Hospital at Home service is ‘game changer’ for families, study says
A children’s ‘Hospital at Home’ service can dramatically cut the time a young patient spends in hospital, according to a new study.
The service, run by Evelina London Children’s Hospital across Lambeth and Southwark, aims to provide a range of medical care for children and teenagers in their own homes.
In many cases this has either helped to avoid a hospital admission or has allowed a child to leave hospital sooner.
The new study, published in the medical journal Archives of Disease in Childhood, aimed to measure how effective the Hospital at Home service had been for child patients from its launch in 2018 until 2022.
During that period the service helped 4,427 children either go home from hospital earlier or avoid a hospital admission altogether.
This freed up more than 11,000 ‘bed days’ across two major hospitals in South London – Evelina London Children’s Hospital in Westminster Bridge Road, and King’s College Hospital in Denmark Hill.
One young patient, 14-year-old Guilherme Niero Mansi from Southwark, has welcomed the chance to spend more time at home with his family.
Guilherme, usually known as Gui, was born with a complex range of medical conditions including spina bifida and hydrocephalus and spent long stints in Evelina London as a child.
Since signing up to the Hospital at Home service in 2018, his mum, Debora Mansi, says they have managed to slash the time Gui spends in hospital by about 85-90 per cent.
She said: “Gui has low immunity and his lungs are not strong, so he gets a lot of infections.
“When he was younger, I’d need to take him to hospital, and then he could be there for a month. And that could happen maybe four times a year.
“But now with the Hospital at Home team, if Gui needs anything that I can’t do myself I’ll call them and they’ll come. They are really amazing – they are very consistent in how they do all the treatments.”
Less time in hospital means Gui can focus on his schoolwork with a tutor who comes to his home as well as having days out with his mum, his dad Claudio and older sister Luiza.
Mrs Mansi said: “He’s a very smart boy and he loves technology, as well as music, maths and English. He also loves playing with a ball and going to parks and museums – and he gets a lot more chance to do these things he loves now. It’s been a game changer for us.”
The service allows children and teenagers to receive a range of treatments for short-term illnesses in their own home, under the care of specially qualified children’s community nurses.
Common treatments that can be provided include giving medication, caring for wounds, collecting blood and measuring a patient’s vital signs.
Dr Ronny Cheung, consultant paediatrician at Evelina London and lead investigator of the study, said the improvements in patient care offered by Hospital at Home provide the evidence to support a wider roll-out of the service across the country.
He said: “Across the NHS there is a growing ambition to introduce more tailored, home-based care for patients and reduce the time they need to spend in hospital.
“Our results from the first four years of the children’s Hospital at Home service show it can greatly improve the experiences of our young patients and their families.”
Pictured top: Gui with his mum Debora at home (Picture: Debora Mansi)
