About Us
We are a 10-bed nurse-led unit staffed by a multi-disciplinary team including a dedicated ward pharmacist, physiotherapist, occupational therapist, nurses and activities coordinator. We aim to provide patients with a maximum stay of 21 days. It is a nurse-led unit, with a contactable doctor between 9 am-5 pm, Monday to Friday and emergency doctor cover during out-of-hours. The unit is open 24 hours a day all year round.
Our service is available to people over the age of 18 who are registered with a GP within the Bexley borough, including Kent.
Our Aim & Objectives
■ To target people who would otherwise face unnecessarily prolonged hospital stays or inappropriate admission to acute in-patient care, long-term residential care, or continuing NHS in-patient care.
■ Based on comprehensive assessment, we structure individual care plans that involve active therapy, treatment, or opportunity for recovery.
■ Planned outcome, maximising independence and typically enabling patients/users to resume living at home.
■ We aim to time limit to no longer than six weeks and more often as little as one to two weeks.
■ To involve cross-professional working with a single assessment framework, single professional records and shared protocols.
■ We form an integrated part of a seamless continuum of services linking health promotion, preventative services, primary care, community health services, social care, support for carers and acute hospital care.
We work in line with the Standard NHS Framework for Older People
We aim to provide older people will have access to a new range of intermediate care services at home or in designated care settings, to promote their independence by providing enhanced services from the NHS and councils to prevent unnecessary hospital admission and effective rehabilitation services to enable early discharge from hospital and to prevent premature or unnecessary admission to long-term care:
■ responding to, or averting, a crisis
■ active rehabilitation following an acute hospital stay
■ where long-term care is being considered.
■ reducing the number of delayed discharges of older people
■ reducing preventable hospital admission and re-admission of older people
■ speed at which older people’s needs are assessed.
Who could benefit from the service?
Many people receive care and support in environments that are inappropriate for their needs. This is happening in
■ acute hospital beds
■ long-term residential care
■ the community.
A significant proportion of these people could benefit from intermediate care if the right support were available. Furthermore, if people could be identified as at risk of increasing dependency at an earlier stage, they could be managed more effectively, thus avoiding the necessity for crisis management. Managing this group differently could mean that a significant proportion will not need hospital admission.
The various community services we work with include:
■ rapid response
■ crisis care
■ early supported discharge
■ community rehabilitation teams
Call or email us to discuss your care needs:
London: 0208 768 5746 info@comfortsupport.co.uk
