The future of community healthcare

Bringing care closer to home
13 Community Hubs across Dorset
9 Community Hubs with beds
4 Community Hubs without beds
Additional 10,000 people will be supported in the community
Around 100,000 outpatient appointments will be moved from acute hospitals to the community

Bringing care closer to home

We believe that we can significantly reduce the number of people attending hospital by delivering more care closer to home. This means supporting people in community settings such as their own homes, making more services available in local communities, having health and social care working closely together to support people, better integrating physical and mental health services and developing community hubs across the county.

“Honestly I couldn’t go back and wouldn’t want to go back to what we had before – I wouldn’t accept it.”

Dr. Karen Kirkham, Weymouth GP

What is a community hub?

Often care professionals and teams can work independently, which means information on patients may not be shared in an efficient or timely way, possibly leading to delays in receiving care or opportunities missed for interventions. Working as part of a community hub or multi-disciplinary team means that teams collaborate and specialists work together on the same site for the benefit of the patient; they could sit in the same room and share their knowledge to help solve problems or streamline the care that people receive. It also means that a greater number of patients could be seen, making waiting times shorter.

Examples of community hubs

Christchurch Health Hub

Christchurch Health Hub is made up of Christchurch Hospital, (which includes x-ray, blood and therapy services), a doctors’ surgery, pharmacy, care home and assisted living accommodation. Together, these services provide the Christchurch community with all their non-acute care needs, saving them the journey into Royal Bournemouth Hospital or Poole Hospital. Having the health hub within the locality of Christchurch provides a convenient means of accessing healthcare in a friendly and familiar environment. It’s easy to get to via public transport and allows healthcare professionals to support their patients outside of an inpatient facility, which is better for patients’ independence and overall health.

Patient benefits – what this would mean for local people

More access to urgent and routine care for more hours of the day so that you can be seen more quickly and at a time that is convenient to you, with a range of services available 12 hours a day, seven days a week.

More support when you experience an urgent health or social care need, with rapid access to more care provided at home and at the community hubs with beds. We expect this to reduce unplanned acute hospital admissions growing by 25%.

More information and support so that you can take better control of your own health. We predict this would mean that 10% fewer people would need to attend
an outpatient appointment and that there’ll be a 25% reduction in follow-up appointments.

More rapid discharges back to your home after a stay in an acute hospital or community hub because of much closer working with social care.

LESS

Less need for you to travel to an acute hospital for care. We expect that more outpatient appointments and same-day treatments, the majority of phlebotomy and anti-coagulation services and most therapy services would be provided in a community setting rather than in an acute hospital.

Less time for you to wait for appointments, x-rays, diagnostic tests and results because they will be available locally at community hubs.

Fewer health complications and poor outcomes for people with long-term conditions and frail older people because of the support available locally from a mixed team of health and care professionals.

Less need for you to repeat your health history to different staff because they would all have access to same patient information. This will reduce the possibility of there being errors with your care. You would also be able to access your own health records.