Hospital Discharge

3.6 Colchester General Hospital
Colchester General Hospital is an acute hospital
in North East Essex providing accident and
emergency (A&E), medical care, surgery, critical
care and other core services. During the months
of June, July, August and September 2015, a
total of 1,687 delayed transfer of care days were
reported at Colchester General Hospital (NHS
England, 2016). The majority of these delays were
due to one of the following reasons: time taken
to carry out assessments to determine patients’
ongoing healthcare requirements, patients
awaiting further non acute healthcare services,
determining available places for patients in
care homes or nursing homes, awaiting patient
or family decisions about care homes or care
packages, and awaiting the setting up of care
packages (ibid). A small number of days’ delay
were due to funding delays. These numbers are
not untypical when compared to other acute
hospitals. A minority of patients, those with
particularly complex discharge needs, contribute
greatly to these figures. Such statistics illustrate
the challenges and complex issues hospitals
face in finding satisfactory discharge outcomes
for these patients, and hint at the distress
experienced by patients and their families during
such lengthy and complex discharge processing.
3.7 Study design
One of the primary aims of Healthwatch Essex is
to work with the citizens of Essex, patients and
local health and social care providers to improve
local health and social care delivery. Therefore,
our study design was co-produced, 7 that is we
consulted with the public, patients and local
stakeholders to decide how we should plan and
execute our study. To achieve this we carried out
focus group meetings with various stakeholders
at all three hospital sites and at North East Essex
CCG. The study at Colchester General Hospital
was facilitated by the Medical Director, Dr Angela
Tillett, who supported the hospital’s involvement
in the study and helped identify suitable wards
and areas for the research team to work in, and
key staff to approach. Further preparation and
planning meetings took place with Dr. Oonagh
Corrigan and ward and discharge staff leads.
7 ‘Co-production in research aims to put principles of empowerment into practice, working with communities and offering communities greater control over the research process and providing
opportunities to learn and reflect from their experience.’ Durose et al. (2011)
7