Heathlands opens its doors

In March we celebrated an innovative community service development with the opening of our new therapy-led intermediate care unit at Heathlands in Bracknell.

The project is part of an exciting collaboration with Frimley Clinical Commissioning Group and Bracknell Forest Council. Our 20-bed unit is focused on rehabilitation and supports patients coming out of Frimley Park, Wexham Park and sometimes the Royal Berkshire hospital.

The teams also care for those who are medically stable but are not managing at home and may be approaching a time of crisis. At Heathlands they can receive well-coordinated and joined up care, promoting independence for as long as possible.

Care is delivered through collaborative working with local community providers and integrated community teams, including rehab nurses, therapy technicians,  physiotherapists and occupational therapists.

Beth Spickett, unit manager for Heathlands, said: “This facility is the first of its kind for the Trust and is providing a much more appropriate environment for people living with frailty or with conditions such as dementia. By spending time at Heathlands we can ensure a better experience by either avoiding a hospital admission or providing extra support enabling patients to leave hospital sooner.”

Hospital care, delivered at home

Developing effective community services is vital to improving people’s wellbeing and independence while delivering better experience of care, and we’ve done just that with two important community care initiatives.

The Hospital@Home service involves a community team supporting patients with blood tests, electrocardiograms (ECGs), medication reviews, prescriptions and IV medications, all administered in the comfort of their own homes.

By providing acute medical care in patients’ homes, we are helping to avoid unnecessary hospital admissions and maintain people’s independence, keeping them at home for as long as possible.

Building on the success of our Hospital@Home service, we developed an urgent community response (UCR) team, which sees patients with an urgent care need who have been referred by either a GP or community clinician, including community matrons, specialist nurses and home-visiting paramedics.

Patients from across Farnham, northeast Hampshire and Surrey Heath are seen within two hours of a referral. The multi-disciplinary team, which is supported by elderly care consultants, can offer a similar level of care to a hospital ward, carrying out blood tests, giving IV medication, taking an ECG reading and giving a nebuliser or oxygen, alongside therapy assessments and providing equipment to help patients’ mobility.

By integrating these services with the specialist expertise of the acute Trust, we can reduce duplication and delay and enable patients to receive specialist expertise without attending hospital.