Wirral University Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust’s Clatterbridge Hospital has partnered with Four Seasons Health Care to set up and jointly operate a new 30-bedded intermediate care service for the hospital’s patients.

The Grove Discharge Unit at Clatterbridge Hospital, the new facility that has been set up to provide this service, was officially opened last week.

This is a flagship partnership for Four Seasons, as it is the first such contract for an intermediate care service located on a hospital site.

The Grove Discharge Unit brings together the NHS with a social care provider, to offer a care pathway to support patients to rehabilitate and get back home as quickly as they can and as independently as they can. It provides short-term care for patients who have had their medical condition stabilised and acts as a stepping stone between an acute hospital ward and returning home or moving on to community-based care in a care home or assisted living.

It will reduce delays in discharges from hospital and improve patient flow within the hospital. It will also facilitate reduced rates of patient re-admission to hospital.

The Grove Discharge Unit is a Transfer to Assess Unit, where patients receive care to support rehabilitation and maximise their independence, while assessment of their longer-term care and support needs and planning to meet those needs is undertaken.

Intermediate care is an integrated multi-disciplinary service. Four Seasons is providing management of the unit along with the nursing and care staff. The Trust is providing dedicated physiotherapists, occupational therapists and a consultant geriatrician and there is primary care medical oversight from a local GP Practice.

This Intermediate Care facility does not replace any of Clatterbridge Hospital’s wards. It takes pressure away from the hospital’s acute wards and those at the Trust’s Arrowe Park Hospital, so that they can concentrate more on acutely unwell patients requiring greater medical need.

The new service has been rated as “good” overall by the Care Quality Commission, following an unannounced inspection. It was also rated as good against each of the core inspection themes of being safe, being caring, providing effective care, being responsive to patients’ needs and well-led. The inspectors said that people’s outcomes were consistently good and their positive feedback confirmed this.

www.wuth.nhs.uk
www.fshc.co.uk