CHICAGO: The growing trend to encourage greater integration between hospitals and social care systems is designed to reduce healthcare costs and lift the ability to provide care in the patients’ own home.
But the system will only work efficiently if a new community care model which has been devised by a group of social care providers, doctors and healthcare consultants, is used.
Once a patient has been referred to the charity by a GP or district nurse, a “guided conversation” is instigated, in which they are invited, at their own pace, to explain what they want out of life.
The program allows for the treatment of patients not simply as a collection of ailments, but as individuals with aspirations that even the oldest and sickest can be helped to achieve.
A pilot project working with 100 people, found a 30 percent reduction in non-elective hospital admission costs, a 40 percent drop in acute admissions for long-term conditions and a 5 percent reduction in both demand and cost for adult social care…