Frailty Hub: Frailty and the NHS
Date Published:
24 June 2020
Last updated:
20 January 2023 This area of the Frailty Hub focuses on the national picture. Here you can access publications by NHS England, NICE, GIRFT, NHS RightCare and NHS Benchmarking.
Quality in frailty: Connecting initiatives - BGS CQSC
The various quality improvement initiatives around frailty can be confusing, even to those who are involved in this area of clinical practice. This article from the BGS Newsletter June/July 2019 (Issue 71) explains what the various national initiatives are and how they link together.
NHS England
The NHS Right Care toolkit provides practical guidance in understanding the priorities in frailty care. It supports ways of evaluating current systems and finding opportunities for improvement.
- NHS England: Virtual wards
This set of resources published by NHS England aims to support service providers to develop and sustain effective virtual ward services. It provides practical tools in designing teams, information governance and training frameworks.
NICE Guidelines
- Multimorbidity: clinical assessment and management [NG56]
Having multiple long term conditions is a risk factor for frailty, although not all patients with multimorbidity are frail. This NICE guidance explains how to optimise identification and care for those with multimorbidity.
National reports
- Commission on Hospital Care for Frail Older People - HSJ (2014)
This report commissioned by the Healthcare Services Journal (HSJ) aims to provide a practical overview of improving hospital care for older people living with frailty. The report brings together the main reports on hospital care for frail older people from recent years, original material submitted to their call for evidence and good practice case studies.
- GIRFT (Getting it Right First Time): Geriatric Medicine Report (2021)
This national 2021 report has focused specifically on the care of older people with frailty. It identifies areas of variation within national frailty care, case studies of good practice and provides recommendations for frailty care. The 2021 report covers care within hospitals, as well the vertical interfaces with primary care and the community. More information on GIRFT can be found here.