Intermediate care (IC) is a valuable setting in which to
explore new ways of working. Many IC services operate
at the interface of numerous agencies, settings and professional
groups, and require workforce structures that
can reflect and respond to this complexity [2]. IC services
tend to have non-hierarchical management structures;
and staff are often supervised by someone whose
professional background is different to their own. Medical
practitioners are sometimes the ‘gatekeeper’ to IC,
however their level and mode of involvement varies [3]
and non-medical practitioners often have a great deal of
autonomy [2]. Finally, IC services can be delivered in a
variety of locations, including the patients’ own home,
nursing homes, hospitals and community centres.
Following the National Service Framework for Older
People (31), the number and type of community based
services for older people have grown substantially and
are set to expand further as acute care services are progressively
moved to primary and community care settings.
Intermediate care services have diverse models of
staffing, however typically intermediate care teams are
multidisciplinary [4-14] even in usual care settings, or
when labelled ‘nurse led unit’, or ‘GP led unit’. They are
likely to include input from physiotherapy, occupational
therapy and therapy assistants [5,10]. A wide range of
other staff may be involved in the delivery of intermediate
care, however this varies greatly across the different
services [13]. There is no evidence about the ‘best way to staff an intermediate care service, and this is likely to
depend on the setting and purpose of the service[10].
Comparable studies are difficult to find, as most workforce
studies explore the relationship between two different
practitioners rather than multidisciplinary
arrangements.
Only one experimental study specifically examined the
impact of different models of staffing on costs and outcomes
[8] by comparing hospital at home with care on
a hospital ward. Staffing models were not attributed to
outcomes, however the research showed that cost efficiency
of services was negatively influenced by employing
high grade nurses in roles with little direct clinical
input. In contrast, the costs of the other members of the
multidisciplinary team (eg therapists) constituted a relatively
small component of the total cost. The authors
suggested that increasing the proportion of nurses
involved in more direct nursing care could reduce the
costs of the service