Helping elderly people in the region avoid going into residential or hospital care before they need to by providing temporary care options is an initiative which has received high praise at the recent Hawke's Bay Health Awards.
The Southern Community Laboratories Excellence in Service Improvement Award went to the engAGE Intermediate Care Beds for Frail Older People project which is a collaboration of HBDHB, engAGE, District Nursing, Clinical Pharmacist Facilitators, Older Persons Mental Health, NASC HB, General Practice, Health Hawke's Bay, Home Based Support Services and Aged Residential Care.
Team leader of engAGE, Sarah Shanahan, said tailoring individual needs was key to achieving wellbeing goals for frail older people who wished to remain independent for as long as possible.
The service was rolled out across 13 local age-related residential care facilities in February 2016 and since then more than 2500 bed days had been utilised to June 2017.
"We were very surprised on the night but very pleased to get the recognition for this initiative.