North Yorkshire MP visits Vivid Care to learn more about its role in enabling quicker patient discharge
MP Andrew Jones has visited Vivid Care, a local business that is partnering with NHS hospitals across the UK to enable faster patient discharge and more efficient community falls response, in Harrogate, North Yorkshire.
As a representative of Harrogate & Knaresborough, Andrew takes an interest in the role that local companies like vivid.care can play in enabling quicker patient discharge from hospital and into the community.
Vivid Care’s Managing Director, Tristan Hulbert, said: “We wanted to demonstrate just how Vivid.Care products and healthcare solutions help to enable timely patient discharge from hospitals and reduce system costs where possible.
In recent years, Vivid Care has partnered with emergency services and local authorities across the UK to provide equipment that allows for faster falls response.
Vivid Care has provided the Raizer Emergency Lifting Chair to councils, home care services, nursing and care homes and NHS hospitals to help lift fallen patients from the floor and reduce long lie times.
The Raizer M is a manual lifting chair that allows a single falls assistant to quickly pick up a fallen person from the floor into a sitting position with a turning handle on the side of the seat.
Tristan added: “The Raizer has become more and more popular, and we have noticed the profile of the product growing. It is a rechargeable standing aid that can remove the need for non-emergency ambulance callouts and free up resources for more serious emergencies, improving response times and patient outcomes.
“With emergency services and ambulances under increasing amounts of pressure, we are glad to see that the Raizer Lifting Chair has gone some way to alleviating the workload faces by first responders, which in turn helps reduce the backlogs outside hospital A&E departments.
“Vivid.Care provides high-quality, innovative solutions that improve patient outcomes and promote independence.
“We are thrilled to have the opportunity to showcase our products to Mr. Jones and highlight the ways we are working to improve patient outcomes and reduce healthcare costs. It was a pleasure to meet with him, and we appreciate his support for our NHS.”
Delays to patient discharge, where patients are considered medically fit for discharge but remain in hospital increased by 57 per cent in the 12 months between April 2021 and April 2022, from 8,039 to 12,589.
“We know that patients with hospital stays of three weeks or longer are known to have poorer health outcomes but nearly 350,000 patients spend more than three weeks in acute hospitals each year.
“The biggest reason that patients face delays leaving is because they are waiting for availability of the service most appropriate for them, we want to make it easier for community services and private individuals to find the correct equipment to get them out of hospital and into more comfortable surroundings.
“We showcased some of our innovative healthcare solutions such as the Raizer lifting chair and our Lento specialist seating range which are being used by healthcare providers across the UK to reduce delays to patient discharge and existing backlogs.”