New care group aims to reduce hospital admissions

The move is part of what chiefs describe as a major enhancement to services aimed at reducing hospital admissions and giving people faster, more joined-up support closer to home.
The services, delivered by HCRG Care Group across Swindon on behalf of the NHS, are designed to make them simpler to understand, easier to access, and better able to prevent serious health problems before they develop.
The NHS says health services across the region, particularly urgent and emergency care, are already under significant pressure, with the cost of inpatient, outpatient and A&E care currently standing at £340m per year and projected to rise to £410m by 2040.
This challenge is compounded by NHS England data showing that people living in the most deprived areas of England are nearly three times more likely to be admitted to hospital for conditions that could potentially have been treated or managed earlier in the community.
Val Scrase, Regional Director - Bath and North East Somerset, Swindon and Wiltshire, HCRG Care Group, said: “Bringing community health services together across Bath and North East Somerset, Swindon and Wiltshire in 2025 was an important step forward in helping people stay well for longer and enabling more care to be delivered safely in the community.
“This next phase will build on that strong foundation. It strengthens our ability to help people stay healthy and live well, while making care easier to access and better to experience. 
:It also supports the NHS’s ambition to move more care closer to home and prevent ill health, while easing the pressure.
“We’ve reached this point thanks to the invaluable support of our local communities, the voluntary sector and our NHS and local authority partners. 
"By working together, we’re creating a community health service that’s designed around people’s lives and capable of supporting healthier communities for years to come.”
The NHS says the changes have been developed with input from local people over the past year, including patients, carers, voluntary organisations, local authorities and NHS partners. 
One key frustration raised was that many people were unsure what community health services existed or how to access them, sometimes leading them to present at A&E instead.
These changes aim to remove these barriers through a new way of organising community services that supports NHS priorities to improve access, reduce health inequalities and deliver more care closer to home.
Anyone in the Swindon and across Wiltshire can contact community health services through a single point of contact - by phone on 0300 247 0200, online, or in writing - without needing to go through a GP or hospital first.
In addition, people will now also be able to ask for help from community health services without the need to speak to a GP first, and instead be assessed and connected to the right level of support by a new team of Community Health Navigators, from self-help resources through to specialist care.
Neighbourhood care teams of multidisciplinary groups of health, therapy and wellbeing professionals are also being introduced to work together with patients to consider all aspects of physical health and mental wellbeing, to offer more tailored care.
By sharing information and working from the same systems, the NHS says, this joined-up approach means teams can step in earlier, manage ongoing conditions proactively and prevent problems from escalating. 
The goal is to support people to live well and independently for longer - in turn, to reduce avoidable hospital admissions and relieve pressure on the wider NHS.
 

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