Agenda item

The Assistant Director, Communities and Wellbeing will report at the meeting.  Report attached.

Linda Jackson, Assistant Director of Operations, presented members of the committee with an update in respect of the delayed transfers of care for Bury.  The presentation contained the following information:

A patient is ready for transfer when:

A clinical decision has been made that the patient is ready for transfer and,

A multi-disciplinary team decision has been made that the patient is ready for transfer and,

The patient is safe to discharge/transfer.

639 bed days were lost due to delays in October for Bury Local Authority area, a 3.4% increase on the previous month.  222 days were lost due to delays awaiting a care package in the patient’s own home and 197 days were lost due to delays in waiting for further NHS non-acute care.

Reasons for those patients that were medically fit for discharge were as follows:

·         Increase in those awaiting a social work assessment

·         Increase in those awaiting continuing health care screening and transfer to community teams

·         Reduction in those waiting to go into a residential and nursing home

·         Issues resulting from the Mental Capacity Act.

The Assistant Director of Operations, reported that there is no one single project designed to improve the situation for Bury  but a range of initiatives which include; Bury Urgent Care Partnership Group, further data collection review, deeper local dive into the National Data Categories, discharge tracker and the north east sector discharge group.

Members present were given the opportunity to ask questions and make comments and the following points were raised:

The Chief Operating Officer Bury CCG reported that the number of emergency bed days lost in Bury is one of the lowest in the country.  The readmission rates following discharge at Fairfield is the best in the North of England.

The Assistant Director of Operations reported that she chairs the North East Sector Discharge Group, the model at North Manchester is different to that which operates at other sites.  The Group is reviewing how the service is provided on that site and any good practices/lessons learnt will be shared within the group.

In response to a query raised in respect of onsite social worker assessments, the Assistant Director of Operations reported that the onsite social worker would undertake the assessment initially, the information would then be transferred to the Local Authority Social worker where the patient is a resident.

In response to concerns raised by members in respect of a greater number of patients being treated further from their home as a result of the Healthier Together proposals and the impact this would have on delayed discharges; the Assistant Director of Operations reported that a Greater Manchester Discharge Group will look and track all patients.  A scheme is being piloted within the Pennine Acute footprint in respect of “discharge to assess” if successful this would be rolled out across Greater Manchester.

Members of the Committee discussed staffing issues within social care including problems with capacity, job progression, working with service users with multiple conditions and the impact of the living wage.

In response to a Member’s question the Assistant Director of Operations agreed with the comments that discharge planning needs to begin from the day the patient is admitted.  The Trust Development Agency as part of review work undertaken at Pennine Acute has identified areas of improvement in respect of discharge.

It was agreed:

The Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee will continue to monitor incidents of delayed transfers of care and in particular the work undertaken in respect of the recommendations from the Trust Development Agency report.