Care Home Alignment

It is nationally accepted that aligning a care home with a GP practice improves care for those patients, aims to reduce admissions into Secondary Care, and also improves communication with the care home staff.

In Rotherham there are approximately 1500 patients living in 36 Elderly and EMI (Elderly Mentally Impaired) homes. Until recently there were several homes which had as many as 12 GP practices visiting them.

Over half of the homes had 6 or more practices visiting them. It is also not uncommon for a practice to be visiting 12 homes (with one practice visiting 24 homes).

Under this scheme the majority of care homes will be aligned to 1 practice only.

St Ann’s now looks after 7 Care homes, these are

• Ackroyd
• Dene Brook
• Eastwood House
• Moorgate Croft
• Moorgate Hollow
• Moorgate Lodge
• Rotherwood

Every week each Care home will receive a visit from a GP and see the patients the home request to be seen.

Scheduled visits such as these have also had a positive improvement on the daily visit requests to the Practice.