South West London CCG Annual Report and Accounts 2020/21

receive patients back from hospital when they are well enough is a vital part of making sure our hospitals have capacity to treat new patients. We have supported care homes in South West London to begin using NHS mail, which has accelerated the discharge process for patients from hospital back to their care homes. This is because patient identifiable information like medical records can be transferred securely through this system. In the past, care homes had not been able to receive this information electronically. We have also been working with local care homes to make sure that they are using the NHS England capacity reporting system, as a London wide view of bed capacity in care homes supports faster discharge from hospital and avoiding admission where possible. During the second wave, the main challenge to patient flow through South West London hospitals has been the availability of appropriate beds. As the number of Covid-19 patients being admitted increased, the infection prevention and distancing measures restricted bed availability. We also saw an increase in the number of patients being readmitted and more patients having to stay in hospital for more than 14 days in both intensive care and on general wards. We responded to these challenges by commissioning additional high intensity rehabilitation beds and reintroducing continuing healthcare assessments and teams to support discharge. We established a new Temporary Alternative Discharge Destination (TADD) care home with 11 beds in February 2021. Care home patients are moved to the TADD temporarily after being discharged from hospital, returning to their care home after having a negative test for Covid-19. This initiative has supported our hospitals and care homes release bed capacity where it was needed and protected vulnerable care home residents. Transforming outpatient services Before the pandemic, work was already underway between our GPs and Trusts to give patients greater control in how they manage their own conditions and access clinical support – including offering more remote outpatient appointments to save patients time and to reduce the environmental impact of our services. From March 2020 this work accelerated, with thousands of GP and outpatient appointments available over the phone or online, helping the NHS to remain open while keeping patients and our staff safe. We have worked hard to improve the compatibility of the digital systems used in primary care and hospitals so they can communicate more effectively and make sure that patients receive the appropriate services and treatments, whilst also having access to digital self-management tools. A revised Outpatient Transformation Programme has been launched to undertake a review of the digital systems in place and develop solutions to meet the needs of both patients and clinicians, while addressing health inequalities. 34 | NHS South West London Clinical Commissioning Group