Improving Intermediate Care Services

Intermediate care services

• promote faster recovery from illness
• prevent unnecessary acute hospital admission
• prevent premature admission to long-term residential care
• support discharge from hospital and maximise independent living.

We have introduced two new home-based intermediate care services:

Community treatment team (CTT)

• consists of doctors, nurses, occupational therapists, physiotherapists, social workers, and support workers.
• provides short term intensive care and support to people experiencing health and/or social care crisis to help them be cared for in their own home, rather than in hospital.
• supports people to return home as soon as possible following an acute/community inpatient stay where this is required/appropriate.
• provides a single point of access to intensive rehabilitation at home or a bed in a community rehabilitation unit if necessary.

Intensive rehabilitation at home service (IRS)

• This is a team of physios, occupational therapists, healthcare assistants and others offering intensive physio and other therapy in a patient’s own home.
• provides an alternative to admitting patients to an inpatient unit for rehabilitation by supporting people within their own homes.
• provides intensive in-home support and involves between one and four home visits each day, depending on the patient’s needs.

Survey results show that most patients are very happy with the new models of care: Mrs McMurray , Mrs Ware and Mrs P who have used the services.

Consultation

From July - October 2014 we ran a consultation asking people what they thought about the changes we wanted to make about intermediate care services. Read the consultation document ‘Making intermediate care better’ Read the consultation report analysing the responses to the consultation.  In December 2014, the CCGs’ governing bodies agreed the model of intermediate care, and this has now been implemented. 

Further information

Bed modelling update - how we worked out how many community rehabilitation beds we would need (December 2014).
Bed Modelling - find out more about how we worked out how many community rehabilitation beds we would need.
Decision-making business case – this sets out the proposed future model and configuration of intermediate care services
Pre-consultation business case - this details the progress made to improve and develop intermediate care services and provides evidence of the case for making changes to services.
CCG Governing Body papers – includes the pre-consultation business case for introducing a new model of intermediate care (July 2014)
CCG Governing Body papers – gives an update on the progress of developing a new model of intermediate care (January 2014)
NELFT leaflet on CTT - explains how the new community treatment team works
Reports from Healthwatch workshops - Healthwatch held a workshop with the CCG in December 2013 to discuss the new CTT and IRS services, and reported on that discussion
National Audit of Intermediate Care report (2014) - provides an overview of intermediate care commissioning and provision in England.
National Audit of Intermediate Care report (2013) - provides an overview of intermediate care commissioning and provision in England
Integrated Care Coalition – the case for change - gives an overview of current services and explains how services could be improved (2012)