Urgent Care Awards Announced

Main Category: Public Health
Article Date: 16 Sep 2009 - 14:00 PDT

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The NHS Alliance Urgent Care Awards 2009 will be presented at the Urgent Care Conference to be held on Wednesday 16th September 2009 at the Congress Centre in London.

Four awards have been made for innovation in delivering integrated urgent care. The winners are Harmoni and West Sussex Health; Urgent Care 24 Asylum, in Liverpool; the GP Support Unit Bristol, and Right©Care Service, in Derbyshire.

Dr Ray Montague, Chief Executive of Brisdoc Healthcare Services and coordinator of the Urgent Care Award, said: "Increasingly, the organisations we represent - those who provide round-the-clock urgent primary care services - are finding themselves at the very front end of many exciting developments at this crucial interface between traditional GP care and secondary care services. Necessity breeds innovation. And being on the front line of urgent care provides a keen sense of what needs to be done and these awards are intended to celebrate and share the different projects that have sprung from that knowledge."

Urgent Care Awards winners

Harmoni and West Sussex Health, set up the overnight nursing service to meet the needs of increasingly complex patients being discharged. Practitioners provide advanced assessment, treatment and care, including nurse prescribing skills, for those with acute or chronic conditions. Care is provided in the home environment, but also includes other settings such as care homes and prisons. The unit has been running for over a year now and has taken 3531 telephone calls, seen 759 patients and discharged 564 back to the community. Alternatives to hospital admission were found for 480 patients.

Urgent Care 24 Asylum is a practice-based GP and nursing service in Liverpool offering an initial health assessment for asylum seekers whose application is still pending. Some of the patients have suffered torture and have been subjected to sexual violence. Many of their health issues revolve around mental health and stress. The service has a high number of clinical assessments and it has benefited the urgent care network by reducing the number of patients attending walk-in centres and the local accident and emergency department. Out-of-hours activity is also being kept to a minimum.

The GP Support Unit Bristol is a team of GPs based in the Bristol Royal Infirmary which offers patients, carers and clinicians alternatives to hospital admission. The unit is situated close to the medical admission unit at the Bristol Royal Infirmary and is open five days a week. The GPs filter all the calls requesting a medical admission from general practice, facilitating health care and providing support to both primary and secondary care. It has also provided a link between services and facilitated the development of appropriate community based care pathways

Right©Care Service was set up by Derbyshire Health United, a GP out-of-hours provider, in conjunction with Derbyshire County PCT, to provide a consistent approach to patient care 24/7. This is achieved by providing a confidential information sharing service of patient care plans between healthcare professionals. Following a successful pilot stage, the service has now been commissioned for the whole of Derbyshire and a contract awarded for two years.

Source
NHS Alliance

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