Home for Christmas Week

18th December 2017

Stockport Neighbourhood Care has been asked by the Greater Manchester Health and Social Care Partnership along with the other health economies in Greater Manchester to run a ‘Home for Christmas’ campaign to help increase discharges and reduce bed occupancy in the run up to Christmas.

The aim is to maintain performance at an acceptable level – operating as close to the 95% level as we can for the 4 hour performance standard.

Home for Christmas is just one of many things that all the Stockport Together organisations are doing. We have a huge number of short, medium and long term actions in place to address the problems and help ease the pressures across the health and social care system and improve the care and treatment the people we look after experience.

The information below gives you the details on how we plan to deliver and communicate a Home for Christmas campaign in Stockport.

1. What is ‘Home for Christmas’ week?

Home for Christmas week will run over five days, from Monday 18th to Friday 22nd December 2017.

During this week, teams from across Health and Social Care will work together with the aim of getting patients the care and support needed to ensure a safe discharge before Christmas.

Volunteer ward liaison officers (non-clinical and support staff) will be present on medical wards at Stepping Hill Hospital from 8am to 12pm midday, attending the white board rounds with a list of questions for ward staff to identify patients who need additional care and support put in place to enable them to be discharged and report this back to the control room at specified times.

2. How will Home for Christmas week run?

Wards and clinical areas at Stepping Hill Hospital will run their day-to-day clinical operations during ‘Home for Christmas’ week.

The difference will be that all the services that are involved in patient flow, or have an impact on patient flow, have pledged this week to speed up and improve what they do and focus on getting patients safely discharged in time for Christmas.

The other difference is that the wards/patient departments will have a ‘ward liaison officer’ with them during this week. This is a non-clinical volunteer from one of the Stockport Together partner organisations who, following a full briefing, will collect important data during the day. The data will help unblock problems in patient flow, and flag up any problems at a higher level.

Executive directors, business group directors and senior managers at the hospital are also providing support this week. A central team based in the control room – the committee room at Oak House, Trust HQ – will monitor and support the teams throughout the day.

3. Why are we doing this?

Our health and social care system is under significant pressure requiring daily fire-fighting sometimes resulting in a poor patient experience and affecting staff morale and we also want to make sure that we can safely discharge patients from hospital in time for Christmas.

4. What are the aims for the week?

• Stockport health and social care partners working together to improve patient flow throughout the healthcare system
• Help increase discharges and reduce bed occupancy
• Focus on reducing occupancy in community beds
• Improvement of quality measures (CQUINS, 4 hour wait, patient satisfaction)
• Re-energise and re-engage staff
• Ensure patients who are ready to be discharged have the necessary care and support packages put in place so they can get home before Christmas.

5. Has anyone done this before – and does it work?

This is a national initiative sometimes called the Perfect Week or ‘Breaking the Cycle’ week’ which has been run in many other areas across the country, with positive outcomes both for staff and patients.

We ran a similar week in Stockport just before Easter and the learning from that will be reflected in our Home for Christmas week.

6. Who is involved in the Home for Christmas Week?

Stepping Hill Hospital
Community health services
Continuing care
Pennine Care – mental health
Local authority – adult social care
Care homes and domiciliary care agencies
Ambulance
GPs
Out of hours service

7. What is patient flow?

‘Patient flow’ is the movement of patients, information or equipment between departments, staff groups or organisations as part of a ‘patient’s care pathway’.

The ‘patient care pathway’ is the route that a patient will take from their first contact with the NHS (usually their GP), through referral, to the completion of their treatment.

You can think of it as a timeline, on which every ‘event’ relating to the patient’s treatment can be recorded. Events such as consultations, diagnosis, treatment, medication, and diet, assessment, teaching and preparing for discharge from the hospital can all be mapped on this timeline.

8. Further information
If you require any more information on Home for Christmas week, please contact Jeanette Livings, Communications and Engagement Manager for Stockport Neighbourhood Care on 07800 618325 or email Jeanette.livings@stockport.gov.uk