After leaving hospital, did you get the care and support you needed?

After leaving hospital, did you get the care and support you needed?  Please tell us your experiences.

Healthwatch Birmingham would like to hear from you, as members of the public, patients, relatives, service users and/or carers in Birmingham about your experiences after leaving hospital. Hospitals do have discharge policies; these policies include passing on information for a patient’s post-discharge care to GPs and communicating with family and carers, where appropriate.  This may also involve referring patients for further care to primary or community services for continued care.
For example Healthwatch Birmingham received feedback from a family member on problems they experienced with joined up care between ‘service providers’, the patient, and the family after leaving hospital; which left a family member without support. They said:

• A vulnerable elderly male was discharged from hospital, and was sent home alone as he had no relatives living near.
• He was later found on the floor and taken back to hospital. He was not admitted, but discharged and sent home where he was alone again.
• The rapid response team were supposed to visit, but failed to do so as they thought he had been admitted to hospital.
• The family feel there was a lack of concern and care and felt the hospitals actions were to avoid a delayed transfer. This demonstrates a lack of communication with the family and health and care services.

Tell us your experiences

We are keen to understand your experience – good or bad – about the care and support you received after leaving a hospital in Birmingham.  Your experience is really important to us.  It can show us the quality of care received and whether improvements are needed.

• Please visit our online Feedback Centre at healthwatchbirmingham.co.uk/services and search for the service you are using, or service you have received care from and complete our short feedback form.
• Or you could e-mail us at info@healthwatchbirmingham.co.uk
• You can feedback anonymously. Your personal details will be kept confidential and not shared with third party organisations.

What will we do with your feedback?

All feedback we receive from you (as a patient, member of the public, service user and/or carer) about your experience of local health or social care services helps to shape our future investigations.
Your feedback is used to provide a better understanding of care quality across the city. We may request more information from the providers of a service or make recommendations for change or improvement, based on your experiences.

About joined-up care

The Local Government Association Local Government Association (LGA) is seeking changes to health and care services.  So the system becomes more responsive, with more person-centred care, and decisions being made together with service users and carers and organisations providing the care.
Issues around discharge from hospital, aftercare and support have been discussed in the media.  Improvement of discharge and post-discharge care is discussed by NHS England.
Unsafe discharge is discussed by the Ombudsman.