Devon Care Coordination Hub (CareCo)

The ICB understands the importance of timely access to specialist support and guidance to ensure that you are able to care for your residents within the home and prevent avoidable admissions to hospital. To help support you with this, the ICB has been able to arrange for Care Homes in Devon to have direct access to the Devon Care Coordination service. This is a service that offers timely access and guidance to a team of clinical specialists with direct access to local service offers and can ensure we are able to offer both guidance and onward access to wrap around support services as part of our local offer. This has been put in place to ensure that you only call 999 for an ambulance when it is absolutely needed. The service operates from 8am until 8pm, 7 days a week.

This service has been available to the ambulance service for over a year now. However, as from today, we will be piloting direct access for your Care Home team. This service will operate alongside existing support through your aligned GP practice and the 111 service, but we ask with immediate effect that you ensure if your teams are considering calling 999, during the hours of 8am – 8pm, unless it is a life threatening situation, they should first contact the Care Coordination Hub on 01752 422 734 for advice on alternative pathways and support.

To support the implementation of this, please find below a poster to raise awareness with your team and information on who to contact - GP, Care Coordination, 111 and 999:

CareCo Poster

Care Home Access to CareCo and 111

We will be following up with direct contact to homes in the next week, and are keen to work with you in the coming weeks to understand the impact this is having and any further support arrangements we can consider putting in place.

We would like to take this opportunity, on behalf of NHS Devon ICB and our partners, to thank you for your continued support to the local health system and your help in implementing the above changes.