Health services

Description

In developing a Primary Care Home Visiting Service for housebound patients, it was the intention to offer a single contract to an organisation that will work closely with local GP practices to deliver agreed outcomes. We expect this service to be delivered by suitably qualified clinicians other than General Practitioners. The Primary Care Home Visiting Service will provide a service that is designed to help balance some of the pressures that GPs are facing as a result of increased demand for their services and to enable earlier timing of visits for patients. In developing a Primary Care Home Visiting Service for housebound patients, it was our intention to offer a single contract to an organisation that will work closely with local GP practices to deliver agreed outcomes. The Primary Care Home Visiting Service will provide a service that is designed to help balance some of the pressures that GPs are facing as a result of increased demand for their services and to enable earlier timing of visits for patients. It is expected that during a working day, the Provider will take referrals from practices, undertake home visits and update patient notes. Visits will be undertaken within 3 hours of referral and patient notes will be routinely updated on the same day. The Provider will need to be able to respond to all requests during operational hours. With shared decision making and an agreed clinical pathway the service will: — release time for GPs to offer more “on the day” appointments in their surgery, — allow GPs to give more time to people with more complex care needs, — reduce the risk of patients having to be admitted to hospital, — promote navigation to wider community services. GP practices will continue to do home visits for a cohort of highly complex patients however the emphasis would be, where appropriate, to refer patients to this new service. The service aims to provide the best options of care for patients at home by ensuring that patients are seen by the most appropriate healthcare professional, provided with a timely and accessible service that will avoid unnecessary admissions to secondary care. We would expect this service to be delivered by suitably qualified clinicians other than General Practitioners. Objectives: — the service will provide high quality assessment and appropriate treatment for either acute or long term chronic conditions for those patients who are housebound, — the service will facilitate access to locally available neighbourhood services including community nursing, community physiotherapy, community pharmacy, social care and My Best Life, — the provider will actively engage all GP practices in Barnsley and make certain that the service is delivered in partnership with the patient's own GP and existing care plans, — the service will work with any existing teams or services already involved with the patient's care e.g. RightCare Barnsley and ensure onward referral/recommendations are enacted, — the service will evidence a reduction in unnecessary and/or inappropriate referrals to secondary care, — the service will evidence that patients benefit from health promotion, prevention and self-management support, — the outcome/s from the home visit is passed back to the referring practice and any appropriate follow up will be completed by the patient's own practice, — the home visit is recorded directly on to the patient's existing record on the clinical system as soon after the visit as possible through agile mobile working, — the Provider will access the EMIS, SystmOne and Vision clinical systems directly and all referrals and reporting back will be completed within the GP practices' clinical system. The Contract will be for a term of one year with the opportunity to extend for 12 months subject to mutual agreement between the successful Bidder and the Authority. The maximum term of Contract is consequently 2 years.