The work of colleagues from the West Kent Single Point of Access (SPOA) team was celebrated at the ‘Healthwatch Recognition Awards’ on 26 February.

Hosted by Healthwatch Kent, the awards recognise the teams making a difference to health and social care across Kent and Medway through collaboration and innovation.

When announcing the winners, Healthwatch Kent stated that the nomination by West Kent Single Point of Access ‘recognises excellence in enabling local people to monitor standards and make improvements.’

Established in 2023, the SPOA is made up of a multidisciplinary team of senior paramedics from the South East Coast Ambulance Service (SECAmb) and clinicians from Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust (MTW) and Kent Community Health NHS Foundation Trust (KCHFT), in partnership with the West Kent Health and Care Partnership.

The team speak with ambulance crews, community services and primary care, and make joint decisions on the best treatment service for patients’ needs. This could include an urgent treatment centre, same day emergency care unit, emergency department or a specialist community service. The SPOA is the only urgent care service in west Kent where acute hospital, community and ambulance clinicians work together in real time.

Each decision made by the hub is patient-centred, with the team ensuring they understand the patient’s wishes, and those of their carer or family.

Open seven days a week, the SPOA aims to refer patients to the correct service first time, enabling them to be treated sooner and avoiding emergency departments when appropriate. This helps ease pressure on busy A&E departments and ensures patients arriving there can be seen more quickly.

The service has transformed urgent care for local residents, reducing unnecessary hospital attendances and supporting more people to remain safely at home with the right community support in place. Elderly people in particular benefit from reduced stress and a lower risk of deterioration.

Ongoing engagement with patients using the service means the West Kent SPOA is continuously evolving and adapting to ensure it meets the needs of local people. It has also given staff in the multidisciplinary team the opportunity to gain a broader understanding of each other’s services, and the different options available to patients needing urgent care across the region.

Speaking about the nomination, Deputy Director of Operational Flow at MTW, Fiona Redman said: “We are delighted to have received this Healthwatch award, which recognises the invaluable contribution the West Kent SPOA is making in the community and the way it is supporting local people to receive coordinated care in the right place, at the right time.

“Resident insight was critical in developing the SPOA and patient experience surveys continue to shape the service, meaning it is built on, and continuously informed by, the people who need it.”