Background: Neonatal intensive care units, high dependency units and special care units look after premature and sick babies. Premature babies are typically discharged home from a neonatal unit rather than via a step down maternity or paediatric ward. These units can be some distance from family homes and babies may need to stay for months in a unit. This created significant economic and social burdens on domestic arrangements which may be particularly difficult for the least advantaged families. Prior to COVID, there were some examples of early supported home discharge models. These models facilitate babies going home earlier, thus reducing health inequalities and increasing capacity within neonatal units. During COVID all units had to quickly bring their version of a new service model into use. The speed of implementation meant that there is now a variation within the system, with variable evidence underpinning the service model its implementation approach and the patient/family experience.
Objectives:
• To evaluate each of the existing service models in place across North -West England.
• To evaluate the impact of health inequalities, staff optimisation levels, clinical safety and efficiency and patient/family experiences using mixed methods.
• To determine and recommend the best model or potential for a blended model that can emerge from consideration of features of all models.
• To disseminate results regionally.
Methods: The program consists of 5 inter-related work packages that will survey the early supported discharge models across the North-West, conduct semi-structured interviews with health care professionals and parents, collate and analyse safety, efficacy, health inequalities and comparative costs of the different models. Finally, we will collate all findings to inform a discussion with the Operational Delivery Network, Integrated Care Boards and parents and co-create the implementation toolkit. This will build capacity and capability in the organisations to implement service re-design or new services through training and workshops and to inform future work.
If you would like to find out more about the project, please contact our researcher: Natalie Morgan nmorgan5@uclan.ac.uk