
Patients across the region are set to benefit from the rollout of additional multi-disciplinary clinical hubs, designed to ensure 999 calls are receiving the most appropriate response, and reduce the number of patients being taken to emergency departments.
South East Coast Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust (SECAmb) is working with its four Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) and provider trusts across its region to initially introduce five new Unscheduled Care Navigation Hubs (UCNHs) this year.
These hubs build on the successful trials conducted in Kent & Medway over the past year, that have helped arrange appropriate care for patients, avoiding thousands of unnecessary emergency department attendances.
The additional rollout will start with a new hub in Strood, covering north Kent, which is expected to go live next week, with a hub at SECAmb’s Polegate Make Ready Centre, covering East Sussex, expected to begin operations in the coming weeks.
The hubs see SECAmb’s highly skilled clinicians joined by specialist teams from across the local healthcare system to ensure 999 calls are receiving the most appropriate response. The multi-disciplinary hubs complement SECAmb’s existing urgent care hubs, which provide support and advice to ambulance crews.
The introduction of the hubs, along with an overall increase in partnership working, is key to ensuring SECAmb delivers on its five-year strategy. The clinically-led strategy, launched in August, saw SECAmb set out its ambition to embrace new technologies and transition from a predominantly ambulance-based response model to a more differentiated approach, where the type of response is tailored to the individual needs of each patient.
The introduction of the Strood and Polegate hubs is expected to be followed by a third hub, based at the Trust’s Brighton Make Ready Centre.
It is hoped that two further hubs, covering east and west Surrey in Banstead and Tongham respectively, are expected to come online before the end of this year. These Surrey hubs will operate as fully-virtual models, allowing SECAmb and its partners to test this approach as a possible future operational model.
SECAmb currently operates two multi-disciplinary clinical hubs at its Make Ready Centres in Ashford and Paddock Wood, covering east and west Kent.
In its first year in operation, the hub in Paddock Wood helped avoid more than 1,200 emergency department admissions. The team also handled more than 3,600 clinical consultations which resulted in supporting approximately 200 medical and surgical same-day emergency care appointments and arranging around 200 GP appointments in emergency departments on behalf of patients.
A feasibility period over the coming months will test and evaluate the new hubs as SECAmb continues to develop its approach to increasing virtual care.
SECAmb Associate Director of Strategy and Partnerships, Matt Webb, said: “We are really pleased to be in a position to roll out additional multi-disciplinary hubs so that patients right across our region can start to benefit from us working more closely with our hospital and community trust partners.
“It’s clear from our existing hubs that this approach is reducing avoidable hospital attendances, ensuring more patients are receiving the right response the first time, and allowing us to better target our ambulance crews to attend our most seriously ill and injured patients."
SECAmb Practice Development Lead and Advanced Paramedic Practitioner (APP), Sean Edwards, who led on the establishment of the Trust’s Paddock Wood clinical hub said: “Our existing clinical hubs are ensuring a higher proportion of patients are being assessed and treated in the most appropriate place for their condition, freeing up ambulance resources and allowing emergency departments to care for the most seriously sick and injured. We are pleased we have recently extended the operating hours of our hub in Paddock Wood and we are excited to see this more collaborative approach extend across SECAmb.”