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Frailty - Urgent Care

Checked: 07-05-2024 by Vicky Ryan Next Review: 06-05-2025

Admission Reflection Tool (ART)

The Admission Reflection Tool is for use by any healthcare professional who is dealing with a frail person who is acutely unwell and hospital assessment is being considered.

It has been developed over many months by the Health and Care Risk Group, a subgroup of Clinical Cabinet.

https://www.clinicaltoolkit.co.uk/knowledgebase/admission-reflection-tool-art/

The core aims are to promote structured thinking, encourage risk-sharing and enable shared decision-making; not to direct decisions one way or the other.

Please also see the Clinical Guide - Using the Charlson Score as a guide to hospital admission.

Urgent Community Referral (Sirona)

To discuss a patient who needs urgent care in the community please contact the Single Point of Access team (Sirona) on 0300 125 6789.

BRI - Frailty Phone pilot

The consultant geriatrician at the BRI has now closed.

NBT - Geriatrician Advice Line

In any situation where you feel that admission is likely, but there is some uncertainty then we encourage you to CALL the Geriatrician Advice Line

Call: 07738859048 or via NBT switchboard. This is answered Mon-Fri 08:00 - 20:00

The geriatrician advice line is answered by the geriatrician on-call in the emergency zone, and as such, we may not always be able to take your call. Please try again a few minutes later if your call isn’t answered.

The Medical Admissions and Weekday IUC Professional Line may be more appropriate if the decision to admit has already been made, or when detailed knowledge of community services is required.

For less urgent queries, NBT offer a Geriatric Medicine A&G service covering Cognitive disorders, Falls, Bone health and Osteoporosis for Older People (BHOOP) and Movement Disorders.

Frailty - ACE

Please also see the Frailty - ACE page. Frailty-ACE (Assessment and Coordination for Emergency and urgent care) specifically aims to support frail patients who would otherwise be admitted or conveyed to hospital.

F-ACE receives referrals from paramedics on scene who are planning or likely to convey a frail person to hospital. In addition, the co-located Weekday Professional Line can pass cases to the Frailty-ACE service as an alternative to admission for eligible frail patients.

Efforts are made to ensure the accuracy and agreement of these guidelines, including any content uploaded, referred to or linked to from the system. However, BNSSG ICB cannot guarantee this. This guidance does not override the individual responsibility of healthcare professionals to make decisions appropriate to the circumstances of the individual patient, in consultation with the patient and/or guardian or carer, in accordance with the mental capacity act, and informed by the summary of product characteristics of any drugs they are considering. Practitioners are required to perform their duties in accordance with the law and their regulators and nothing in this guidance should be interpreted in a way that would be inconsistent with compliance with those duties.

Information provided through Remedy is continually updated so please be aware any printed copies may quickly become out of date.