Bulletin
February 2020
Welcome to new look County Durham Care Partnership bulletin, keeping you up to date with integrated community care in County Durham.
Strengthening our ambitions for the new year The Integrated Care Board has been reflecting upon its progress during the last 12 months, thinking about what the future might hold for us and how to progress the work of the partnership to ensure we have the most positive impact. Last year saw an awful lot happen, including building on our work in developing TAPS, supporting and developing our staff through the leadership programme and cultural competency framework, honing governance structures, reviewing services and pathways, strengthening partnership working with the wider system including providers, the emergence of PCNs and establishing the PCN structure and the appointment of the Head of Integrated Commissioning along with a new model for an integrated commissioning function. Phew!!! All of this whilst continuing to deliver high quality services to the people of County Durham in an environment that is pressured due to demand and available resource. As we start a new year and in recognition of our ambition in County Durham to continue to develop our integrated offer, the board and partnership has reflected upon its profile and identity and has decided to be known as the County Durham Care Partnership. This reflects the need to have the care of our local people front and centre to our work and reinforces the uniqueness of County Durham in terms of our heritage and geography.
Along with our name change we have developed a new branding which, as previously, keeps the same key colours from Durham County Council and the NHS logos to represent our close partnership. We’ll be circulating a pack with full details of the new branding and copies of the logo and templates very soon for you to use across your channels and update current materials. We’ve also produced two new films under the Powered by People banner to showcase the effectiveness of the close partnership working that’s been developed in Durham and that underpins so much of our ambitions for the future. Check them out using the links below and see how to use them across your own channels and events. Strengthening our ambitions for the future in this way has given us a great start to the new year and on behalf of the County Durham Care Partnership, I’d like to wish all of our staff and stakeholders a happy and healthy 2020.
Appointment of Head of Integrated Strategic Commissioning It is our pleasure to announce that Sarah Burns is our new Head of Integrated Strategic Commissioning. This is an important step in our plans to join up the way health and social care services are commissioned in County Durham with the introduction of an integrated strategic commissioning function from April 2020. Many of you will already know Sarah from her work as Director of Commissioning, Strategy and Delivery for the North Durham and DDES CCGs and she brings a wealth of experience and knowledge to her new role.
“I’m really looking forward to making a difference to the way we commission services and think about the whole person. By having separate teams we have focussed on our own piece of the puzzle in terms of health and care services and making that as good as it can be. The new integrated team will help us to look at health and care commissioning in a much more holistic way. “We’ve already been working on a joint delivery plan for the next five years with our NHS provider partners and my first job will be to bring the two teams from the NHS and local authority together to form a single team. We need to make sure that we deliver the priorities we have set out in our plan which are all aimed at improving outcomes for people in Durham.”
“When we think of a person’s health and care needs separately, we don’t always think about the impact on the person as a whole,” Sarah explains. “We can miss opportunities and we can end up with duplication of services. This can lead to a poor experience and poorer outcomes for people.”
New Care Home Trusted Assessor Model CHS Healthcare are building on their successful Durham brokerage service which has been operating since November 2018, to deliver an additional Care Home Trusted Assessor Model. Trusted Assessment will work closely with care homes, patients/families and the commissioners of services to support safe and timely discharges into care homes for hospital based patients. There are many benefits to adopting the Trusted Assessor Model including a reduction in delayed transfers of care and an improved patient flow process. It is proven that delays result in patients spending longer periods of time in acute or community-based hospital beds which contribute to muscle wastage and reduced mobility. Patients also have an increased risk of contracting infection or delirium which can result in providers missing out on timely placements. Pre-admission assessments will be carried out by an independent qualified Band 6 RGN who will gather information and make a judgement based on medical knowledge and experience using the agreed Pre-Admission Assessment Tool.
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Contact - paul.goodwin@durham.gov.uk
Films showcase the close partnership working in County Durham As Lesley mentioned above, two short films have been produced as part of the Powered by People initiative to showcase the close partnership working that’s been forged between health and social care providers in Durham and how this is driving our ambitions for the future. The first film looks at the value of the strong partnership working that’s been developed with insight from key players across the health system in Durham, including Integrated Care Board members. The second film focusses on the people that make this happen and the excellent work being carried out across the county, produced largely as a recruitment tool to attract more people to work in the region’s health sector. These films are available to be used in your communications, events and presentations and to be shared widely across local health and care organisations. You can view both the Partnership and the People films on Durham County Council’s youTube channel. Downloadable versions are also available by contacting Paul Goodwin at paul.goodwin@durham.gov.uk
County Durham Health and Social Care Public Congress
In the News!
Celebrating our TAP 2 Easington STARS! TAP 2 Easington team are proud winners of the CDDFT ‘Working Together For Patients’ STAR award.
