Urgent Community Response

About the service

Urgent Community Response is a Consultant Practitioner and Advanced practice led service, which is multi-professional, assessing, diagnosing and treating patients at home with the primary aim to care for people in their own homes, and avoid admission to hospital.

Across North and Mid Hampshire we have a collaborative working partnership with Hampshire and Isle of Wight Healthcare UCR, South Central Ambulance Service, and Hampshire Hospital front door frailty team, to deliver the falls and frailty car and urgent response van. The clinicians respond to 999 category 3 and 4 calls and 111 calls within 2 hours in a fully equipped car with specialist lifting equipment, adaptive equipment to support and facilitate therapeutic interventions, point of care testing, and medications. This enables the team to assess, diagnose and treat patients in their own homes.

Hampshire has an ageing population. Patients with frailty are at a higher risk of being admitted and have more adverse outcomes if they are admitted. However, some patients do not need to be in hospital and with the right clinical support can remain independent at home. The service is aimed at identifying and treating those patients, and supporting their recovery before they get to the stage where they need to be admitted.

What we do

In order to deliver this, the team work as a joined up service alongside adult social care, to give patients a seamless journey through the care system. The UCR team provide advanced clinical support and therapy experts to support patients at home, as well as working with adult social care so that the patient is seen by the right person at the right time and by the right service.

Once the team receive a referral a senior clinician will visit the patient, either at their home or in hospital, and complete a full initial assessment.

Following the assessment, appropriate treatment and holistic care planning will be done together to ensure appropriate support to enable the patient to remain at home and recover. This can include support from Consultant Practitioners, Doctors, Nurses and Allied health professionals such as occupational therapists and physiotherapists, as well as social care and respite services.

Up to 85% of our patients do not need to go to hospital and are able to stay at home with support.

Accessing the service

Access to the service is via referral from a healthcare professional, or self-referral.