Enhancing Patient Wellbeing Through Integration of Social Prescribing, Transitional Care, and Place-based Care in Community Hospitals Settings

SingHealth Community Hospitals Place-based Care model will be utilised in the ward on top of standard of care treatment.

Place-based Care (PBC) at SingHealth Community Hospitals represents a significant evolution of these approaches, addressing the limitations of fragmented care by integrating social prescribing with structured transitional care. Within community hospital settings, PBC encompasses five core domains: coordinated specialist outpatient follow-ups, linkage to community resources, medication adherence support, primary care transition planning, and caregiver education and self-care empowerment.

This integrated model shifts the conventional discharge process from a primarily episodic and medically driven approach to a comprehensive, person-centred care pathway that incorporates both clinical and social assessment, coordinated care planning, supported transition, and structured follow-up. By embedding social prescribing within the continuum of care, PBC aims to improve both clinical outcomes and patient experience during vulnerable transition periods.

Wards will have normal standard of care treatment.

The CTM-15 is the primary outcome measure for this study and aligns closely with the five core domains of the PBC intervention: specialist outpatient clinic (SOC) follow-up coordination, community resource linkage, medication adherence support, primary care transition planning, and caregiver and self-care capability. The CTM-15 is a validated 15-item instrument that assesses the quality-of-care transitions from the patient's perspective, capturing key domains such as medication management, understanding of the care plan, preparation for self-care, and coordination across healthcare settings.