29 October 2019
More health and social care services will be provided in the community for Islanders in future, with more working with expert partners to provide services, including GPs and the community and voluntary sector, as the redesign of Health and Community Services continues.
The project, known as the Jersey Care Model, aims to transform the delivery of healthcare within the next five years, and is a continuation of the work delivered by Health and Community Services under P82/2012. It was unanimously approved by the Council of Ministers on 16 October.
The Jersey Care Model has been developed over the past few months by Health and Community Services, working with its own clinical specialists – surgeons, consultants, doctors and nurses – as well as GPs and dentists, optometrists and pharmacists, community and voluntary organisations, and care homes. The department has held more than 50 events in recent weeks to present and discuss the new model with the health and care sector.
Over the coming months, the model will be further refined to ensure it meets the needs of Islanders and will be cost effective.
The model was developed following a detailed analysis of data about the provision of health and hospital services in Jersey. The analysis found that, last year, the hospital dealt with:
around 30,000 Emergency Department patient visits that weren’t emergencies
at least 40,000 outpatient visits to treat long-term conditions that could have been better managed by GPs
The Jersey Care Model proposes that the Government will move some health and social care services into the community, so that Islanders won’t need to come into the hospital for many routine and non-urgent appointments. This will enable the hospital to concentrate on the specialist and emergency care, full intensive care and maternity services that only a hospital can provide.
The new model proposes to:
- do more work to help Islanders to look after their own health
- provide thousands of outpatient appointments in the community, so Islanders don’t have to come into the hospital
- do more for people with long-term conditions, by offering Islanders treatment through GP practices
- work with our expert partners in the community and voluntary sector to boost our Island-wide care services
- establish a new urgent treatment centre, to offer Islanders the urgent care they need, while ensuring that our Emergency Department only treats genuine emergencies
- do more day surgery to keep people out of hospital
- continue to improve mental health services
- make more care available at night (currently at night there is very little help and care for people to access, apart from the hospital and the GP Co-op and one late-night pharmacy)
- do more work with people with cancer in the hospital, so we don’t need to send so many patients to the UK for treatment
It will also ensure that the needs of Jersey’s growing, older population are met, as older people can need more health and social care services. At present, too much of this care is based in institutions, including the hospital and care homes, because there is insufficient community care to support older people to live independently.
A particular focus will be on offering Islanders care in the community through ‘Rapid Response and Reablement’ – care offered by qualified professionals when someone does not need to be in hospital and can be cared for safely in their own home, or in another community setting.
Commissioning of services
The department is developing new ways of commissioning and paying for services, to ensure that health and social care services, under the new plans, are accessible and affordable for Islanders.
Deputy Richard Renouf, Minister for Health and Community Services said: "We know our health and social care services need to change to meet the needs of Islanders for the future. We celebrate the fact that people are living for longer than in past generations, but older people often have more complex health needs to manage, which could require more care and treatment as a result.
"If we are to continue to give Islanders the high-quality health and social care they rightly expect, we need to keep up to date with how we provide it. This means that we will make some changes over the next five years to the way we work, so we can continue to provide timely, effective and safe care, that meets everyone’s needs.
"We need to do some work now to update our health and social care services, for instance by moving services that don’t need to be provided in the hospital into the community, so care is delivered in the right environment and is easier to access. But we will continue to provide the full range of specialist, emergency and intensive care in the hospital, alongside maternity services, and we will seek to bring more care into the hospital that is currently provided in the UK."
Under the Jersey Care Model, some services will be provided in the community, closer to home, and discussion is currently ongoing about what these will be.
The hospital will continue to be a place where safe care is delivered in an excellent clinical environment. Among other services, the hospital will provide:
- Emergency Department
- Acute treatment
- Operating theatres
- Medical specialities
- Intensive care
- Diagnostic services
- Maternity services including a Special Care Baby Unit
- Urgent treatment centre
- Outpatients clinics for complex cases
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