Guidance for providing out-of-hospital care for London’s children and young people. Out-of-hospital care describes any care that is not undertaken in a traditional hospital setting. This could include healthcare in the community, at the patient’s home, school or workplace, or at a GP practice.

This document is for London’s commissioners and providers of out-of-hospital healthcare services for children. It brings together information and standards for care to enable the effective commissioning of services that meet the required minimum standards. Providers can use these standards to undertake a self assessment of their ability to deliver the required quality of out-of-hospital care for children. They can be used to validate, challenge and quality assure services and improve quality.

Extensive research was undertaken to identify existing standards. These were taken from a diverse number of sources such as the Royal Colleges, National Guidance/National Institute for Care and Health Excellence (NICE) and the London Quality Standards developed by London Health Programmes as well as Healthy London Partnership’s acute standards and asthma standards. There was significant similarity and overlap across many of the standards. Where this occurred, the standards have been worded to capture the essential meaning of the multiple sources. The original sources have been included and cross referenced.

The standards are designed to promote quality and standardisation across London, for out-of-hospital healthcare provision for children and young people. They are aimed at addressing the needs of physically unwell children and young people (with or without a long term condition) or those with continuing/complex care needs, who can receive safe health care at home or in settings outside of hospital. The role of the nurse has been clearly identified in the evidence for out of hospital care, but there is a shift and growing body of evidence considering other professions undertaking responsibility for delivering acute health care out of hospital, for example community pharmacists and allied health professionals.

If organisations wish to self assess against the standards please find a template attached. We would be interested to see completed self assessments – please contact us at hlp.cyp-programme@nhs.net