Acute Inpatient Care

Since October 2008 the West Midlands Regional Development Centre has provided a programme of support, with new resources, to help Trusts bring about improvements in acute in-patient services, building upon the findings of the Healthcare Commission.

Most of the expertise that was developed prior to 2008 is still highly relevant and these webpage's are organised to ensure the recent and previous resources are available.

All resources can be accessed from the following sections:

Resources developed for the Acute In-patient Development Plan

  • The plan and a brief narrative on progress in West Midlands: The original plan and a brief summary of progress and implementation issues raised
  • Explanation of Terminology for Operational Standards: This explains the terminology in all of the Operational standards so that a common language can be used when using these standards as a "system of care".
  • Operational Standards for Acute Care Planning: Standards of practice that promote appropriate assessment of service users needs and actual care provided to meet the standards that were used in the original Healthcare Commission Review
  • Operational Standards for Acute Care Pathways: Standards of practice that promote effective management of services users "journeys" through the teams and wards of the services to meet the standards that were used in the original Healthcare Commission Review and wider guidance
  • Operational Standards for Acute Inpatient Environment: Standards for the physical and personal environment to meet the standards that were used in the original Healthcare Commission Review and wider guidance
  • Operational Standards for Supervision and Training for Acute Care Staff: Standards around ensuring the competencies and clinical governance of practitioner in acute care Teams and wards.
  • Matrix for local exception reporting for Operational Standards: A table for local modifications to support how to respond to, or escalate, exceptions to operational standards in practice.
  • Audit database and forms: a relational database has been developed to assess the effect of implementing of these resources by analysing against the original HCC criteria, enabling Trusts to compare against "absolute" standards as well as benchmark against the West Midlands averages. The database also includes a local copy that will support Trusts continuing with local audits. The audit forms are designed to capture the data as easily as possible for entry into the database that will programmatically produce the audit reports.
  • Presentations and guidance materials for Equality and Diversity in Acute Inpatient Care: Developed as part of the network and local consultancy support for these specific issues in relation to Acute Inpatient Care.
  • Presentations and guidance materials for Sexual Safety in Acute Inpatient Care: Developed as part of the network and local consultancy support for these specific issues in relation to Acute Inpatient Care.
  • Presentations and guidance materials for managing Substance Misuse in Acute Inpatient Care: Developed as part of the network and local consultancy support for these specific issues in relation to Acute Inpatient Care.
  • Acute Workload Calculator: Based on the operational standards linked above, this is an updated copy of the Excel based application where all of the care activities pre-included is based upon delivery of the above operational standards for further localisation. Helps give a rational basis to estimating staffing levels.
  • Acute services database: A modified version of the tried and tested WMRDC "Activity and Outcomes Database" specifically for Acute Services Can be sued by Inpatient, Day care and Home Treatment acute Teams with localisation required.

Resources developed for prior to October 2008

  • Acute Care Referrals Audit Tool: Audit tool looking quantitatively at the referral routes for access into Acute Services.
  • Acute Care Forums: includes the original guidance on Capable Acute Care Forum and the ACF Action planning Tool.
  • Pathway Ethnicity Analysis model: Excel based example of analyzing the ethnicity of the service user populations across referral pathways against local ethnic profiles to support rational analyses of access to acute inpatient services in relation to local population
  • Auditing for Efficient Clinical Meetings: Audit tool / checklist for clinical meetings such as staff handovers that can be a major demand on the capacity of ward staff.

National guidance and policy documents

  • Road to Recovery
  • Audit Commission Review of CRHT
  • Star Wards

If you have any questions on any of the above, please email nick.adams@wmrdc.org.uk or call on 07747 793748