Thursday 26 March 10am-4pm at Hardwick Hall Sedgefield You are invited to a special stakeholder event to hear more about the innovative work taking place across County Durham within your local health and social care system. There’ll be an opportunity to discuss current plans as well as how we can work together as a community to shape services in the future. Key to the success of this work is the sharing of information and listening to and engaging with the populations living and working in County Durham. So, as well as an extensive line up of keynote speakers from across the health system in County Durham and case studies showcasing some of our teams and services, we are also looking forward to hearing from you on how we can take this work forward in the future. Keynote speakers from health and social care partners so far include:
• Welcome and national context:
Hugh McCaughey, National Director of Improvement NHS • CCG – ICS / ICP and County Durham Plan: Dr Stewart Findlay, Chief Officer Durham CCGs and Dr Neil O’Brien, Accountable Officer/ Clinical Chief Officer Durham CCGs Chief Officer Durham CCGs • Local Integration-benefits and outcomes: Lesley Jeavons, Director of Integrated Community Services • Integrating strategic commissioning functions: Sarah Burns - Head of Integrated Strategic Commissioning • CDDFT – Centres of Excellence/Community Services: Sue Jacques, Chief Executive CDDFT • Public Health – Prevention: Amanda Healy Director of Public Health, Durham County Council If you would like to be part of these discussions please register for the event through eventbrite and for further details please contact Tina Balbach or Rachel Rooney.
The award recognises how all colleagues in the TAP go above and beyond to ensure quality and commitment is provided in community nursing to ensure the highest levels of patient safety. Staff were praised for supporting each other on the ground with the TAP lead providing visible support by carrying out visits as well as management responsibilities. There was also felt to be a real ethos across the TAP of treating staff and patients with dignity and respect in a positive working environment, making the team a place where people want to belong and enjoy working. Well done TAP 2 Easington!
Nurse and social care teams move to Richardson Hospital
NURSES and social workers have relocated to the Richardson Community Hospital in Barnard Castle, enhancing services at the facility . . . Find out more >
Joining up health and social care services in Durham By Simon Henig, leader of Durham County Council. Find out more >
Contact - paul.goodwin@durham.gov.uk
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Updates from across the Partnership
Improving Community Heart Failure services The Community Coronary Heart Disease (CHD) and Heart Failure Service (HF) in County Durham and Darlington is a well-established service offering specialist nursing input into the care and management of patients with acute and chronic cardiac conditions. The service is looking at a range of new initiatives that will improve the care of heart failure patients by reducing admissions and lengths of stay, improving current therapies and supporting palliative/end of life care. There are also plans to increase provision for heart failure cardiac rehabilitation across the county. As part of the new community contract the service is also well placed to collaborate further with district nurses and community specialist practitioners to improve the care of patients with multiple comorbidities and to prevent unnecessary hospital admissions. Following a successful British Heart Foundation pilot study there are plans to introduce the provision of community intravenous diuretics for patients experiencing worsening of their heart failure symptoms. It is hoped that this will see more patients treated at home rather than in hospital, with closely monitored by the Community Heart Failure Service working closely with cardiologists in hospital. Another service development is the provision of Subcutaneous Furosemide at home for end of life care for patients with end stage heart failure. This will be available to clinicians when caring for patients who may be experiencing worsening heart failure symptoms at the end of life stage of their illness. The heart failure service will oversee this treatment. The care plan for this has been agreed with our Palliative Care colleagues and is currently progressing through the governance process. There are plans to expand the general cardiac rehabilitation provision helping to provide a more varied approach to meet patients’ needs and expectations which will shortly include introducing supervised home-based exercises programmes. For further information contact Caroline Levie or Aidan MacDermott (Matron Leads for CHD/HF)
What do you think of the new look Bulletin? We’re keen to get your feedback on the new design - and if you have any updates, news or items you’d like to share in the next edition of the CDCP Bulletin (due out March) please contact: Paul Goodwin at: paul.goodwin@durham.gov.uk or on 03000 265 627 / 07788 363205
C3 change of name and number On 6 February CDDFT’s Care Coordination Centre (C3) became the Community Health Services single point of access (SPA) when they moved to the Spectrum building in Seaham to join Social Care Direct. The move to integrate the teams also means that for the first time both community health and social care services can be now accessed using a single telephone number: 03000 267979. Please make a note of the new number and use it from now on for all health and social care referrals. Calls using the old C3 number will automatically be re-directed for a three-month period.
Improving Emergency Health Care Plans A multi-agency task group has been established to oversee a range of quality improvements aimed at promoting the effective production and use of EHCPs for better patient care and outcomes. An Emergency Health Care Plan (EHCP) makes communication easier in the event of a health care emergency. It can give direction for carers, such as who to call or what first aid can be used, and more detailed advice for professionals and emergency teams. This could be, for example which drugs to use or what treatment would be appropriate in these situations. While EHCPs will likely result in more patients remaining at home and dying in their usual place of residence, for some patients the plan will be to admit to hospital for acute medical care. Dr David Oxenham, County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust’s consultant in Palliative Care, explains: “Planning in advance is increasingly important for patients to make sure they get the care that they want. Because everyone is individual, creating an EHCP can be easy or very complex. As a group of professionals from different organisations we are delighted to be making progress though also aware that there is lots more to do.”