What Are Acute Care Services?
Acute Care Services are episodes of care that someone receives on a short-term, high dependency basis. In a hospital setting these would include an intensive care, inpatient, outpatient or accident & emergency department. Acute care is expected to be for a fairly short amount of time before a person’s condition is stabilised enough so that they can then be treated in a less acute setting. According to The Health Foundation, this can include “treatment for a severe injury, period of illness, urgent medical condition, or to recover from surgery.”
How Can Acute Care Be Delivered at Home?
Acute Care can be delivered in your own home by Helping Hands, as part of a wider community healthcare team which could include your GP, community nursing staff and other professionals. As well as our amazingly dedicated private carers, at Helping Hands we have our own team of clinical nurses that oversee aspects of our customers’ acute care, where necessary. Thanks to our bespoke packages of care, we can support our customers on a visiting or live-in basis and because your care will be accompanied by a personalised support plan, you and your loved ones can be confident that every aspect of your care will be covered, down to the finest detail.
The Benefits of Acute Care at Home
Receiving Acute care at home means that you will be in familiar surroundings, with the people who mean the most to you close by. This can have real benefits for your physical as well as emotional health, as being able to remain in the home you love, with daily life continuing around you as if you weren’t ill, are positive steps towards motivating your health to improve as quickly as possible. Perhaps you love looking out at views that you’ve seen every day, such as your garden or the rolling hills beyond, or perhaps hearing your grandchildren playing close by gives you the energy to forge a recovery. Regardless of the motivating factor, the important things to you are the ones that will have the greatest effect on your continually improving health. And because you’ll be receiving your care at home, you’ll also make the decisions about how your care is delivered and in what form, decisions which may not be in your hands if you were to be in hospital or a nursing home setting.
How to Arrange Acute Care
If you have been receiving Acute care in hospital and wish to come home for your continued treatment, then you would need to speak to the healthcare team who are looking after you to arrange to be discharged. They would be able to advise you on your options for care outside of the hospital setting and liaise with the community health team to ensure that everything that you needed to continue your home-based recovery would be in place before you left hospital. In addition, talking to Helping Hands’ friendly and helpful customer care team would give you valuable advice on how we could be supporting your home-based treatment and the care options available to you.
Acute Care from Helping Hands
The first step to arranging Acute care with Helping Hands is to contact us, either by phone or via our website. Our knowledgeable customer care team are available seven days a week and can advise you on what care options are available for you or your loved one, and our highly skilled and experienced nursing team can organise fast-track home care packages for people with complex healthcare needs. If you’re not sure where to start and you feel as if you’re struggling with the complexities of a loved one’s care, then call us for more information or speak to your local care manager.
With regional based support teams and more than 150 branches across England and Wales, there’s almost certainly a Helping Hands expert not far from where you live.
Page reviewed by Deanna Lane, Senior Regional Clinical Lead on November 8, 2021