New scheme helps patients get the healthcare they need from the comfort of their own home

The Single Point of Access scheme allows East of England Ambulance Service (EEAST) clinicians to make a single phone call to:

• Speak to a clinician to agree the best care pathway for a patient
• Review patient’s medication requirements via clinical conversation with senior clinician, including access to different drugs
• Book patients into ‘virtual ward’ care which offers care at home that would otherwise be received in hospital, including access to a senior clinician (assessment and diagnostics) and drugs that would be administered at hospital.

Without the Single Point of Access scheme, most of these actions would usually require taking the patient to an accident and emergency department. This scheme keeps people out of hospital and in their own homes where they are more comfortable.

Pete Bumphrey, Business & Partnerships Lead for the East of England Ambulance Service (EEAST), said: “It’s another conversation that our clinicians can have to be certain about what is the best way to treat a patient, and the doctors are working from the same location as the urgent community care services are based, so they can make decisions about capacity based on real-time information.

It’s the latest development led by the Unscheduled Care Co-ordination Hub (UCCH). The hub has been running for one year and involves clinicians from different health and care providers working together to ensure patients receive the best care in the right place. Since its inception the UCCH has helped 10,000 patients and prevented more than 7,500 unnecessary ambulance dispatches.

The hub is now working with Virtual Wards, Network Escalation Avoidance Team (NEAT), and Urgent GP services and its aiming to increase support for care home patients, the ambulance service, and acute hospital trusts.

This will help both patients and healthcare professionals to navigate the local Integrated Care System (ICS) and all of its services. When patients access healthcare through 999, NHS 111, community, primary care, or – eventually – acute hospital emergency departments, they can be referred to UCCH to ensure they get the most suitable care for their needs.

Norfolk and Waveney joins other similar schemes EEAST works with alongside ICBs in Mid and South Essex, Suffolk and North East Essex and Cambridge and Peterborough.