Annual Report and Accounts - The Great Western Hospital

3.28 Working with our partners to strengthen the service we
provide
During the course of the year significant effort has gone in to focussing on how the Trust can
achieve its objectives through better working in partnership with local key stakeholders. The
merger with Wiltshire Community Health services (WCHS) in June 2011 presented a unique
opportunity to shift from being an acute hospital provider to being an integrated healthcare provider
with much closer links to GPs, Local Authorities and the Third Sector in particular.
This shift has also seen the Trust operate across a much wider geographical area and has required
us to build greater knowledge of the surrounding area and an understanding of the partnerships
there so we can tap into the effective relationships that already exist on the ground.
As evidence of our commitment to working in partnership, work has taken place with our partners
to:
• Redesign the Older People’s Pathway with the aim of making the best use of providing both
acute and community services under a single organisation so that the various stages of
clinical care for an elderly patient are provided in the appropriate setting and in a timely
fashion.
To be successful this project involves a wide variety of local stakeholders including our
commissioners, Clinical Commissioning Group, and Acute Geriatric Medicine Consultants,
Social Care, and Community Hospital representatives.
The group aims to reduce reliance on the acute sector to provide clinical care, support more
care in the community or at home and reduce the risk of elderly patient becoming
institutionalised in hospital due to the challenges of getting social care and other support
services in place following long stays in hospital.
• Instigating a project to improve patient flow not only to reduce the amount of time patients
spend in our hospitals but to improve their overall NHS experience whether they come to us
through their GP or through the Emergency Department. This work relies on close working
with our partners in social care to support patients and users in getting back to where they
originally came from and then working closely together to develop effective plans to prevent
unnecessary readmission. The work of our Discharge Liaison Nurses is instrumental in this
area in working with social care to help ease the transition from hospital back into the
community.
• Engage more with the emerging Clinical Commissioning Groups to secure early GP input
into discussions around pathways and potential future commissioning intentions so that
services are built around our customers – patients and GPs.
Over the coming year the Trust will be engaging with GPs to secure their input into the
development of the Trust strategy running from 2012 – 2017. This is to ensure that our new
strategy reflects future commissioning intentions and is responsive to the rapid changes in
the local health economy.
• Regular attendance at Wiltshire Involvement Network (WIN) to discuss key developments in
the community and at the GWH which is helping establish more productive working
relationships in an area that the Trust had not previously engaged with.
This relationship will continue to develop as we engage with them on changes to local
community services in the years ahead.
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