The Scottish Government

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RECOMMENDATIONS

• NHS Boards should consider using new community hospitals as local resource centres in which to provide people with more holistic and integrated services quicker and closer to home. The aim should be to enable local primary care resource centres and local community nursing services to provide the majority of care for the local community alongside local general practices.
• NHS Boards are encouraged to develop this agenda in partnership with and with the support of others in the NHS, such as the Scottish Ambulance Service and NHS 24.
• NHS Boards should adopt the new community hospital model for urban areas, providing services more locally.
• NHS Boards should look at the role of community hospitals in providing a range of planned care services.
• NHS Boards should consider whether community hospitals are appropriate sites in which community casualty units could be based and whether OOHs centres might be co-located with these.
• Community Health Partnerships and local management must recognise the investment local people and stakeholders have in the service. They must be involved at the earliest possible stage in thinking about developments, identifying innovative, locally orientated models, planning their implementation and evaluating their effectiveness. This includes the development of new community hospitals and resource centres.
• NHS Boards should ensure that new community hospitals work within the existing Board clinical governance framework using appropriate NHSQIS standards and guidelines.
• NHS Boards should work closely with NHSQIS to develop standards and guidelines in line with the development of services in new community hospitals.
• NHS Boards should ensure that they incorporate new community hospitals in their overall implementation of the eHealth strategy, including development of the Electronic Health Record.
• NHS Boards should maximise their use of technological developments to enhance the potential of new community hospitals to deliver safe and effective services, and to optimise training and educational opportunities for community hospital staff.
• NHS Boards should strengthen their technological infrastructure to support these developments.
• NHS Boards should develop a strategy for recruitment and retention of staff for new community hospitals within their overall workforce plan. This will include the development of new roles.
• NHS Boards should ensure that addressing the educational and training needs of staff is integral to the development of new services and to multi-disciplinary working in new community hospitals.
• NHS Boards should work with educational institutions to establish clinical placements in new community hospitals for all professionals undertaking education.
• NHS Boards should ensure that estate planning around new community hospitals is integral to the whole service and is driven primarily by strategic service development rather than current estate availability.
• NHS Boards should maximise the use of joint planning with local authorities in developing existing and new community hospitals according to service needs.
• NHS Boards should have an integrated patient transport policy to include new community hospitals.

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