Innovating care in the community

Abstract

The move to care in the community is a key feature of NHS policy aimed at delivering better care while reducing costs. A multi-award-winning service in Oxford is leading the way in innovative community care, making a real difference to improving patient health and wellbeing. The Oxford Emergency Multidisciplinary Unit in Abingdon, Oxford was set up to meet the urgent assessment and treatment needs of patients with multiple, often complex problems, many of whom are frail and elderly. The unit provides comprehensive medical, nursing, therapist and social care assessment, supported by advances in ‘point-of-care’ diagnostic technology that provide test results within minutes of patients' arrival. This successful project has led to duplicate units not only in the Oxford region, but across the UK.

Acute care models for older people living with frailty: a systematic review and taxonomy

“…The provision of tailored bed-based in-patient care for frail adults as a direct alternative to treatment on a general medical ward was described in 32 articles derived from 24 studies. This included 8 articles [15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22] reporting results from 6 randomised controlled trials, 1 trial protocol without results [23], 11 observational studies with a comparator group reported across 15 articles [24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38] and 8 descriptive studies without a comparator [39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46]. A detailed description of the care models is provided in Supplementary Table 2A.…”

“…The mean number of beds in each unit was 18 (SD 8). The number of beds was not reported in 3 studies [25,41,46]. A mobile model providing specialist consultations to patients within general medical bed was described in 3 studies [20,33,36] (and an integrated service with variable bed capacity operating within an acute medical unit in 1 study [45].…”