Medical Director for NHS England praises service for elderly patients

On Friday 5th October NHS England’s Medical Director, Professor Stephen Powis (pictured third from right), visited the innovative Woking Community Hospital-based Bedser Hub to find out how CSH Surrey are leading the way with a successful integrated health and wellbeing service.

The Hub provides a range of services for elderly and frail patients all in one place, including access to GPs, community matrons, pharmacists, mental health services and social services. The service aims to ensure that patients are helped to stay well and independent at home rather than be admitted to hospital. Since it opened in December 2015 it has helped care for more than 4,000 local people and received excellent feedback from patients and carers, with its success leading to two more Hubs in the North West Surrey area this year. The two new Hubs are located at Ashford Hospital and Walton Hospital. Each serves a population of 120,000 people.

Professor Powis was impressed with his visit and insight into how the Hubs provide a joined up service for patients. He said: “It was fantastic seeing teams coming together with their shared expertise to develop a better service for the benefit of the local community. We are living longer, which is of course a great thing, but many people also have long term health conditions. Schemes such as this where one of the aims is to ensure people can be treated closer to home and don’t end up in hospital unnecessarily make such a difference to their quality of life.”

For more information on the Bedser Hub visit: https://www.cshsurrey.co.uk/our-services/service-adults/bedser-hub