[MTS] What benefit would using the Nursing and Residential Tool have?

7.6 million patients over the age of 65 years were admitted to hospital in the UK in 2016 - accounting
for 41 % of total admissions.

The average length of an admission in the UK for a patient 65 years or over= 11.9 days.

2.7 million bed days are being taken unecessarily for patients with no requirement of hospital care.

These unecesary hospital stays can have significant consequences for elderly and frail patients, with
people with dementia having even poorer outcomes in hospital compared with those without;

• They are 5 times more likely to be admitted.
• They have longer admissions.
• They are 3 times more likely to die in hospital.

Approx 30% of patients from North West Abu lance Service are discharged on scene; these are patients
that would have been appropriate for an alternative pathway of care and could have saved a valuable
emergency resource.

The aims of the Nursing and Residential triage tool are not only to reduce the number of unnecessary
999 calls but to ensure that patients are not admitted to the emergency department/hospital
unnecessarily by using the tool to direct the staff to the most appropriate referral pathway first time.

The Nursing and Residential Tool is not a clinical assessment tool and does not ask staff to make
clinical decisions.

It does however, provide staff with the confidence to make decisions as to the most appropriate
pathway of care for their patient in order to ensure patients are assessed in the most appropriate
timeframe by the most appropriate health care professional.

It also provides Nursing and Residential Home managers increased support to show how decisions
regarding a patients care was achieved, should this need to be shared with a patients family.