Older People's Urgent Care

Older Persons Urgent Assessment Service and COPE Service

The older persons urgent assessment services based at Shotley Bridge Community Hospital and the Chester-le-Street Community Hospital based COPE service (community older persons excellence) service are part of County Durham and Darlington Community Health Services. They provide older persons assessment as part of a multi-disciplinary team approach, providing a high standard of medical and nursing care in order to maintain patients in their own home enabling pre-crisis intervention and preventing the need for emergency care.

The aim is to enable patients to cope better at home, avoid unnecessary admissions. It allows health care professionals easy access to an alternative to an emergency admission and deliver better health for older people.

The service has immediate access to a comprehensive range of diagnostics including blood tests, x rays, CT scans, us scans, 24 hour tapes and 24 hour blood pressure monitoring, echos and spirometry.

The clinic will see urgent patients in 2 working days.

Referrals to the service can be made for a range of reasons including:

• Unexplained deterioration in a patients condition
• Unexplained functional deterioration in patients with chronic medical problems
• Frail elderly with functional decline in activities of daily living
• Patients requiring urgent multi disciplinary assessment including medical assessment to prevent acute admission to hospital
• Younger adults (over 18) with complex and/or long term conditions who are likely to respond to simple interventions e.g. nebulisers, restoration of blood sugar levels

• Patients who need 999 emergency intervention
• Patients who require acute mental illness intervention

Service Information

Referrals

The service is available Monday to Friday, 9.00 am to 5.00 pm, excluding bank holidays.

Referrals can be made 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Referrals are accepted from the following health professionals

• General Practitioners
• Nurse Practitioners
• Community Matrons
• Primary Care Practitioner
• Acute Physicians 

• Tel No: 01207 594459 (please ring if further discussion required)
• Fax No: 01207 594457 (please confirm with the service receipt of referral)

• Tel No: 07773 390104 (please ring if further discussion required)
• Fax No: 0191 301 8537 (please confirm with the service receipt of referral)