RightCare Barnsley win HSJ award

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RightCare Barnsley won a Health Service Journal (HSJ) Value in Healthcare award last night in the clinical support services category.

The programme, which is run collaboratively between Barnsley Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) by Barnsley Hospital and South West Yorkshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, helps people get the treatment and care that they need without being admitted to hospital thanks to a co-ordination service for GPs and other healthcare professionals.

This means that when a GP rings, RightCare Barnsley can assess the patient’s clinical needs and identify what is available and can be organised for them. This allows the patient to stay at home and frees the GP to care for other patients rather than spending time securing services.

Over 1000 patients whose care has been co-ordinated through RightCare Barnsley have avoided being admitted to hospital over the past 10 months since the service started.

Hosted last night by comedian Alun Cochrane, the HSJ Value in Healthcare awards recognises and rewards outstanding efficiency and improvement by the NHS, including excellent use of resources.

Brigid Reid, chief nurse Barnsley CCG said: “We’re extremely proud to receive this prestigious award for the work RightCare Barnsley has achieved in its first year of operation, not least as this is making a real difference to Barnsley people – patients, relatives and healthcare staff. For many, hospitals are absolutely the right place for people to be treated but actually, as we’ve seen over the past year, there are also lots of times when people can be cared for more effectively by community services and social care and this service makes those arrangements for referring health care staff freeing them up to carry on caring for their patients.

“RightCare Barnsley currently enables avoidance of a hospital admission 32% of the time and is now embarking on supporting Barnsley Hospital to ensure all services are in place for those who need them on discharge. Staffed by both community and hospital nurses, RightCare Barnsley is an excellent partnership service which has real value for patients and all services in the borough and to have this recognised with this award is fantastic and adds to our motivation to do more.”

Sean Rayner, district director for services in Barnsley and Wakefield at South West Yorkshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, said: “This is a great service that has really helped to improve the efficiency of care provided to the local community. We’re really pleased to see that it’s received the national recognition it truly deserves.”

The Kirklees and Calderdale Police Liaison team were also nominated for a HSJ Value award last night following the Trust’s mental health practitioner’s work alongside officers at stations and on scene at incidents. Since their work began, there has been a 54% reduction in the number of arrests under ‘breach of the peace’ for people identified as having a mental health condition, leading to an improved experience of service users in crisis.

Congratulations to both teams for their nominations and success.

RightCare Barnsley win HSJ award

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