Winning the best community health care
Over the past three months the Save Lewisham Hospital campaign and Healthwatch Lewisham, Carers Lewisham and others have collected over 100 stories gathered from users, clinicians and managers to find out from people’s personal experience what are the key features, the magic ingredients that make good community healthcare so valuable.
Findings
The best community healthcare includes pathways in and out of hospitals. Lewisham Hospital is at the heart of our community. To maintain such high quality care our work has shown that we need:
- Well trained and well paid staff, well supported, who have the time to offer patient centred services.
- A holistic approach, taking into account many aspects of the patient’s life and health.
- Connectedness and cooperation between services, the voluntary sector and the community.
- The patient supported to make as many decisions about their care as they want.
- Healthcare as a whole – we reject suggestions that boosting community healthcare opens the door to reductions in hospital care
- No privatisation. Smooth integrated pathways cannot be provided through privatisation and fragmentation.
- If there are clinically sound and citizen-backed reasons for closing hospital services, then community services need to be in place and effective first.
- Renegotiation Private Finance Initiative where possible
- New media should be used where appropriate
Downloads
If you require this report in an alternative format, please get in touch with us to discuss your request.
File download
Community health care report
