Implementing an Acute Frailty Intervention Team in the South West New Forest

Community dwelling older people living with frailty can decompensate resulting in crisis (e.g. fall, sudden loss of mobility, delirium) This results in emergency call outs via carers, family or emergency call lines to their own GP or an emergency ambulance. In conjunction with South Central Ambulance Service we created a mobile triage team to provide rapid on site triage. This determined how ill the patient was, and the current impact on ADL function. Information was fed back to an experienced clinician to determine the best immediate management plan with the aim of avoiding unnecessary hospital admission.

Following completion of a successful project from March 2017 to December 2017in which we saw 326 patients 192 were looked after at home and 81 were admitted to hospital. The service has now been commissioned by West Hampshire CCG. This has resulted in expanding the team in both size and skill mix to cover the whole New Forest area over a 7 day period. We have clinical hubs at Lymington, Fordingbridge and Totton to allow integrated working with our GP colleagues, and community services.