Adults aged 18 and over who have had 12 or more contacts with urgent healthcare services (including A&E, ambulance, walk-in centres, out of hours GPs) in the last year or 5 within the last month. People can be referred either as part of a weekly data referral spreadsheet from Leeds Teaching Hospitals Trust or as a completed referral form from specific health organisations.
People who meet all of the above criteria can be referred to the project by contacting the team’s secure email address to request a copy of the referral form.
Please note that due to a high demand for support from the Barca Outreach Support Team, referrals are prioritised from the Emergency Department and Yorkshire Ambulance Service for people with a current high volume of urgent healthcare contact.
BOST helps individuals to reduce their use of urgent care services and to use more accessible and appropriate support for their individual needs. The team works with people across the city to address some of the psychosocial reasons why someone may frequently use urgent and emergency healthcare services. This could include key issues around challenges with housing, drug or alcohol use, mental and physical health needs, help with managing money, volunteering or employment and providing improved social networks and relationships.
Not all contacts with urgent care services require medical support or admission to hospital; often the reasons for such frequent use are socially determined. It is important that people who regularly use urgent healthcare services feel that they are supported and not stigmatised for being in a healthcare setting. BOST work collaboratively with a number of services and will refer and engage the people they support with more accessible health and community teams. This model has shown significant positive results in its previous years’ work with Leeds Teaching Hospital Trust, for both the people supported by BOST and the hospital.
The project has previously been nominated for the Yorkshire Evening Post’s Community Healthcare of the Year award and was shortlisted by the Health Service Journal Partnership for the Best Not-for-Profit Working in Partnership with the NHS.
After 3 months of intervention BOST achieves a reduction of:
For more information about the service please email Kim Bright.
