West Lancashire Adult Community and Urgent Care Services

Over the past three years, we have:

• Brought community service colleagues, previously dotted around the district, together in to two bases – Bickerstaffe House at Ormskirk and District General Hospital and Clayton House in Burscough (now our District Nursing base).
• Developed our district nursing hub, providing colleagues with new equipment, processes and training to help them do their jobs. We’ve increased the number of phlebotomists and supported colleagues in gaining Specialist Practitioner Qualifications.
• Opened our Diabetes and Community Services Centre at Bickerstaffe House in August 2018. In March 2019, Diabetic Retinopathy Eye Screening (DRES), a service provided by Aintree Hospitals NHS Trust, co-located within our Diabetic and Community Services Centre to offer patients eye screening locally within Ormskirk.
• Launched a successful pulmonary rehabilitation programme for patients with lung conditions like asthma and COPD. This was the first time such a programme was available in a community setting in West Lancashire.
• Refurbished Skelmersdale Walk In Centre to create more consulting rooms. This allows community teams to deliver clinics and care closer to patients living in Skelmersdale. We created dedicated areas in both West Lancashire Urgent Treatment Centre and Skelmersdale Walk In Centre for sick children to provide a calm and therapeutic environment, and recruited paramedics, with their unique set of skills, to provide additional support to patients at the urgent care centres.
• Launched our Short Intensive Support Service in 2019, offering patients care in their own homes and helping to avoid unnecessary admissions to A&E.
• Began hosting the Macmillan Cancer Information and Support Service on behalf of Macmillan and NHS West Lancashire Clinical Commissioning Group.
• Partnered with local colleges and universities including West Lancashire College and Edge Hill University and offer work experience placements for health and social care students. We are also offering placements to trainee GPs at Edge Hill University’s new medical school from autumn 2020.
• Drawn on new technology and innovation. We have introduced mobile working for front line staff so they can  spend more time out in the community with patients without having to travel back and to from office bases, and have also begun offering virtual consultations and sessions to give people more choice about how they access our services.
• Launched our Care Co-ordination Hub, which sits at the heart of our West Lancashire operations.
• Procured and implemented an assistive technology service, on behalf of NHS West Lancashire CCG, to offer a free 12-week package of support for vulnerable patients during the COVID-19 pandemic. 
•  Developed an enhanced discharge planning service, running 7 days a week from 8am-8pm, to support Southport and Ormskirk NHS Trust in helping patients experience a smooth transition from hospital back in to the community during the COVID-19 pandemic.

If you’d like to find out more about how we can help change people’s lives through the transformation of health and care in your area, please contact us.