‘Let’s get you home’ but ‘Let’s make it real’

Old and frail people are routinely discharged from the Royal Sussex County Hospital without proper discharge plans or advice.

A REVIEW conducted by HealthWatch Brightonand Hove on the experiences of older people being discharged from the Royal Sussex County Hospital, Brighton from July to September 2018, reveals community support often fails to meet expectations and does not help people cope independently at home, raising serious concerns about the quality and consistency of care planning and a lack of coordination and personalisation of care.

♦  59% people felt they were not involved or only partly in decisions about their care. Over half of these patients 53% felt they had not been asked for their opinion

♦  39% of all patients felt the advice they had received while in hospital was not good enough to prepare them for being at home. 44% of all patients felt they were either not ready or only partly ready to return home.

♦  At the time we spoke to hospital patients, only 3% had received written advice on discharge planning, 11 people had received a hospital discharge letter, and only two people had received a written care plan.

Fran McCabe, Chair of Healthwatch Brighton and Hove said: “One person told us about being asked to walk with a Zimmer frame to the toilet on the day of their discharge. Following a fractured hip this was the first time they had out of bed in a week. A cancer patient told about leaving hospital with no advice or information and ending up back in A&E a week later.

Overall people rate their care in the hospital and at home highly, but all too often they are not involved in their own care or discharge plans.”

David Liley, Chief Officer, Healthwatch Brighton and Hove added: “It is shocking that old and frail people are not being routinely involved in plans about their care at home after discharge from hospital.

“There are plenty of fancy policies and promises in the system, but we need to make them real. Solutions need to work in the boiler room, not just sound good in the Boardroom.”