Hospital at Home

About us

Hospital at Home (H@H) is a virtual ward within the Frailty service. It began at the L&D in 2015, and started at the Bedford site in early 2015.

We provide 1:1 nursing care, to ensure the nursing intervention is inclusive and personalised to each patient. We liaise with community services to carry out joint nursing care, or utilise other local services alongside our care to best support our patients. This leads to the concept that ‘the Hospital has no walls’, and creates a fluid healthcare provision for the Bedfordshire community.

We strive to maintain a culture of openness, where communication is valued and used to ensure our patients are receiving the support they need.

We are currently also piloting a ‘safety net’ service across both sites: this involves looking after patients that are almost ready to go home, but still need that little bit extra such as taking blood, observation monitoring, etc. Our team provide those short bursts of support or intervention in the form of clinical observation visits, blood monitoring, or simple follow-up phone calls.

 

Meet the team

The Hospital at Home service consists of:

• Cross-site
  • Birgit Spring-Morton-Holmes – Matron
    

• Bedford
  • Anna Szatkowska – Band 7
  • Sunil Heera – Bedford Site Administrator
  • x14 Band 6 nurses
• Luton
  • Hasna Laacouri – Band 7
  • Karen Herr – Luton Site Administrator
  • x9 Band 6 nurses

 

Our service

Referrals and treatment:

1. Patient referrals are accepted internally from our medical teams, therapists and nurses. We also take referrals from other Trusts.
2. The H@H nurse assessed referred patients, and accepts them to the caseload (if appropriate).
3. Once accepted, the patient remains under the care of their original consultant from the ward, for consistency and reassurance.
4. The consultant signs a transfer-of-care form which outlines what the treatment is going to be, when follow-ups are, and any diagnostics.
5. The completed assessments remain at the patient’s discharging address, no matter where this is, and can accessed by the patient at any time.