An Integrated Partnership – Transforming St Luke’s

On 19^th June 2015, Community Integrated Care will be hosting a special celebration with Halton CCG to celebrate our partnership to transform St Luke’s Care Home, Runcorn, into a genuine centre of excellence for dementia care. This event will officially open our jointly funded refurbishment of the home, as well as celebrate the impact of our integrated approach on the lives of the people we support.

We’ll be telling you more about our event in the coming weeks, but for now, we want to share with our supporters a snapshot of the amazing results of our partnership.

Here’s some highlights of the St Luke’s story….

Community Integrated Care and Halton CCG have come together achieve the ambitions of the Care Act by turning a traditional care home into a national centre of excellence. This is a stunning example of true integration, with CCG clinical specialists working closely with the home’s colleagues to keep people healthier, happier and independent for longer. This has reduced demand on local health services, saved hundreds of thousands of pounds and measurably improved lives. 

The aims of our partnership:

St Luke’s is the only specialist dementia care home in the Runcorn, Halton. It previously had major occupancy issues and a traditional approach to care, and was at risk of closure. But in the new CCG regime, Community Integrated Care, Halton Council and Halton CCG came together to not just save it – but to transform it too.

This partnership has seen clinical experts work within the home – ensuring resident’s health needs are met at St Luke’s, not in hospital, and in doing so reduced pressure on the NHS. It has also included new approaches to training, care delivery and a significant investment in improving the living environment.

How we achieved it:

At the start of the partnership, a multidisciplinary project team was established – featuring lead members of the CCG, local authority and Community Integrated Care. Together, they identified that people with acute dementia needs were not properly supported by existing provision within Borough, escalating the need for hospital interventions. By adding clinical input to the service, it could meet this additional need, specialise provision and make the home viable.

The Clinical Lead and Dementia Lead for Halton CCG worked alongside staff at the home to identify opportunities to improve provision. As a result, the service now receives on-going support from a CCG team that includes: RMN Advanced Practitioners, OT’s and Behavioural Specialists. Additionally, every St Luke’s staff member received a suite of genuinely specialist training.

The home also received a £100,000 investment from the CCG in December 2014 (an unprecedented commitment in times of austerity), to create a more dementia friendly living environment.

Our Results:

The partnership has had a dramatic effect on local dementia provision. St Luke’s now supports Halton’s most high-need individuals and has significantly reduced the need for hospital interventions – reducing the demand on local authority and NHS resources. But most importantly, it has transformed the lives of residents and their loved ones, made the home viable and given staff an incredible career experience.

• The home is now sustainable and secure in the long-term – with occupancy rising from 40% to 100%
• The CCG believe that this upfront investment has saved hundreds of thousands of pounds by removing the need for long-term hospital interventions
• It has had a 55% reduction in hospital admissions by residents. All admissions have been due to acute ill-health, rather than challenges in supporting very complex people.

Amazingly, these results were achieved with relatively little upfront financial investment, but rather through a reconfiguration of existing resources.

What we learned:

This project shows that the aims of the Care Act – integration; upfront investment to reduce long-term demand; preventing the escalation of needs; concentrating on the outcomes people want to achieve – can be achieved to the benefit of the person supported, tax payer and community.

Find out more:

The leads of the project, Cath Murray Howard – our Deputy Chief Executive, and Dave Sweeney – Director of Transformation at Halton CCG – discussed our integrated partnership in this video filmed at the National Dementia Congress: