New Haslemere health hub brings specialist care together in one visit
The Proactive Care Hub is aimed at people with long-term conditions
A new health hub offering people with long-term conditions a full assessment in a single visit has opened at Haslemere Hospital.
The Haslemere Proactive Care Hub (PACH) is a service from Royal Surrey NHS Foundation Trust, designed to support independent, healthy living and stop existing health conditions getting worse.
It is being set up in space previously used for inpatient wards at the hospital.
It brings together a range of healthcare professionals under one roof.
The Royal Surrey team is working with local GPs to identify people who could benefit from the service.
Those people are then invited in for a review, with follow-up checks as needed.
The trust says the aim is to spot small changes in a patient's health early, before they lead to a more serious deterioration that might otherwise go unnoticed until a later, harder-to-treat stage.
Dr Simon Vickers is the Royal Surrey Clinical Director for Proactive Care and also a Guildford-based GP.
He said: "What's different about this service is that it's a proactive approach to treating patients, drawing on a range of expertise to provide holistic care. It bolsters the service provided by GPs and will help us identify and address signs of declining health at an earlier stage, when interventions are typically more successful. As well as leading to better health outcomes for patients, this also takes pressure off GPs and hospitals."
The trust says the hub has ambitions to expand to support people living with a range of other long-term conditions.
The Royal Surrey team is working with GPs to identify local care priorities, which may include respiratory conditions, diabetes and neurodegenerative conditions.