{"id":209380,"date":"2025-12-29T10:01:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-29T10:01:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/209380\/"},"modified":"2025-12-29T10:01:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-29T10:01:10","slug":"hospital-at-home-scheme-aims-to-revolutionise-nhs-care","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/209380\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Hospital at Home\u2019 scheme aims to revolutionise NHS care"},"content":{"rendered":"

Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for free<\/p>\n

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.<\/p>\n

After being diagnosed with a lung infection two weeks earlier, Jim Bradford is being discharged \u2014 not from a hospital, but from the comfort of his own living room.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The 84-year-old former boxer avoided hospital altogether after being referred to a \u201cHospital at Home\u201d team operating in Manchester.<\/p>\n

In the past 10 days, Bradford has been visited by GPs, occupational therapists and nurses, and his care has been overseen by a hospital consultant.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the first time I have had confidence in my healthcare,\u201d he said. \u201cInstead of me going to the hospital, they were coming to me. Out of the blue came this team who got me to breathe again and I\u2019ve got my life back.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bradford is one of 190 adults a day in Manchester who are receiving acute-level NHS<\/a> care in their own beds rather than on a hospital ward. <\/p>\n

The majority of routine investigations, including blood tests and ECGs, are carried out at home, while more complex tests are arranged through fast-track outpatient slots in hospital, allowing patients to return home the same day rather than occupy a bed overnight.<\/p>\n

\"JohnJohn Wild is an advanced clinical practitioner on the Hospital at Home team \u00a9 Colin McPherson\/FT<\/p>\n

\u201cWe try to do everything possible in a patient\u2019s home,\u201d said John Wild, an advanced clinical practitioner who has been regularly seeing Bradford. \u201cJim is one of the people we have managed to keep out of the hospital entirely.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Since April, the Hospital at Home service has saved more than 32,000 hospital bed days, according to the Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust, equating to an estimated cost-benefit of more than \u00a34mn.<\/p>\n

The number of patients being treated under the service is set to rise to 250 by the end of December \u2014 along with the capacity to treat an extra 36 flu patients<\/a> at home. <\/p>\n

The ambition to move care out of hospitals and into the community has underpinned several NHS strategies over the years, but hospitals have continued to see far higher rises in expenditure and staffing.<\/p>\n

The UK government\u2019s 10-year plan, published earlier this year, pledges to reverse this trend so that the share of expenditure on hospital care will fall \u201cwith proportionally greater investment\u201d in out-of-hospital care.<\/p>\n

\"SohailDr Sohail Munshi, joint chief medical officer of the Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust \u00a9 Colin McPherson\/FT<\/p>\n

A key part of this change will be the creation of a \u201cneighbourhood health service\u201d whose guiding principle is that people should be cared for at home wherever possible.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe aren\u2019t just saying it, we are doing it,\u201d said Dr Sohail Munshi, joint chief medical officer at the trust. \u201cIt\u2019s a massive cultural change \u2014 it\u2019s the future of the NHS.\u201d<\/p>\n

Munshi said the trust had found the health outcomes of people who are looked after at home were better than those being admitted to hospital with the same condition.<\/p>\n

Evidence collected by the Hospital at Home service shows that people recover more quickly in familiar surroundings, with fewer risks of falls or further infections, as well as a greater ability to stay connected to family and carers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cOld people become disoriented when they are admitted to hospital, they are disconnected from their family and loved ones, and they are not following their usual diet,\u201d said Munshi.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cSimply put, admitting a patient to hospital is a good way to make an older, frail person confused, disoriented and lonely,\u201d said Munshi.<\/p>\n

Claire Wilson, MFT\u2019s chief financial officer, said that traditional rigid divisions between hospitals, GP surgeries and community care had previously held back the desired shift from treating patients in acute settings and towards the community.\u00a0<\/p>\n

MFT is the largest local NHS Trust in England, made up of 10 acute hospitals, with a \u00a33bn annual turnover and 30,000 staff.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\"Montage<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThere is always a reason why it doesn\u2019t happen,\u201d she said. \u201cFinance is often a blocker and what we\u2019ve got here is a much more fluid approach which has enabled that much more flexible use of resources.\u201d<\/p>\n

She added \u201cYou are asking acute trusts to give up resources, so if they are part of the whole thing then it is much more likely to succeed.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we think about the future, it isn\u2019t that we are going to close a load of beds and escalation capacity,\u201d Wilson insisted. But the Hospital at Home model removes the need to build more acute wards to cope with growing demand, \u201cwhich we can\u2019t afford to do\u201d.<\/p>\n

For Munshi, the model should be a consistent part of the NHS offering across England. \u201cIt\u2019s what we would all want for our families,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":209381,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[163,521,85,46],"class_list":{"0":"post-209380","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-healthcare","10":"tag-il","11":"tag-israel"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209380\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/209381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}