Increasing access to therapy

Examples of practical work to increase access to therapy

The use of alternative therapies in stroke rehabilitation - looking outside the box

• Solihull Hospital Part of Heart Of England Foundation Trust

Improving rehabilitation opportunities through healthcare assistants:

• Guys and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust

Increasing rehabilitation through joint working with nurses

• Medway Community Healthcare Stroke Rehabilitation Unit, St Bartholomew's Hospital, Rochester, Kent
• Newton Abbot Hospital stroke unit with Torbay and Southern Devon Care Trust

Reorganising therapy services and workforce changes: 

• South Tyneside NHS Foundation Trust
• Chesterfield Royal Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
• Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
• Sheffield Primary Care Trust and Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

Community stroke teams working with enabling carers and social care: 

• NHS Camden - stroke REDs
• The community stroke team in Blackburn with Darwen, part of Lancashire Care NHS Foundation Trust

In Greater Manchester, Greater Manchester and Cheshire Cardiac and Stroke Network worked with clinical teams to identify ways to increase access to therapy and rehabilitation. Formal evaluation of the impact of the changes are ongoing and will be complete in February 2012, but an informal interim assessment at one participating site indicated that the average length of time that patients spent engaged in meaningful activity had risen from under one hour, five days a week to three hours five minutes, seven days a week after the timetables and activities had been introduced. To find out more, see the Greater Manchester and Cheshire Cardiac and Stroke Network case study.

To support this work the team have developed a prescribed activity booklet. 

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