£4.5 million boost to tackle pressure on city’s health and social care

As part of a wider Health and Social Care Improvement Programme produced by the Edinburgh Health and Social Care Partnership, these additional resources will be focused on the following three priorities:

• Backlog of assessments and reviews. Most recent figures show that there are 1,913 people waiting for an assessment, of whom 1,100 had no involvement/assessment activity in the last year. A project will be funded to address this and it is anticipated that with this investment, the backlog can be cleared over a 7-month period.
• Reducing delayed discharges. Money has been earmarked to help reduce the number of people whose discharge from hospital is delayed by helping to increase capacity of residential care provision. One option being explored is a strictly one-off spend on additional care home placements. A detailed assessment of this option will be undertaken.
• The funding of a temporary project team to support the full implementation of the locality model, and help establish efficient and consistent business processes.

Councillor Ricky Henderson, Chair of the Edinburgh Integration Joint Board said: “This agreement, as well as the report on the wider improvement programme, paints a clear picture of where the service is right now and the immediate steps we need to take.

“For the Partnership to achieve long-term sustainability of health and social care services in the city, the immediate pressures from the backlog of demand, the service capacity limitations and the extreme pressures on acute services from people delayed in hospital must be addressed.

“Our aspiration of providing the right care in the right place at the right time can be realised if we continue to develop a programme to support long-term change in the way these services are delivered.”

The report will also be presented to both the City of Edinburgh Council and NHS Lothian.