(The following story is an edit of a feature in the last issue of SATURDAY digital magazine).
National home care provider Silverchain is targeting high need acute home care services, leaving domestic services for the less equipped home care providers. Good news for residents.
With hospital and aged care beds full, increasing numbers of clients will be housebound with greater medical related challenges.
To support them, village operators will need to partner a new breed of home care providers, who have the skilled staff and the scale to be on call.
Silverchain is a 130-year-old Not For Profit home and acute care provider servicing 125,000 clients nationally.
Its services include:
Silverchain CEO Dale Fisher AM tells us: "We look after people, for instance with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and keep them in the home longer. We would provide a 24-hour, 7-days-a-week service. The client would ring us, not an ambulance, and we would be a partner with their GP.”
"We could get a nurse to the home within 15 to 20 minutes and stabilise the client, preventing that ambulance transfer, preventing an emergency admission and preserving an acute hospital bed, which is one of the major health problems in each jurisdiction of Australia.”
Silverchain also combines care navigation services with a home nursing Priority Response Assessment service to avoid unnecessary hospital admissions.
During a three-year WA program, there were more than 3,000 active patients and 73% were able to remain at home.
Taking Home Care providers to this higher level and leaving domestic services to non tertiary, non health trained lay staff is a logical and efficient use of rare resources.
Village operators may wish to consider a two level home care partner alliance – domestic services and critical acuity services.
Silverchain is increasingly the future of real Home Care.
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