Outstanding home care agency praised for speeding up hospital discharges

Home care provider Care By Us has achieved an Outstanding rating from the Care Quality Commission (CQC) for its efforts to accelerate older people’s safe discharge from hospital.

The CQC report, published on 9 September, found the team had established a hospital discharge service across a number of acute hospitals in Hertfordshire, offering care to those recently returned home from hospital.

By liaising with GPs and healthcare professionals, Care By Us worked with people who had recently left hospital on Hertfordshire County Council’s ‘accelerated hospital discharge’ project until they had regained their independence.

Healthcare professionals quoted in the CQC report said: "They [Care By Us] have integrated their services and their teams well in to the discharge teams within the hospitals and this is undoubtedly having a positive effect both in terms of easing system pressures and supporting elderly and frail patients home after a period in hospital."

Jemima Burnage, CQC’s head of inspection for adult social care in the central region, said: “They were the only provider working on these projects and successfully built and facilitated safe discharges from hospitals for people back to their own homes.

“All of this meant people received a high standard of care, which is why it has been rated Outstanding.”

'Funding is secondary'

CQC inspectors detailed in their report that the care provider has, on a number of occasions, “gone the extra mile” to provide extra care for service users in need, even if it incurs financial costs for the provider.

The care provider took measures to provide 24-hour care, despite the local authorities being unable to fully fund it. Staff said: “It is about the person and what is in their best interest. Sometimes funding is secondary.”

Noting that people returning from hospital often had no food or drink in the house, Care By Us established a credit line which staff could use to buy food and drink for service users who needed it.

The cost of this was not always reimbursed, yet the care provider continued to offer this service to every person in need.

A staff member at the provider added: “It is nice that they never think about the costs if we can improve the life of someone.”

Role models for failing care providers

The home care firm also assumed a mentoring role to enable similar services to improve, as well as taking over people’s care from a failing provider.

The outstanding care provider successfully took on care and support for eighty people on Christmas Eve in 2014 thanks to well-developed preparation and contingency planning.

With further initiatives founded by Care By Us, such as a Fast Response Team (to quickly access service users in cases of late calls or emergencies) and Advisory Boards (bringing together local health and social care associations and professionals for better continuity and care), the provider has helped 2,500 people in the last two years, the CQC report found.

All of this comes as a result of Care By Us’s dedication and commitment to the training of their staff and continuous learning as a company. The provider was found to actively seek feedback from service users and took any issues or complaints as a learning opportunity, resolving them in a timely manner.

One service user mentioned in the CQC report said: “I did inform them [the office] about the tea time call coming too early… It all settled down after that.”

Ms Burnage added: “[Care By Us] took prompt action to resolve concerns and, when people started using the service or experienced problems, weekly wellbeing visits from senior staff were arranged.

“Any complaints were investigated and, where needed, improvements were made and learning from these was shared with staff.”

Care By Us is based in Bishops Stortford and provides domiciliary care to people in their own homes in East and North Hertfordshire and West Essex.

Under CQC’s inspections, adult social care services are rated Inadequate, Requires Improvement, Good or Outstanding, based on whether they are safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led.

Care By Us was rated Good for safety and Outstanding for the remaining criteria, giving them an overall rating of Outstanding.

Andrea Sutcliffe, chief inspector of adult social care for CQC, said: “The quality of care which our inspectors found here was exceptional… An outstanding service is the result of a tremendous amount of hard work and commitment.”