Issue - meetings

Joint Report of the Associate Director of Commissioning (Care and Health) Devon County Council and NHS Devon CCG on the Better Care Fund (BCF), Quarter Return, Performance Report and Performance Summary on the BCF.

The Board considered a joint Report from the Associate Director of Commissioning (Care and Health) and NHS Devon Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) on the Better Care Fund (BCF), Quarter Return, Performance Report and Performance Summary. The BCF was the only mandatory policy to facilitate integration between Health and Social Care, providing a framework for joint planning and commissioning. It brought together ringfenced budgets from Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) allocations, the Disabled Facilities Grant and funding paid to Local Government for adult social care services. The Health and Wellbeing Board had oversight of the BCF and was accountable for its delivery.

The Report highlighted that hospital discharge was greatly affected by COVID-19. Delayed transfers of Care had started to decrease in March due to the requirement to reduce bed occupancy levels to 50% as part of the pandemicresponse, dropping to a very low level in April and May. In the period May to September delays had increased steadily as elective services recommenced.

Regarding permanent admissions to residential and nursing care, fewer older people were placed in residential/nursing care relative to population than comparator and national averages. From April, there was increased pressure within the system as a result of Discharge to Assess pathways out of hospital, which increased numbers of placements, particularly short-term admissions.   However, the number of permanent admissions had continued to reduce which was likely due to personal choice and available capacity due to outbreaks closing care homes to admissions.

The percentage of people still at home 91 days after hospital discharge into

rehabilitation / reablement services attempted to measure the effectiveness of rehabilitation and reablement services in keeping people out of hospital.

The 2019-20 outturn for this indicator was 85.8%, which was an improvement on the 2018-19 position of 80.1%.

Discussion points with Members included:

• Data around the number of readmitted patients back to hospital in Devon. This was monitored regularly, with a discharge cell that looked at readmission patients and those staying in hospital longer than 7 or 21 days. Work was ongoing to boost community services to support people to stay at home and not be readmitted to hospital.

RESOLVED that the Board note the national requirements and latest performance data.