Cabinet Secretary praises Hospital at Home
Cabinet Secretary for NHS Recovery, Health and Social Care Neil Gray MSP has praised the work of Healthcare Improvement Scotland in the Hospital at Home programme.
Hospital at Home is designed to treat patients at home, without the need to be separated from family and friends.
Mr Gray gave the opening address at the first National Hospital at Home Event, held on 29 October at the voco Grand Central Hotel in Glasgow. More than 200 people, from 13 Scottish health boards, were in attendance. The event focussed on the different Hospital at Home pathways. These included care for older adults, and for younger people through paediatrics.
The event had nine guest speakers, including:
- Zoe Tribble, Senior Paediatric Nurse and Nurse Leader at Barts Health
- Christine Newbould, a Registered Children’s Nurse with Oxford Health NHS TrustSpeakers from NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde and NHS Lothian
“I’m very grateful to Healthcare Improvement Scotland for their leadership and helping to support people from all over Scotland to develop the Hospital at Home and frailty services. This will ensure people feel supported and they can grow those services.”
Cabinet Secretary for NHS Recovery, Health and Social Care
Mr Gray said:
“The collaboration will, I hope, help them take that home. This will ensure that we share best practice as we address some of the challenges there are in creating new systems.
“We can build systems that meet the needs of people in shifting that balance of care – getting people out of hospital and into community and home-based services.”
During the morning session, talks were held on how our organisation has redeveloped the guiding principles document for October 2020, looking at older adults. A new guiding principles for paediatrics will be developed in due course.
A number of workshops were held, discussing areas such as patient experience, heart failure and respiratory conditions, developing new or established services and paediatrics. There were also breaks for networking.
Healthcare Improvement Scotland Chief Executive Robbie Pearson said: “I am delighted that the Cabinet Secretary had such high praise for our colleagues in delivering Hospital at Home.
“Hospital at Home is a very practical demonstration of the commitment to deliver safe and effective care closer to home – and which promotes people to lead independent lives for as long as possible.
“I am grateful to the teams across the country – supported by the staff in Healthcare Improvement Scotland – who are expanding this vital service across Scotland.”
One of those attending was Healthcare Improvement Scotland chair Evelyn McPhail.
She said: “It was great to have the Cabinet Secretary attend in person and be so supportive of the work that Hospital at Home is doing in general, but also the work that Healthcare Improvement Scotland is doing specifically, to support the development of this really important service across Scotland.”
Belinda Robertson, our Associate Director of Improvement within Nursing and Systems Improvement, attended.
She added: “It’s a really exciting opportunity to look at what the next steps are for Hospital at Home. The Cabinet Secretary talked about shifting the balance of care out of acute and into care closer to home, through primary community care. That’s essential to the next steps in the recovery and reform for the health service in Scotland.
“Hospital at Home provides an opportunity that we haven’t really had before. Or to expand services to a much broader audience. Our challenge is going to be doing that in a way that we don’t set up silo services and that’s why events like this are really helpful.
“It allows people to come together and to understand how they can maximise their resources while sharing learning and capacity.”
The event took place as Hospital at Home published new guiding principles for all adult services. This was an update to our previous publication which focussed on services for frail older adults.
The new principles include new guidance on respiratory and heart failure in adult Hospital at Home pathways, and assistance on the planning of specialist services which supports people to receive hospital-level care at home or in their homely setting.
It can be used alongside support from Healthcare Improvement Scotland and the Scottish Hospital at Home community.