OVERVIEW

At a time when every penny spent on healthcare is under scrutiny, the NHS is wasting billions of pounds each year with unnecessary hospital admissions. Since 2005 the number of hospital admissions has increased by 2.79 million and yet 30% of the patients occupying beds can be treated elsewhere.

With an increasingly aged population and more people suffering with long-term conditions, there needs to be a radical rethink as to the location of healthcare delivery. The assumption that hospital is the 'default setting' for treatment needs to be dispelled and a new era of community-based care needs to be encouraged.

Transferring services from the acute trusts to the community is seen as an essential strategy in achieving the £20bn productivity savings by 2015. The NHS spends £1.42bn each year on emergency admissions of patients suffering with chronic conditions. It is estimated that this amount can be reduced by 8-18% if these conditions were better managed through general practice and other local medical services. Older people account for 70% of hospital bed days; however, many could be looked after elsewhere, with 29% being inpatients purely as a result of inadequate social care.

Putting financial pressures and productivity targets aside, perhaps the most important reason for community-based care is simply that patients prefer to have their care provided closer to home. Two-thirds of people would prefer to die at home, but if current trends of hospital admissions remain by 2030 fewer than one in 10 of us will have that opportunity. Providing local services not only improves patient experiences but has a significant and positive impact on clinical outcomes.

The Department of Health Whole System Demonstrator trial was set up to explore the benefits of telecare and telehealth; two very important contributors in preventing unplanned and emergency admissions to hospital. The results have shown a 14% reduction in bed days and a 21% fall in emergency admissions, whilst visits to A&E also tumbled.

It is the desire to provide the right care, to the right patient, at the right time – and now with increasing importance – in the right place. The decision to close dedicated units in certain hospitals to concentrate specialist expertise in fewer sites has been met with much protest and would appear to defy the notion of keeping care closer to home, yet supporters insist health outcomes will improve.

By embracing integrated community-led healthcare programmes, can acute care providers be more able to treat those most in need, and can patients avoid unnecessary admission to hospital through improved local care?

At Community Led Care: Meeting needs closer to home a line-up of expert speakers will explore and discuss the opportunities that such transference of healthcare services from hospital to home can deliver. A series of case studies will allow delegates to hear of successful programmes that could provide benefit to their own organisations and patients, whilst the lively panel debate will allow for interactive contributions.