New joint team helping prevent lengthy hospital stays

A new Admissions Prevention team is successfully preventing lengthy hospital stays, freeing up much-needed A&E bed space in the Royal Sussex County Hospital (RSCH).

The cutting-edge team comprises social care workers, community nurses and physiotherapists.

The service is a partnership between Brighton & Hove City Council and the Sussex Community NHS Foundation Trust.

By ensuring early engagement with support providers, it aims to achieve better outcomes for patients, improve hospital flow, and promote independence while providing preventative care. And it’s working.

Promising outcomes

The Admission Prevention team was set up in June 2023 to address complex patient needs that prevented rapid discharge from the Emergency Department. The approach is already showing promising results.

Over the first year of operation, the team has supported more than 1,750 patients.

Of those, more than 1,000 patients have been supported to leave hospital quickly and provided with the support they need to continue treatment in the comfort of their own home.

The team is based in the patient handover area in A&E at RSCH, and works closely with the Southeast Coast Ambulance Service, the Integrated Discharge team and the Emergency Department team.

Working together to support patients

Councillor Tristram Burden, Cabinet member for Adult Social Care, Public Health and Service Transformation, said: “This team is such a great example of the power of partnership working between our city council and our NHS. The results speak for themselves.

“While the hospital still experiences challenges, the same-day discharge that the team is sometimes able to accomplish slashes waiting times and ultimately improves patient outcomes.

“This frees-up beds on the one hand, and reduces waiting times on the other, ensuring patients that might otherwise have gone into A&E get the right care and support in a more appropriate place.

“I am very grateful for the fantastic work our Admissions Prevention team is doing to support patients and the hospital emergency teams and look forward to their future success at improving health outcomes for patients.”