INITIATIVES helping patients who need assistance to return home for hospital or who have suffered a fall is set to be extended.
The Falls Response Service, which is run by Staffordshire Fire and Rescue Service to help cut ambulance wait times and hospital stays by getting residents back on their feet, has received thousands of calls since it went live in December 2022.
Meanwhile, the Home From Hospital Service went live in December 2023 and has been used more than 2,600 times to assist with discharging patients.
Chief Fire Officer Rob Barber, told the latest Staffordshire Fire and Rescue performance meeting:
“We’ve talked many times about the benefits of both of these provisions. They were both three-month pilots a number of years ago and we’ve just received further information that they are going to be extended, which is really positive.
“Home from Hospital goes through to March next year and the Falls Response Team through to December this year, but we’re expecting further funding coming from our health partners.
“I know from speaking with health colleagues that they’re really pleased with the provision. The discharge and settle in provision we’re doing through Home from Hospital has expanded massively.”
The fire service team took on new responsibilities in July 2024 to help patients settle in more smoothly at home once discharged from hospital and now completes six or seven jobs a day on average.
Mr Barber said:
“We’ve now fitted 513 key safes and we’ve completed 103 furniture movements. That means that people who couldn’t be discharged previously because of inappropriate layouts in the home can now go back to their home environment and they’re not staying and blocking a hospital bed.
“We’ve also completed 13 property inspections as well, to make sure grab rails and things like that are fitted and vulnerable members of the community can go and live independently in their own homes.
“Some of the little things that we knew we could do have a massive effect. If somebody can’t be returned to their home environment because carers can’t access the premises because there’s no key safe – it’s a five minute job for us to fit a key safe. Or if the layout of the downstairs isn’t appropriate and they couldn’t get the bed in the right place or there was furniture in the way, we could do that really quickly
“The knock-on-effect has a huge impact and benefit to the whole system. It’s not just a fire service benefit, it’s a system-wide impact, and it’s far more than a financial benefit to the organisation – it means we’re putting the patient at the centre of everything we do.”
Staffordshire Commissioner Ben Adams said:
“This is more than supporting the ambulance service in transport – it’s actually going way beyond, getting the environment ready for the individual coming back from hospital.
“The numbers that are then returning to hospital are greatly reduced, which means the beds are free. It’s a huge impact on public health.”
