Emergency Hospital Admissions

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff Excerpts
Wednesday 7th March 2018

(6 years, 9 months ago)

Lords Chamber
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Baroness Finlay of Llandaff Portrait Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)
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Is the Department of Health and Social Care, in conjunction with NHS England, monitoring the completeness of 24/7 nursing coverage in the community? Even though the pilots, which will have a virtual ward, will help determine the most vulnerable patients, those patients will still need hands-on nursing at the time they need it. If it is not available, they will inevitably end up being transported to hospital.

Lord O'Shaughnessy Portrait Lord O’Shaughnessy
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One of the issues the NAO reports is that we do not yet have good enough data on what is happening in the community. The creation of the community services dataset will enable us to track precisely what is available in the community in every area. Concerns have been raised in this House before about the number of district nurses, which unfortunately has fallen over recent years. It has now shown a small increase year on year and we hope we are starting to turn the corner on community nursing numbers, too.