Going Home pilot project learning and next steps
Download (PDF 230.28 KB)Summary of report content
Healthwatch Lambeth and Heathwatch Southwark created the 'Going Home' pilot project to test out an approach for building a picture of older people’s experiences of health and social care services following a stay in hospital. This report presents the project’s key findings, maps how the insights have been used to date, and explores next steps.
The project was devised in response to the need for a better understanding of current transfer of care experiences during and after hospital
discharge – particularly the longer view of a patient’s recovery journey. It involved tracking the patient journeys of 9 older patients - five people who were discharged from St Thomas’ Hospital and four people discharged from King’s College Hospital.
Some of the key findings included:
· Participants reported generally good care during their stay in hospital; however, all were keen to leave.
· In addition to health fluctuations, most of our interviewees described feeling out of control, isolated and unhappy about their situations, which undermined their psychological wellbeing and affected their sense of recovery; notably, these feelings were experienced by family carers as well as those recovering from their hospital stay.
· Care from different agencies often appeared slow or disjointed, such as a two-week wait for a district nurse visit to replace dressings, lack of awareness about someone’s preferred name and prescription delays
Outputs from the project included:
- A report on the Southwark step-down pilot was published in February 2017
- A welcome pack for step-down scheme participants was created
- The experiences of our project participant discharged straight home was developed into a short film commissioned by both CCGs for the Quality Summit. It has since been used more broadly as a practitioner training resource to show the range of factors affecting the transfer of care and recovery journey.
- In summer 2016, the ‘Going Home’ pilot methodology was featured in an NHS quick guide 'on Discharge to Assess' as an example of patient engagement and feedback.