AfH MEND Stream – Proactive Community Healthcare: A Vision for Care Closer to Home

Supporting this view, our presentation will highlight the impact that integrated community healthcare facilities can have in relieving the strain on overstretched acute health services, particularly when they are designed to promote a proactive, preventative approach to health and wellbeing.

We will describe the success that the pioneering Jean Bishop Integrated Care Centre in Hull has had in shifting the focus from ‘illnesses’ to ‘individuals’, with an anticipatory care model that improves the quality of life of people living with frailty, helping them to stay at home and out of hospital. A clinical study has shown that this has significantly reduced demand for acute health services and brought about savings to the wider healthcare system. The building has been specially designed to integrate the range of specialist services provided, and to provide a welcoming, comfortable, and dementia-friendly environment for the elderly patient group.

We will then describe similar plans which are being developed through the Cavell Centre programme to set a bold new vision for the delivery of community health services. Like The Jean Bishop Integrated Care Centre, the strategic vision for the Cavell Centres recognises that social factors in health are as significant as clinical factors, and therefore combines both models to proactively address the barriers to improved community health and wellbeing.

This formed a central feature of the pilot scheme design we are developing with collaborators Architype. Setting a new standard for community health facilities, the building hosts a varied health and wellbeing offering, including multiple GP practices, community diagnostics, therapy services, outpatient services, third sector social prescribing organisations, and a health-centred commercial offer. Strong internal connections to quality external landscaping with lawns, planting, and water features; and inviting, non-institutional internal spaces; enable a variety of wellbeing activities. This, combined with access to local authority support, links patients with opportunities for social prescribing, integrating health and wellness into the community.

The Jean Bishop Integrated Care Centre has shown that long-term investment in the right kind of community-focused facilities can reduce demand for acute services and bring about savings to the wider healthcare system, as well as improving the wellbeing of individuals. We believe that the Cavell Centre programme is well placed to offer a scalable and repeatable solution to ensure the health and care system is sustainable for the future.