St. Vincent’s University Hospital Highly Commended by HSE Excellence Awards – Community Medicine for Older Person’s Nursing Home Service Project

26th May 2016

Healthcare staff in the Community Medicine for the Older Person’s Services in St. Vincent’s University Hospital (SVUH) has been highly commended by the HSE Excellence Awards for their project on Community Medicine for Older Person’s Nursing Home (NH) Service. The hospital has been recognised as an exemplar site by the National Clinical Programme for Older People, Nursing and Midwifery Practice Development Units and the HSE. This project was 1 of 7 highly commended projects out of a total of 426 submitted projects.

Speaking about the award, Jonathan O’Keeffe CNSp Gerontology said:

“The project demonstrated that before the service came into being in 2010, a Nursing Home resident would be admitted with a chronic disease profile to the hospital but, would end up leaving the hospital without any follow up that would help support their discharge. Through this project we have continued to strive to improve care and quality of life for all Nursing Home patients within our catchment area through on-going audit, research and education. We are delighted that our hard work has been recognised.”

SVUH has 60+ Nursing Homes in its’ catchment area representing approximately 3,000 people (5-6% of all ED Admissions) with an average age of 83-86 years old and have significant frailty burdens.

The project commenced in 2010 and the clinical and economic impact of the project has meant that:

• The patients undergo a comprehensive geriatric assessment performed by the interdisciplinary team (CNS, Geriatrician, SLT & Physio) when they are admitted to the Emergency Department (ED)
• The patients receive integrated follow up from Direct Outreach staff
• There were 4 fewer transfers to the Emergency Department in SVUH per week
• There were 2 fewer admissions to the hospital per week
• Reduced length of stay from 11 to 7-8 days and annual cost savings of €258,720 for B&B costs alone.

The hospital submitted the project in early January this year. This involved the completion of a detailed on – line repository form incorporating the service structure, our work and achievements to date and how the service fits the HSE values. The presenting team to the HSE included: Jonathon O’Keeffe CNSp Gerontology, Dr. Graham Hughes Consultant Geriatrician, Colette Gill Senior SLT and Kathryn O’Reilly, Director of Nursing Altadore Nursing Home.

SVUH will expand this project to the in-patient strand of the service in the hospital over the coming months and the project team are actively assisting the development of this service at a national level also.

Issued 27th May 2016