinic appointments.