CLCH now delivering adult community services in West Hertfordshire
From today (1 October) adult patients in west Hertfordshire will have most of their community health care provided by Central London Community Healthcare NHS Trust (CLCH)
CLCH is taking on the delivery of adult community health services from the current provider, Hertfordshire Community NHS Trust (HCT). Both organisations have been working closely with Herts Valleys Clinical Commissioning Group to make sure that the transfer runs smoothly in the interests of patients and the adult community healthcare workforce.
There will be no changes to services on 1 October as the focus is on patient safety and making sure that people continue to receive the care they need. Patients will still be looked after by the same group of skill and dedicated staff (such as district nurses and therapists) whose employment has transferred to CLCH. Home visits and clinic appointments will also still go ahead in the same way.
CLCH is a well-established NHS organisation that is already familiar with west Hertfordshire as providers of integrated community respiratory care, as well as providing sexual health services across the county.
Andrew Ridley, Chief Executive at CLCH said; “We’re delighted to be building on the services we’re already delivering in Hertfordshire.
“As a community healthcare provider, our focus is helping patients to look after themselves better, keep healthy and avoid trips to hospital.
“We will be working in partnership with local GPs, NHS Trusts, social care and voluntary sector organisations so that together we’re able to deliver the best possible care.”
Over the coming months CLCH will work with Herts Valleys Clinical Commissioning Group, which is responsible for planning and buying health services locally, to introduce a new model of care that reflects the direction set out in NHS England’s Long Term Plan. This will create fully joined-up services between community, GPs, mental health, social care and voluntary services so that patients get more seamless, unified care. There will be a greater emphasis on prevention, helping patients to better look after themselves and on services intervening early and quickly to support patients in their own homes and reduce hospital admissions.
Kathryn Magson, Chief Executive of Herts Valleys CCG said: “It’s been really important to make sure that this is an orderly handover for patients and staff and I’d like to thank everyone involved from HCT and CLCH as well as CCG staff for ensuring that today’s transfer happens as smoothly as possible.
“We’re really pleased to be working with CLCH to deliver a real step change in the way that we look after patients in the community. This means various health, social care and voluntary services working together to meet patients’ increasingly complex needs in a holistic way and working at a neighbourhood level to provide tailored support to local communities. We need new, innovative approaches to meeting our healthcare challenges and we’ll be involving patients and local communities as we develop our plans.”
Hertfordshire Community Trust will continue to provide some community health services for adults in west Hertfordshire. In particular it will still manage the diabetes (including diabetes podiatry) and nutrition and dietetics service and will continue to provide community health services for children and young people, including public health nursing.
To find out which services have transferred to CLCH and for information about these services, visit the CLCH website