Walsall patients are benefitting from an upgraded community assessment service that also creates more clinical capacity.

Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust has launched a community centralised triage which includes a team of clinical and clerical staff who are based within an area of multidisciplinary professionals.

This team better supports telephone and referral messages to be triaged and signposted correctly.

This ensures patients receive the treatment and medical advice they need from the most appropriate people.

Dawn Asbury, Locality Lead Matron for Quality Community Division is part of the Adult Community Nursing service which provides Nursing care for patients within their home environment.

She said: “The community centralised triage has been redesigned to allow telephone messages and referrals to be received into place-based teams which means that they now all come through to one place.

“We did this as it meets the needs of the national strategy of healthcare providers which states that having a single point of access supports healthcare professionals and patients.

“This will benefit staff as it will allow more clinical capacity within the teams to provide holistic best patient practice and care.

“Although this is a redesign, patients will continue to be assessed by senior clinical staff and hopefully their experience will be further enhanced due to a more efficient flow.”

Dawn added: “I am very proud to have been part of this launch and of all the staff working hard together to make this happen.

“There is continued evaluation from members actively working in the centralised triage centre and clinical audits will be undertaken on a regular basis to ensure we are always running to the best of our ability.”