Home Oxygen Assessment Service Patient Engagement
The Home Oxygen Assessment Service is currently commissioned by NHS Tees Valley CCG (all areas except Hartlepool and Stockton-on-Tees), NHS Sunderland CCG, NHS County Durham CCG, NHS South Tyneside CCG and the Gateshead locality of Newcastle and Gateshead CCG from Air Liquide.
The current service model focuses on oxygen prescription and ongoing assessment of oxygen need. A typical pathway incorporates an initial assessment, reviews at four weeks, three months and six months and annual reviews thereafter.
It is expected that the majority of patients on long term oxygen are also supported by community respiratory teams, leading to two independent teams supporting this group of patients and potential duplication therefore of clinical activity, or not making best use of clinical time whilst supporting individual patients.
Current Service
The current service consists of a team of 13 specialist nurses responsible for assessing and reviewing patient’s oxygen needs. The clinical team is supported by an admin team based in South Shields.
Referrals to the service are usually made by GPs but can be made by other healthcare professionals. When patients with respiratory problems and any other conditions are thought to need oxygen they are referred to the service for an oxygen assessment. The team of specialist nurses will assess if oxygen is appropriate and if so order the supply, provide support and follow up.
The team reviews all patients receiving home oxygen to make sure their oxygen supply is appropriate for their condition and provide ongoing care and support. The majority of oxygen assessments take place in the home. This is supported by ambulatory assessment clinics at Middlesbrough, Sunderland and Durham. The team works closely with GPs, hospital consultants, community healthcare teams and home oxygen equipment providers. There are currently approximately 3,302 patients accessing the service.
The CCGs are keen to understand the views and experience of patients who have used the Oxygen at Home Service, how they access it, any barriers to service, what ‘good’ looks like etc. This is in order that they can build a more detailed picture of the service and feed this into work ongoing across the region via Integrated Care Partnerships (ICPs) that are looking closely at the way services are configured.
A survey has been posted out to a sample of current service users and here is an online link to the survey. Survey closing date is 16th July 2021.