NHS Islington is the operating name for Islington Primary Care Trust – the NHS organisation responsible for public healthcare in the London Borough of Islington. Delivering all non-hospital aspects of NHS services for Islington residents, NHS Islington has around 900 employees. The Islington REACH Intermediate Care Team is a multidisciplinary group of staff from both NHS Islington and Islington Council. Team members include physiotherapists, occupational therapists, speech and language therapists, rehabilitation assistants, social workers, nurses, psychologists, and a consultant geriatrician.
Working collaboratively to support mainly older people – along with their relatives and carers – the Islington REACH Intermediate Care Team is there to promote health and maximise independence. “Our role is largely about intermediate care and community rehabilitation. An important aspect is facilitating the discharge of people from hospital with the right levels of intermediate care in place,” explains Jar O’Brien, Islington REACH Intermediate Care Team Manager. Much of the work is carried out in people’s homes, at day centres, or at residential nursing homes. It can involve anything from fitting handrails over the bath, to helping with walking, personal hygiene, and home cleaning. Jar O’Brien continues: “Putting the necessary support infrastructure in place often involves the co-ordination of services from many different departments.” This time consuming exercise had traditionally meant lots of emails, meetings, and telephone calls – not to mention following up when those initial communications failed. The resulting complexity often led to delays in discharging people from hospital, with hospital beds unnecessarily blocked.
A key performance indicator for the Islington REACH Intermediate Care Team is a measure that counts the number of additional days patients stay in hospital because discharge arrangements are not in place. “BT Meet Me has made a real impact,” says Jar O’Brien. “From historically being way off target, the first two months of using the service saw us consistently beating the benchmark. It’s true to say it’s one of the factors that has helped us improve our performance.” The new approach involves a daily conference call with each hospital and the key stakeholders to discuss the needs of individuals approaching discharge and requiring intermediate care. Jar O’Brien again: “BT MeetMe has some really useful features. I use the participant count and roll call facility, and I have the ability to lock the call for security so that nobody else can join. As chairman, I can also end the call when I hang up. That cuts down idle chat after the business has been concluded.” Such has been the impact of BT MeetMe that the Islington REACH Intermediate Care Team is now looking to extend its use. Options under consideration include virtual weekly team meetings dealing with work allocation. These are currently conducted face-to-face and involve up to 27 people. Using BT MeetMe will improve efficiency and cut down travel, supporting a more sustainable business model. Jar O’Brien sums up: “BT MeetMe is helping us to get patients back into the community more quickly and that’s good for them and good for the NHS. It’s cost effective too. We only need to unblock one hospital bed for one or two days each month and it pays for itself.” Following the success of the trial, NHS Islington has increased its number of accounts to a total of 16 and is extending the use of BT MeetMe to other people and departments, including the NHS Islington CEO and the senior management team.
