‘Red Bag’, part of the Hospital Transfer Pathway system for people moving between care home and clinical settings including hospitals, developed by the Sutton Homes of Care Vanguard in 2015, made by Openhouse Products, United Kingdom, 2015-2018

In 2015, the Sutton Homes of Care Vanguard, developed the ‘Red Bag’ to help care home residents when leaving or returning from medical treatment. The bag is the most visible part of an agreed Hospital Transfer Pathway, built on collaboration between community and hospital care, GPs, the local Ambulance Trust and care homes. Together, they identified issues in the transfer of residents to hospital and agreed a standardised handover process would lead to better quality of care.

On a person’s transfer to a clinical setting, the Red Bag is filled with standardised paperwork, any additional advanced care plans, medication and personal belongings. The bag always stays with them and has discharge summaries and nurse transfer letter added when leaving the hospital.

There were concerns about bags going missing so each bag has a serial number, with each serial number assigned to a care home. A space is for a name tag on front of the wipe-clean bag. On rolling out the scheme, users found a reduction in ambulance transfer times, reduction in avoidable hospital admissions and A&E assessment times as well as reduction in length of hospital stays. With improved communication between care home and hospital staff, information sharing became easier and returning home much quicker. As part of the scheme, care home staff visit their resident while in hospital, giving the person a much-needed familiar face but also involving everyone in their care. Training is available on the scheme to ensure everyone knows what to do in an emergency and for hospital staff to recognise the bag’s meaning.

The success of the Red Bag saw it being widely deployed across the country in 2017 and by April 2019 it covered 80% of England. Many areas adopt and tailor the pathway to their local needs.

Since 2022, pilots for the ’eRedBag’ have taken place. Care homes are supported to digitise and securely electronically transfer patient records between care providers to ensure all up to date information is accessible by healthcare professionals.