The mounting problem of elective backlogs in hospitals
The UK has begun to tentatively end most lockdown measures, the vaccination programme continues to be rolled out at speed, and many are looking forward to returning to a semblance of normality as restrictions are lifted. Yet hospitals are unable to...
ISO9001 Annual Recertification
At HomeLink Healthcare we are meticulous about quality assurance, it’s essential when you provide clinical care services to NHS patients in their homes. However, our focus on standards goes beyond those required by the CQC (Care Quality...
Celebrating saving the NHS 10,000 bed days
It’s important to take the time to mark achievements. Today at HomeLink Healthcare (HLHC), we’re proud to celebrate a significant landmark with one of our co-created services: saving over 10,000 bed days for the Norfolk and Norwich University...
Discharge to Assess – retaining the positive improvements from the pandemic
While Covid-19 has thrown much of society into disarray and caused monumental damage to hospitals, healthcare workers and their patients - in healthcare, there have been some positive changes. One of these is in the altered attitudes toward...
Hospital at home in the time of COVID-19
Covid-19 sent shock waves through Britain’s national health service, exposing fragilities, underlining insecurities, and pushing many hospitals to the brink. The pandemic has both exacerbated existing issues and added fresh challenges.
Even before coronavirus swept through the UK, the NHS was struggling. Overwhelmed hospital capacities, protracted A&E waits and staff shortages signalled a looming crisis. The NHS was rapidly mobilised in response. Non-urgent care was scaled back, elective surgeries were cancelled. Infection control measures added to mounting capacity challenges: fewer beds spaced further apart.
Addressing the shortfall in NHS hospital beds this winter
The NHS will face the winter peak in demand with around 5500 fewer beds than last year, the Health Service Journal reported earlier this month. Covid-19 precautions are behind much of the decline in numbers, for example infection control measures...
Stepping In and Stepping Up
Covid-19 Home Testing Service Improves Capacity, Accessibility and Patient Flow. This case study looks at how an urgent need for addition home testing for Covid-19 was addressed by HomeLink Healthcare, working in partnership with Norfolk and...
I’m Celebrating AHP Day
Every year on the 14th October – Allied Health Professionals (AHPs) come together to celebrate being part of the AHP family. It is a social movement that enables AHPs from different backgrounds and organisations to collaborate within and outside of...
Winter is Coming
Unfortunately, this is not only a phrase used in the TV series Game of Thrones, it is an often misused call to arms for the NHS as the dark nights start to draw in. However, this year whilst we don’t expect to have to deal with White Walkers and...
Restoration and Recovery – Addressing the Capacity Challenge
Getting the right balance between, delivering a Recovery Plan, providing ‘normal’ NHS services and maintaining capacity for local surges in COVID-19 cases
Patient Story – a virtual therapy visit
Patient A contacted HomeLink Healthcare following an appointment with their GP for a painful shoulder. HomeLink Healthcare contacted the patient and discussed the options of how we could assist. A virtual visit was arranged using an IT platform...
Enablement – Adding life to years, not just years to life
Enablement is the term given to empower individuals to have the confidence and means to do something themselves and get better more quickly.
Being a good partner in times of trouble
If private providers of health services are really to be partners with the NHS then now more than ever they must take some of the strain as the Coronavirus escalates, but how? HomeLink Healthcare have some of the answers. Whilst it is hard to...
2020 is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Florence Nightingale
2020 is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Florence Nightingale probably the world’s best known nurse. To mark the occasion the World Health Organisation has declared 2020 the Year of the Nurse, or Year of the Nurse and Midwife as NHS England...
HomeLink Healthcare gains important cyber security standard
We understand the importance of protecting our IT systems from cyber-attack and are committed to securing our systems in line with the National Cyber Security Centre’s guidelines. We have taken steps to guard against the most common cyber-security...
I can get my coffee just how I like it, but can I get my healthcare just how I like it too?
Every day we are bombarded with myriad choices. A quick visit to a coffee shop, and we are faced with tens of alternatives about how we would we like our favourite beverage: are you drinking in or taking out , small, medium, large, with or without...
NNUH at Home shortlisted as a finalist for the HSJ Partnership Awards 2020
Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals and HomeLink Healthcare are delighted that NNUH at Home is a finalist in the prestigious HSJ Partnership Awards, in the Best Healthcare Provider with NHS category. NNUH at Home provides a Virtual Ward and...
Healthcare Data: The importance of high quality, timely and accurate management information, available when it’s needed
I hear all too often that it takes some organisations weeks, in some cases over a month, to prepare accurate management information reports and that usually boils down to the lack of trust in the data that is made available this purpose. Typically,...
Almost 60,000 NHS beds ‘blocked’ by Delayed Transfers of Care every month
Patients are spending unnecessary nights in a hospital bed because of delays in services which would provide their care at home or in another setting. NHS Hospital Trusts have been working hard with their community partners to improve the...
Healthcare’s Waste Problem, reducing our dependancy on plastic.
Despite plastics being a part of our lives for decades, it only feels as though we have woken up to the damage that we may have caused by its forever proliferating use, the environmental equivalent to the headache from the night before. To me, I...
Case Study: Supporting the flow of patient care from hospital to home
HomeLink Healthcare has been providing clinical care in the home with Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust since January 2019, to release in-patient bed capacity and improve patient choice. The two organisations have...
Working across the divide – Home or Hospital?
I love working in the community – my early career was spent looking after people at home and my belief is that is where people should be unless they are really sick. It’s always been a bit of a dilemma – Are people better off as patients on a...
The winning team is back together
So here we are again! Having been one of the founders of Medihome, back in 2003, I am very proud that, with some of the successful team that set Medihome up, we have done it again. Our new, much improved, service is called HomeLink Healthcare,...
The best of both worlds. Service integration delivers patient benefit
Recovery at home is a popular choice for many patients and clinicians. Recently HomeLink Healthcare provided care at home for a patient recovering from emergency surgery who required daily intravenous antibiotics for six weeks. Faced with an...
Private Patients Benefit from Recovery at Home Services
HomeLink Healthcare is offering choice to patients from private hospitals and private wards in London by providing them with some of their treatment at home. Many people stay in hospital to receive treatment that can be provided safely in their own...
Case Study – Improving Patient Flow Through Early Supported Discharge and Virtual Wards
IntroductionHomeLink Healthcare has been working with the NHS to help deliver and evaluate Early Supported Discharge and Virtual Ward services. These services, designed to improve patient flow, provide care at home for patients who would otherwise...
NNUH at Home service saves 365 bed days at Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital
Within its first four months a new service, NNUH at Home, which prevents patients having to stay in the hospital any longer than necessary, has saved the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital (NNUH) 365 bed days. Patients often have to remain in...
The emotional impact of caring – who asks how you are feeling?
When someone close to us needs our care we want to do the best we can to help, so we: try to think of all the ways we can look after them and put our energy into helping them HOWEVER: because we are busy thinking about someone else’s needs, we...
Anxiety – a guide to some of the causes, effects and ways of managing anxiety.
Understanding Anxiety What is it? Anxiety is a normal human reaction in times of danger and stress. It affects all of us at different times and in different ways. It can be felt through our thoughts, feelings and physical sensations in the body....
A new framework makes it easier to procure Hospital at Home services
The NHS Long Term Plan recommends that ‘care will increasingly be delivered in people’s homes or somewhere convenient, freeing up space in hospitals for those who need it’. A new purchasing framework created by NHS Shared Business Services is...