Somerset NHS Foundation Trust ’s Post

Earlier this week, we welcomed Professor Em Wilkinson-Brice, Director of Staff Experience and leadership Development at NHS England, and Sue Doheny, Chief Nursing Officer at NHS England South West, to visit the new Care Coordination Hub and Community Diagnostic Centre in Taunton – two brilliant examples that demonstrate the developments around the shift in services from hospitals to community sites, one of the three Government shifts identified as part of the NHS 10-year plan. The Care Co-ordination Hub was launched in November 2024 as a 6-month pilot, aiming to simplify access to community services by offering clinicians advice and guidance to support onward referral. The hub helps to prevent avoidable ambulance dispatches to emergency departments, hospital attendance and admissions, and in turn, ensuring that patients get the right care for their needs quicky and safely. Sue and Em were able to meet the teams and see the Hub in action, before making their way to the Taunton Diagnostic Centre. The centre opened in September 2021 and was the first independent sector partnership of its kind in the UK. It delivers diagnostic tests, outpatient appointments, as well as minor skin procedures, and this rapid expansion of community diagnostic capacity in Somerset recently resulted in the county marking the 500,000th community diagnostic test. While at the centre, Sue and Em met representatives from Alliance Medical and radiology colleagues from the trust and were taken on a tour of the diagnostic centre to see both the range of diagnostic imaging services available, as well as hearing about the diagnostic tests available on the first floor, which is also home to dermatology services and Somerset’s orthopaedic assessment service. South West Regional Chief Nurse, Sue Doheny, said: “Seeing two different examples of the work the NHS in Somerset has been doing to prevent people going to a hospital setting when not required, was really inspiring. I could really sense the desire and passion of the staff that I met in the community diagnostic centre to innovatively lead the way in providing a wide range of tests and scans for patients in an environment away from a hospital setting. The patients expressed a really positive experience, from the calm environment to being able to park. “It was also clear that the multi-disciplinary team in the Care Coordination Centre were having a real impact in ensuring people that might need urgent or emergency care could get the help they needed in a more holistic way, rather than simply being taken to an emergency department or hospital bed. By having GPs, ambulance staff, community nurses, social care, virtual wards and a range of other clinicians in one room, able to work together to find the best solution for a patient, means many people are able to be cared for either in home or closer to home, which we know ultimately has better outcomes for people.”