The Pre-Hospital Frailty Network is working with systems to provide the right care, in the right place, for older people living with frailty who have urgent care needs. The Network launched in November 2021, to work with eight systems across the Midlands region, and is a clinically led quality improvement collaborative.

Frailty describes  a health condition that means individuals are less able to recover from accidents, physical illness or other stress events.  It should be treated as a long term condition through-out adult life.  The care of older people living with frailty presents a growing and significant issue for today’s NHS.

The aim of the programme is to provide a cohort of patients that have accessed healthcare via the ambulance service with the most appropriate care at home. Data analysis has been undertaken focused initially on older patients triaged within 999 dispatch categories C3 or C4 (urgent or less urgent healthcare needs), and suggests there are opportunities to improve quality and patient experience in this cohort as well as reduce demand on ambulance dispatch and appropriately avoid admission to the emergency department by appropriate referral to urgent community response services, virtual wards or other ‘care at home’ services in local areas.

The Network delivers a programme of support framed around frailty assessment, that will help inform a clinically appropriate and holistic response to meet patient needs.