Comfort Care Bundle for the Frail (CCBF) service project

[From Metro North Health]

The Comfort Care Bundle for the Frail (CCBF) is a specialist palliative/geriatrician consultation service project which is providing an integrated solution to the gap that exists for people in Metro North whom have life limiting illnesses, however their prognosis may be much longer than the usual three-month prognosis considered for community palliative care, palliative outpatients or for SPACE, but they do not want or need acute care or hospital transfers.

The aim of this service is to reduce this burden of unwanted low value care on the Metro North Hospital systems and to ensure that patient and/or carer wishes are documented and respected. These patients can be streamed to more suitable venues for their care including home, palliative care, subacute care, and Residential Aged Care. Community based options for End-of-Life care will be planned for these patients. This service will provide structure and Governance for those already in RACF and those looking to transition into Aged Care for patients who no longer want restorative care. This addresses one of the major gaps perceived by Acute Care clinicians who recognise the subacute needs of their patients but do not have any direct vision of the care provided in Aged Care.

The service will sit beside SPACE under CPC and work in conjunction with those teams and capture those patients for specialist symptom management and advanced care planning who do not yet meet the criteria for CPC, SPACE or Palliative OPD due to their longer prognosis.

Referral pathways:

  • QHEPS REFER for internal referrers, Metro North paper referral avail on the Metro North and submitted through the central referral unit
  • Ward consultation is available in Metro North Hospital and Health Systems Acute and Non-Acute settings via verbal referral and followed by eREFER.
  • RACF consultation available to all RACF’s in the Metro North catchment
  • Community home based consultations available
  • GP Smart Refer and Refer Your Patient. Just note that referral is for ‘CCBF.

For more:

Contact:

Comfort Care Bundle for the Frail Specialist Consultation Service

Community Palliative Care Service

P (07) 30495737 | M: (07) 30491226

E CPC-CCBF@health.qld.gov.au

W metronorth.health.qld.gov.au

A Level 1, 9 Endeavour Boulevard North Lakes Health Precinct North Lakes, QLD, 4509