Shaping the Future of ‘Integrated Discharge Hubs’ in Bedfordshire

 8th July 2020

By Michael Mcghee, Carlos Santos, Susan Alfred, Carole Green, Gopal Waddon and Amrus Ali

2021 update: The ‘BCHS Shaping Our Future’ workshops brought staff, service users and partners together to help shape the future of the ‘Integrated Discharge Hubs’ in both Luton & Dunstable and Bedford hospitals. The hubs were set up in all ELFT Community Health Service directorates, initially established to facilitate the Covid-19 discharges at the start of the crisis and are now set to continue, after proving to be a successful change.

The Bedfordshire Community Health Services (BCHS) held a ‘Shaping Our Future’ Workshop on 10^th June 2020, gathering fascinating insights about the next steps for their ‘Integrated Discharge Hubs’ in both Luton & Dunstable (L&D) and Bedford hospitals.

The workshop was attended by 41 participants including representation from the Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCG), local authorities and acute provider colleagues, as well as ELFT service leads, people participation and corporate colleagues. The result was a wealth of feedback gathered from staff, service users and partners to help shape the future, with plenty of ideas around service priorities for the creation of a first draft high-level strategy.

The workshop was also an opportunity to celebrate some very positive feedback that service users have been sharing about the new ‘Integrated Discharge Hubs’ (fig. 1):

Figure 1 – Service Users feedback about the new Integrated Discharge Hubs in Bedfordshire

---

Michael McGhee (Director of the Community Health Services) has been sponsoring several workshops in the Community Health Services (CHS) directorates to focus on the development the Integrated Discharge Hubs (IHB).  The hubs were set up in all three Community Health Service directorates, initially established to facilitate the COVID-19 discharges at the start of the crisis and are now set to continue, after proving to be a successful change.

The workshops were facilitated as a collaborative effort by colleagues from ‘quality improvement’, ‘performance’ and ‘people participation’.  The session started with a review of the BCHS performance data from the services, as well as from staff and service user feedback to provide context.

Attendees explored changes and experiences that have come about since the Integrated Discharge Hubs have been in place, using the ‘Shaping Our Future’ framework and the ‘sense making matrix’ .

Outputs included:

• Exploration of the service redesign through perspective of ‘value’ and ‘enablers’. (fig. 2)
• Developed a matrix consolidating what processes could be ‘stopped’, ‘let go’, ‘restarted ‘or ‘amplified’ (fig. 3)
• Plan the next steps for development of the hubs and for developing the overall strategy using a driver diagram.

Figure 2 – Themes emerged from redesign discussions in terms VALUE and ENABLERS

---

Figure 3: Practices agreed to either Stop, Let Go, Restart or Amplify during the next stages

---

After the session, participants were asked what the key learnings from the workshop had been. Emerging themes included:

• Team Empowerment
• Staffing Resources
• Co-design with service users
• Service offer and access
• Digital platforms

And in the feedback following the workshop:

---

Next steps

The ‘Discharge Hub’ team will consolidate the service user feedback received (fig. 1) and explore other components for the Shaping Our Future Framework, such as Population Health and Future Service Design.  BCHS will meet regularly to develop their change strategy which will include a driver diagram to inform the next steps.