The Community Wellbeing Hub (The Hub) is a partnership between Bath and North East Somerset Council, its prime provider HCRG Care group, the Royal United Hospital and 16 third sector partners. Established in March 2020, the aim of The Hub is to improve the health and wellbeing of its residents.
The Hub has been a long-standing ambition of strategic partners and third sector to create a more joined-up and co-ordinated approach to delivering care. Whilst there had been some attempts to deliver these ambitions, it was the COVID-19 pandemic that removed barriers to enable a more collaborative approach to be taken locally.
The Hub is not an entity in its own right, it brings together, through shared vision and objectives, a partnership, that joins up community services across Bath and North East Somerset. It recognises that no one organisation can improve the health of the population on its own but is a shared responsibility.
The Hub provides the infrastructure for its partners. It offers a central triage, secure referral management system called RIVIAM and governance to enable partners to work more collaborative ensuring a person-centred approach is at the centre of its work. The lead partners are the council and the HCRG.
In December 2022, funding was secured to deliver a more co-ordinated approach to community services through a digital discharge service at the Royal United Hospital.
The digital system has enabled ward teams at the Royal United Hospital to complete an Onward Admission Referral form giving them one place to refer a patient to a wide range of available community, housing and voluntary services at The Hub. This includes commissioned discharge dependent services.
Immediately reducing admin burden, the referral process is quick and seamless. RIVIAM also auto checks the patient’s details against the NHS Spine Mini service ensuring a high level of data accuracy is captured during the referral process.
Ward teams then use a care control dashboard to see in real time what’s happening regarding the care they have requested for a person. Status updates and useful information are easily accessible. Online communication reduces the need for phone calls and emails which introduce time delays to a patient’s discharge.
A view of the dashboard is also available for partners at The Hub so staff can easily see the person’s most recent ward, their expected discharge date and the different services requested.
With RIVIAM’s secure integration with the Electronic Patient Records, dashboard data is seamlessly updated providing timely visibility of this critical information. For The Hub's partners, RIVIAM makes it easy to co-ordinate care for a person with each other, reducing duplication, providing efficiencies, and improving the person’s experience.