Information
NHS Lothian’s Care Homes Website https://weare.nhslothian.scot/carehomes/ was initially devised to provide Covid-19 information for Care Homes.
Since then, the website has grown immensely and now offers information on a wide variety of services, teams and training and education relevant to not only to Care Homes but others working with Older Adults.
It aims to be a “one stop shop” and is publicly accessible so anyone who may be involved with a Care Home or with working with Older Adults can access information whether this be Care Home staff, Care at Home staff, District Nurses, resident’s, relatives or GP’s.
The section “Lothian Care Homes” provides information and contact details of Care Home Support Teams (CHST) for each partnership in Lothian. GPs may liaise with CHSTs in relation to Care Home resident’s care.
The section “NHS Teams – Home Orientated” provides information and contact details on teams that work with the whole Care Home. This may be in terms of notifiable illnesses or diseases (Health Protection) or in terms of developing education programmes (Lothian Care Academy) or quality improvement projects (Quality Improvement Team for Care Homes and Primary Care Settings). GPs may wish to refer to Health Protection if one of their patients has a notifiable disease, such as, scabies, norovirus or e-coli. GPs may not need to refer to the latter two teams, however, if either team is working in a Care Home the GP is connected to it might be useful to see what the teams do as GPs may find some of their patients included in projects the Lothian Care Academy or the Quality Improvement Team for Care Homes and Primary Care Settings are carrying out.
The section “Supporting Resident’s Needs – Services and Referral Pathways” provides information and contact details on services which Care Home residents and Older Adults may require – so services that work with an individual. Some of these services Care Homes can directly refer the resident to others require GP referral. Most of these services are not Care Home specific and can be accessed by/on behalf of any Older Adult in Lothian.
Patients who are acutely unwell who would benefit from management in the community can be referred to Hospital at Home.
Services which are available for Older Adults and people living in Care Homes are wide and varying and the website has specific pages relating to referral to some of these services, including:
As well as referral details the section “Supporting residents needs – services and referral pathways” also contains information for the management of common conditions seen in Care Homes and amongst Older Adults. These topics are divided into the following categories:
Holistic Care – such as Anticipatory Care Planning (ACP) and Occupational Therapy
Physical Conditions/Treatments – such as Audiology and Oral Health
Physical Other – such as Falls and Physiotherapy
Wellbeing & mental Health – such as Behaviour Support and Dementia
