19.06.2015 Views

Better Sooner More Convenient Primary Care - New Zealand Doctor

Better Sooner More Convenient Primary Care - New Zealand Doctor

Better Sooner More Convenient Primary Care - New Zealand Doctor

SHOW MORE
SHOW LESS

Create successful ePaper yourself

Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.

Underdevelopment of support for carers – local voluntary agencies are barely<br />

sustainable as the Coast population is not large enough to support services that would be<br />

available in bigger centres, (eg. age concern befriending, continence education, dementia<br />

support). <strong>Care</strong>r burnout contributes to the relatively high rate of rest home entry.<br />

Many health and support workers and many clients still hold to a traditional dependency<br />

and entitlement model for rest home and home support services and there is limited<br />

implementation of a restorative model as yet.<br />

Very limited availability of allied health staff for community based work, (eg. supervising<br />

home carers in home based rehabilitation programmes, responding to GP referrals),<br />

reflected in high rate of inpatient admission to AT&R ward.<br />

Residential aged care facilities (in Greymouth) have had limited access to general<br />

practitioner services, reflected in a relatively high rate of referrals to the acute<br />

services. <strong>Primary</strong> health care received by residential care residents is sometimes suboptimal<br />

and would benefit from greater input from medical staff with specialist<br />

knowledge of older peoples health, including dementia.<br />

A number of residential aged care facilities have had a continued shortage of registered<br />

nurses, which has repeatedly compromised quality of care.<br />

3 OBJECTIVES<br />

Set up a clear pathway for accessing primary and community services. This would include:<br />

A hub of shared client information available to all health and support services – GPs,<br />

practice nurses, district nurses, <strong>Care</strong> Link, ward staff, allied health, residential care,<br />

home care agencies etc. This includes InterRAI and other assessments.<br />

A triage function for logging all cases and sending simple routine cases directly to the<br />

appropriate service while ensuring complex cases receive multidisciplinary assessment,<br />

case management through Chronic Conditions Programme and/or <strong>Care</strong> Link, and/or<br />

referral to specialist services<br />

Clear, agreed protocols for accessing services<br />

Co-locate <strong>Care</strong> Link with the Integrated Family Health Centres (IFHC), and link staff to<br />

specific primary health teams, thereby giving those teams easy access to expert assessment<br />

(InterRAI), community-based support packages and a case management function for people with<br />

long-term disabling conditions.<br />

Set up a restorative home-based support service based on need, accessed through <strong>Care</strong> Link and<br />

closely linked to primary and community health services:<br />

Home care workers having close connection to primary health services, community<br />

nursing and allied health, in some cases working under supervision to help clients do the<br />

Business case appendices V12 AC 25Feb2010 Page 102

Hooray! Your file is uploaded and ready to be published.

Saved successfully!

Ooh no, something went wrong!