Who are Ashfield Intermediate Healthcare?

Ashfield Intermediate Healthcare Ltd is an independent provider of community based healthcare to the NHS. The company is a separate legal entity to ensure appropriate levels of clinical governance, risk management and independence within the United Drug Group of Companies. Ashfield Intermediate Healthcare services are not funded by the pharmaceutical industry.

Ashfield Intermediate Healthcare’s service goal is to utilise its teams of healthcare professionals to enhance patient care and to deliver the objectives set out in the DH white paper “Our Health, Our Care, Our Say”. The publication of the white paper, the ensuing focus on the management of long term conditions and recent structural changes within the NHS have resulted in a growing pressure to the move services from secondary care into the community.

All healthcare programmes offered by Ashfield Intermediate Healthcare acknowledge the changes in the NHS, are evidence based and devised and performance managed with clear objectives both in terms of activity patterns and patient outcomes. 
 
Aware that movement of services from secondary care to the community may adversely affect the incomes of Hospital Trusts, Ashfield Intermediate Healthcare works with NHS management to reduce cost base and increase income from other sources.
 
How we work
 
Ashfield Intermediate Healthcare works with local healthcare professionals and patients to:
 
1.      Devise enhanced services; these services are normally community based or delivered in the home; where appropriate services are also delivered in collaboration with secondary care.
 
Contract these services through:
2.1.   Practice based commissioning (PBC) either at a cluster level or at a practice level;
2.2.   a PCT level;
2.3.   As pilots, on occasion as subcontracts from an acute trust.
 
3.      Key objectives in devising and delivering programmes include:
3.1.   Involving patients and healthcare professionals from the local health economy;
3.2.   Delivering high quality, evidence based healthcare;
3.3.   Providing care closer to or in the patient’s home;
3.4.   Ensuring clinical governance and risk management standards that far exceeds the minimum standards required by the NHS;
3.5.   Extending hours to improve access;
3.6.   Improving access to the socially disadvantaged;
3.7.   Focusing on the proactive management of chronic diseases;
3.8.   Collection and analysis of data and the proactive management of all programmes; and
3.9.  To reduce the costs of healthcare delivery and in particular reduce unplanned hospital admissions.
 
Our programmes
 
We have devised programmes in a number of disease areas using a number of different healthcare delivery models. These include:
  1. COPD: we have devised a variety of programmes. The common features underlying these programmes are that they are:
    1. Evidence and community based;
    2. Proactive more than reactive; and
    3. Designed to reduce unplanned hospital admissions, in certain settings the evidence shows by as much as 50%.
  2. DVT diagnosis and management including the management of anticoagulant treatment. This service is fully community based and provides a one stop shop for highly convenient patient management. 
  3. Anticoagulant management is also offered as a stand-alone service at a practice, PBC or PCT level. This service meets all the PSE requirements (Add hyperlink) for risk management.
  4. Musculoskeletal service: this programme involves the transfer from secondary care of all rheumatology and outpatient orthopaedics. In addition the service provides a community assessment and treatment service (CATS) for musculoskeletal conditions at minimal additional cost. This model provides a 4 week wait to final definitive treatment and represents best value.
  5. Diabetes: Ashfield Intermediate Healthcare has devised community delivered services based on a range of different models. In one design, the delivery of diabetes care is through a diabetologist led, nurse delivered service for all patients with diabetes in a PCT area. A range of other models have been developed to address local needs.
  6. Other programmes include:
    1. Heart failure;
    2. Dermatology;
    3. Back pain;
    4. Osteoporosis; and
    5. Service redesign.
 The benefits of using Ashfield Intermediate Healthcare?
There are benefits both to patients and the NHS of using Ashfield Intermediate Healthcare.
For patients:
  • Treatment closer to or in the patients’ home
  • Minimise hospital visits
  • Reduced length of stay in hospitals
  • Reduced waiting times
  • Reduced risk of hospital acquired infections
  • Supports patient choice
 
For the NHS:
  • Provide a flexible capacity for the NHS to help deliver patient care
  • Meeting the objectives of“Our Health, Our Care, Our Say”
  • Care closer to the home
  • Increased patient choice access for the socially disadvantaged
  • Meeting waiting time objectives
  • Potential cost savings

 

 

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