Following a GP alert, the CCG has recently been made aware of a potential gap in service provision from NELFT one of our community health service providers.
This comprised of a referral to the NELFT continence service for a patient who recently had a traumatic childbirth leading to 3rd degree tears causing the patient to be doubly incontinent.
The patients referral was declined by owing to them not being housebound. When the CCGs quality team have raised this with NELFT formally the following response was received:-
“The specialist continence team only provide a level 2 (complex care) service to community patients. Level 1 provision ( non-specialist assessment and provision of pads ) has never been the remit of the specialist service – excluding patients in residential care homes. Therefore requests for continence pads are referred to the DN service, however as they are only commissioned for housebound patients this leaves a gap for any patient with basic continence pad requirements who is mobile.
For the case that was presented in this alert the continence service lead has undertaken some work with the community liaison team to ensure that those cases where the needs fit the complex category would be accepted and not simply refused due to being mobile so that this doesn’t happen again”
Please continue to use your GP alert facility on your GP intranet to raise issues with this and any other service provision.
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