Tower Hamlets Care Homes residents and staff supported through COVID-19 with bespoke testing service
The borough’s vision of a seamless health and care experience for its citizens.
Residents and staff working in Tower Hamlets Care Homes have been the focus of a ground-breaking new ‘COVID-19 home testing service’ delivered by THT partner -The GP Care Group
Following the NHS's 72nd birthday last week, I'd like to say a personal thank you to the Royal London and the community health and care services that my young family and I have benefited from, and pay tribute again to the hard work of staff across all partner organisations as you continue to respond to the pandemic while moving into recovery.
This month the THT Board focused on user engagement, future governance, Covid-19 and inequalities, and the THT borough plan. We were a smaller group than usual, following the decision at the June meeting to slim down the membership and establish an executive level Board better able to drive momentum and make system-wide decisions.
First up, we approved a proposal from THT engagement leads for a 6-month co-production project on digital access to health and care services. Working with a wider group of partners in the health and care sector, including voluntary sector organisations supporting residents who face the
Residents and staff working in Tower Hamlets Care Homes have been the focus of a ground-breaking new ‘COVID-19 home testing service’ delivered by the GP Care Group aimed at reducing the spread of the coronavirus within the five older people’s care homes in Tower Hamlets.
Back in May, during the peak of the pandemic, Tower Hamlets Council approached the GP Care Group to carry out the programme of testing for COVID-19 among the staff and residents of the five CQC registered care homes in Tower Hamlets. The aim of the service was simple, to reduce the risk of asymptomatic transmission between and among this vulnerable cohort and aid early support for those who had the virus.
The GP Care Group’s Ruth Walters, Director of Quality & Assurance, describes how the process worked: “We put together a team of nurses from the Urgent Treatment Centre (UTC), also hosted by the Care Group. Every two weeks, the nurses visit the care homes and take swabs from the residents and staff. The swabs are brought back to the lab at the Royal London Hospital and analysed and processed.”
The results of the tests are passed back to the nurses at the UTC service who share the results back to the staff at the care homes.
This hands-on approach to taking the swabs by the nurses, rather than relying on a self-testing approach, favoured by other areas, has proven benefits, including a more reliable result as well as a faster testing process.
The care homes testing service has been a true example of “Tower Hamlets Together”, with the Royal London Hospital Lab, Tower Hamlets Council, the GP Care Group and CCG working together to improve the health experience of Tower Hamlets residents and patients.
Ruth continued: “We have had really good feedback from the care homes who told us the service was extremely valuable and has provided reassurance to residents and their families. Our team have also been instrumental in engaging care homes staff to take the test, so there has been an increased take up amongst this cohort too.”
Chris Lovitt, Tower Hamlets Associate Director of Public Health, said: “Working together with the GP Care Group enabled us to rapidly introduce local COVID-19 testing for both staff and residents in our local care homes four weeks ahead of the national programme. Diagnosing COVID quickly is vital in preventing further spread of the virus, so this ambitious testing programme has helped us to protect some of our most vulnerable residents. It has also enabled us to make sure care homes are supported to manage infections according to best practice.”
biggest barriers to digital inclusion, we now have a clear picture of which groups are excluded from accessing online health and care services, and an increasingly detailed picture of what the barriers are. The project will bring together front line staff working on re-designing services with VCSE organisations and residents who are most excluded to develop and test ideas and solutions, ensuring consistent reward and recognition for everyone involved.
We then reviewed proposals for THT's future governance model. We confirmed the previous decision to streamline the executive Board, with a core purpose to oversee and drive forward borough-level integration, hold accountability for agreed system-wide resources and transformation priorities, and ensure patient voice is at the heart of our work. It's fair to say there was a robust exchange of views about the best mechanism for the operational group reporting into the executive Board, which should act as the engine room for delivery, building on the pace, innovation and operational freedom we have seen during the pandemic. My sense is there's a shared goal among partners to focus on delivery, reducing duplication and remaining fleet of foot in these uncertain times, but different views on the best way to get there. We all agreed we can't debate governance indefinitely, so follow up conversations are already underway to crack this.
We also heard feedback from a survey of lifecourse workstream members - thanks to those who took part. The key messages were that a majority of members across all three workstreams believe they add value to partnership working and overwhelmingly people want to retain them, but most felt they should be reformed. People proposed helpful ideas to improve the focus, capacity, accountability, pace and delivery of the workstreams, which we will be taking forward with the chairs. We need them to focus more on transformation priorities, innovation and engagement with service users and the voluntary sector, to avoid duplication with business-as-usual.
We had a presentation on the disparities in risk and outcomes of Covid-19 identified in the recent Public Health England report, outlining the stark implications for our borough. Tower Hamlets has the 4th highest death rates in London (when adjusted for age) and the report highlights the overlapping factors impacting on the pattern of Covid-19 in the borough e.g. deprivation, older population with worse health than elsewhere, ethnicity, occupation and diabetes as a major cause of poor health. We tasked the operational group to work with Public Health on an urgent action plan in response, using PHE's recommendations as a framework, to come to the next Board.
Finally, we reviewed the draft borough plan for THT which brings together existing priorities (refreshed just before Covid-19), emerging priorities identified at the last Board meeting and community modelling about reducing admissions at the Royal London. We identified immediate system-wide priorities to be considered by the Board: children's mental health following lockdown, inequalities and disparities arising from Covid-19, shielding the extremely clinically vulnerable, and urgent service areas requiring funding beyond temporary arrangements.
As ever, there is much to do within limited resource, but our goal as a Board is to focus more effectively on themes requiring a system response to unlock barriers and facilitate rapid, joined up solutions.