The red bag contains standardised paperwork, medication and personal belongings, and it stays with a care home resident from the time they leave the residential home to go to hospital until the time they return to their care home at the end of their stay in hospital. This example of a local initiative forms part of our managing transfers of care resource.
The initiative:
- ensures that everyone involved in the care for the individual will have vital information to hand, including about the resident’s general health, the current concern, and any medication he/she is taking
- saves time at the transfer from care home to ambulance and at the transfer from ambulance to A&E
- allows A&E staff to make more informed decisions about the patient
- enables speedier discharge, as hospital staff will know that the patient is going back to the care provided by expert staff in the care home
- enhances the experience and continuity of care for care home residents and helps staff to treat them with dignity and respect.
Over a period of nine months, 179 residents of care homes were tracked through the local hospital. For these, the average length of stay with a bag was 13.4 days, compared to 17.4 days without a bag, meaning that residents with a bag spent four days less in hospital than those without a red bag.
Read a fuller description of the scheme: Sutton Homes of Care: red bag initiative