This week Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust (SASH) has launched its enhanced frailty service to further support the care of older and frail patients.
As part of this, the Trust has opened a Frailty Same Day Emergency Care (SDEC) unit at East Surrey Hospital and has expanded its Geriatric Medicine Integrated Initiative (GEMINI) Acute Frailty Service.
The initiatives enable staff to rapidly identify people who are frail earlier and carry out comprehensive geriatric assessments and advanced care planning. All of this means frail and elderly patients are given the care they need sooner, allowing them to return to back to their own home, improving their recovery and wellbeing.
The new model, led by Clinical Director of Frailty, Iain Wilkinson, has been informed by national best practice, and the team behind it have been trialling it since April 2024.
The team have been working closely with external partners, including the South East Coast Ambulance Service (SECAmb), to expand the model to make best use of community services and alternative pathways, including virtual wards.
GEMINI will provide the Trust with accessible specialist frailty support across urgent and emergency care. The new Frailty SDEC will support same-day turnarounds, preventing older and frail patients from requiring an overnight admission to hospital. Enabling patients to return to the community as soon as it is safe to do so is important for improving patient recovery and wellbeing, and ensuring hospital beds are occupied only by people who need to be there.
This work will help reduce bed occupancy at the hospital by reducing the length of stay and admissions of patients, in turn, relieving pressure on the Emergency Department by reducing the time people have to wait for a bed.
Dr Iain Wilkinson, Clinical Director of Frailty at SASH said: “We are really excited to bring this new model of care to SASH. It is the right thing for our older patients and will help us link into the hospital as well as teams working in our local community. We know it’s going to be a lot of work and that this is just the start of an ongoing development of the services we offer.”
Renée Padfield, Executive Director of Operations at First Community Health and Care said: “‘The GEMINI frailty service at SASH is a fantastic addition to our wider frailty offer across East Surrey. Knowing the patients we care for in the community can access this specialist and expert care will help enhance the experience and outcomes for them. This is an exciting development, and we are looking forward to continuing to work with SASH on this important work.”
The enhanced service also supports the Trust’s successful Let’s Get You Home programme which helps patients return home, or to onward care once their treatment in hospital is complete.
Angela Stevenson, Chief executive said: “This is a really exciting new chapter for our hospital. A large portion of the population we serve is made up of elderly people. This service enables us to rapidly identify and assess our elderly patients, making sure the right care is provided sooner, increasing the numbers of people who are able to be discharged back to their own home, in turn, helping us reduce length of stay and bed occupancy.
“A lot of work has gone into this, and I am really proud of all those involved with the project, including our partners, as we know the hospital stay is just one part of the journey a patient takes to recovery.”