Our Rapid Assessment Interface and Discharge (RAID) service has recently won a prestigious Health Service Journal Award for Best Innovation in Mental Health.
What is RAID and how does it work?
The RAID team, based at City Hospital in Birmingham is made up of a multi-skilled team that provides a comprehensive assessment of a person’s physical and psychological wellbeing at key points in the care pathway.
Traditional acute admission beds to not have access to a staff team with psychiatric expertise or specialist training so mental illness can sometimes go undetected and untreated.
RAID, an innovative new approach in mental health, delivers an in-reach service across the hospital. As well as psychiatric liaison, it brings together practitioners from other mental health specialities, including substance misuse and old age psychiatry in one team so that all patients over the age of 16 can be assessed and treated or referred appropriately much earlier.
The results - with NHS funding being tighter than ever, RAID has shown that it is possible to improve outcomes whilst saving money.
RAID has not just resulted in better, more holistic, patient care, but has also streamlined services and been shown to make significant savings, as it has avoided unnecessary admissions onto busy medical wards.
Below are a few examples of efficiency savings the project has made, for a comparatively modest outlay, at the hospital it is based within since its launch last year:
• Average length of stay has been reduced from eight days to five
• 14,600 bed days have been saved over eight months
RAID has shown that it can reduce the length of stay for dementia patients in City Hospital by at least by 7.5 days per admission. This is the equivalent to £2m saving in vital NHS funds that can be spent elsewhere. This level of saving has been achieved by improving quality of dementia care and not through cuts on vital services.
By rolling the service out to other acute hospitals in Birmingham and beyond, RAID has the potential to save millions of pounds for the NHS, improve efficiency and improve patient experience.
Where can I find out more?
For more information visit http://www.hsjawards.co.uk or www.bsmhft.nhs.uk or contact comms.team@bsmhft.nhs.uk.
