Discharge to Assess (D2A) is a pathway model for people who are clinically ready for

discharge from hospital and who no longer require an acute hospital bed, but who may still require care services including short-term, funded support. The ethos is to discharge people to remain in their own home wherever this is possible. This is the ‘Home First’ approach.  However, some people require a period of extended short-term support, assessment and therapy within a bed based D2A service before they can return to their home or to their onward care arrangements.

The proposal in this report is to transfer D2A bed-based service provision from the current range of services in the independent care home sector, to a single site service operated by the NHS.