Frailty
Supporting people to age well is one of the ambitions of the NHS Long Term Plan. As the population ages, frailty is becoming a more prevalent condition presenting local health systems with a number of key challenges. Increasing numbers of people are at risk of developing frailty and people living with frailty are experiencing unwarranted variation in their care.
The NHS RightCare Frailty Toolkit has been developed in collaboration with NHS England’s National Clinical Director for Older People, Age UK, Getting It Right First Time and The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE). The toolkit supports systems to understand the priorities in frailty identification and care, and key actions to take. It provides opportunity to assess and benchmark current systems to find opportunities for improvement.
Wider consultation has taken place with patient representatives, clinicians, social care organisations, professional bodies and other key stakeholders.
Commissioners responsible for supporting people with frailty for their population should:
- Use the Frailty Pathway to work across your systems ensuring that where possible the following improvement priorities are applied:
- Population segmentation, identification and stratification of frailty
- Supporting people living with mild frailty and encouraging people to ‘age well’
- Supporting people living with moderate frailty
- Supporting people living with severe frailty
- Reducing hospital length of stay
- Applying the Falls and Fragility Fractures pathway
- Focussing on delirium, dementia and cognitive disorder
- Maximising use of personalised care in people living with frailty
- Maximise the experience of care for people and their carers
- Use the self-assessment questionnaire to baseline your services and assess the extent of your improvement activity
Relevant links to support implementation are included throughout this resource.
Health systems can use this resource as a framework for their local improvement discussions.