How Improved Care Home Standards Can Help to Reduce Hospital Admissions

• Improved Care Home Standards: Elevating care home standards can notably diminish hospital admissions for elderly residents. Enhancing accessibility to care, health guidance, and treatment within care facilities enables timely and adequate support, reducing reliance on hospitals.
• End-of-Life Care Focus: Standardizing specialized end-of-life care in care homes can curtail emergency admissions. This approach concentrates on delivering comprehensive care and treatment, minimizing the need for hospitalization during critical periods.
• Enhanced Medical Access: Direct access to GPs and trained diagnostic personnel within care homes, alongside regular health assessments, can effectively manage residents’ health conditions and curb illness escalation, enhancing their overall quality of life.
• Investment in Infrastructure: Tailored plans to bolster care options for residents, targeting common elderly ailments, can alleviate pressure on the NHS. Allocating resources for dedicated areas and amenities within care homes for end-of-life care can further mitigate hospital admissions.
• Financial Considerations: While funding is vital, focusing on fundamental plans to enhance care home infrastructure and services is equally crucial. Prioritizing investments in care home standards can foster a positive transformation in the care industry, benefiting residents and the healthcare system alike.

In 2016/17, there were 28,000 emergency admissions to NHS hospitals from care homes – a 62% increase over the 18,000 admissions recorded in 2010/2011.

Of these admissions, over 65% of them were for residents aged 80 and over.

This increase has weighed heavily on the NHS and, with an ageing population, it’s imperative that this burden is relieved. Could focusing on care homes be the answer?

A focus on care home standards

It’s no secret that the UK’s elderly population is only growing in number.

This portion of the population is the most likely to require emergency care – and that currently means heading to accident and emergency and being admitted straight to hospital.

However, there is a huge opportunity for care homes to help pick up the slack; to provide the necessary care and treatment for ill residents without them ever needing to visit the hospital.

How should this be approached?

The main focus would be to build a plan which improves the accessibility of care, health advice and treatment for residents.

End-of-life care is a specialisation which, if implemented in more care homes as standard, could reduce a great number of emergency admissions.

Direct contact to GPs and trained diagnostic staff, as well as regular assessments – whether in-house or from third-party personnel – could reduce the severity and amount of illness for residents, allowing them to enjoy a better quality of life which doesn’t have a bottleneck effect on the NHS.

How to achieve improved care home standards

Of course, funding is always a factor – and is a definite reason for existing limitations – but the fundamental plans behind a care home will also be influential.

With a bespoke plan in place to improve the root care options for residents – targeting common ailments for the over 65s, for instance – and providing areas and amenities designed solely on end-of-life care and treatment, the NHS could see a substantial weight lifted from its shoulders.

This would, in turn, do a great deal to improve the attractiveness of care home investment, and be a powerful image shift for the care industry as a whole.

Aedifice Partnership is a leading consultancy and project management firm specializing in delivering high-quality projects across various sectors, including care homes, residential properties, education establishments, and commercial properties.

Our range of services includes project management, chartered building surveys, CDM and quantity surveying among others.

At Aedifice Partnership, we manage new care home construction as well as refurbishment projects throughout the UK.

For further details on the services Aedifice Partnership offer contact us here.