Urgent treatment centre and day surgeries aim to lighten hospital's load

Tuesday 29 October 2019

A new 'urgent treatment centre', more day surgeries and increased care in the community are all part of a new package of measures being proposed by the government to transform healthcare and lighten the hospital's load.

The release of the Jersey Care Model, which has been unanimously approved by the Council of Ministers, marks a major step in the 'Our Hospital' project. The government had previously said that it needed to establish what the future of care in Jersey would look like before deciding what elements a new hospital would need.

The new care model has been developed over the past few months by Health and Community Services, working with its own clinical specialists – surgeons, consultants, doctors and nurses – as well as GPs and dentists, optometrists and pharmacists, community and voluntary organisations, and care homes.

It follows an analysis of data about the provision of health and hospital services in Jersey, which found that, last year, the hospital dealt with:

• around 30,000 Emergency Department patient visits that weren’t emergencies 
• at least 40,000 outpatient visits to treat long-term conditions that could have been better managed by GPs

Pictured: A representation of the current care model.

The Jersey Care Model therefore proposes to move some health and social care services into the community, to avoid islanders having to come to the hospital for routine and non-urgent appointments whilst making sure the hospital concentrates on “the specialist and emergency care, full intensive care and maternity services that only a hospital can provide".

Most of the plan focuses on offering care in the community through ‘Rapid Response and Reablement’, where care is provided by qualified professionals to those who do not need to be in hospital and can be cared for safely in their own home, or in another community setting. 

Pictured: The new care model focuses on care in the community.

As part of the new model, the government also proposes to: 

• Do more to help islanders to look after their own health;
• Provide thousands of outpatient appointments in the community, so islanders don’t have to come into the hospital;
• Do more for people with long-term conditions such as offering treatment through GP practices;
• Work with expert partners in the community and the voluntary sector to boost Island-wide care services;
• Establish a new urgent treatment centre, to offer islanders the urgent care they need, while ensuring that the Emergency Department only treats genuine emergencies;
• Do more day surgery to keep people out of hospital;
• Continue to improve mental health services;
• Make more care available at night - currently at night there is very little help and care for people to access, apart from the hospital and the GP Co-op and one late-night pharmacy;
• And do more work with people with cancer in the hospital, so we don’t need to send so many patients to the UK for treatment.

The model also aims to ensure that the needs of Jersey’s growing, older population are met.

Pictured: The model also aims to ensure that the needs of Jersey’s growing, older population are met.

At present, a large proportion of care for this group is based in institutions, including the hospital and care homes, because there is insufficient community care to support older people to live independently.

The Health Department said it is developing new ways of commissioning and paying for services, to ensure that they remain accessible and affordable under the new plans. 

“We know our health and social care services need to change to meet the needs of Islanders for the future,” Deputy Richard Renouf, Minister for Health and Community Services, said.

Pictured: Deputy Richard Renouf, Minister for Health.

“We celebrate the fact that people are living for longer than in past generations, but older people often have more complex health needs to manage, which could require more care and treatment as a result.  

“We need to do some work now to update our health and social care services, for instance by moving services that don’t need to be provided in the hospital into the community, so care is delivered in the right environment and is easier to access. But we will continue to provide the full range of specialist, emergency and intensive care in the hospital, alongside maternity services, and we will seek to bring more care into the hospital that is currently provided in the UK.”