“As digital technologies have developed, there has been a slow but significant shift in people using digital tools to access health and care services – and in health and care services using digital tools to deliver services.”
At Broomfield Care, we felt it was necessary to share some information surrounding a recent report done by the King’s Fund into the digital side of care (or lack thereof). We felt this report would be interesting to share, to show how significant technology is as a care provider and the necessity for more services to work together.
*To read the full report, click here on the link below*
Many of our health care services are under intense pressure, meanwhile the digital world behind them is tedious and outdated, further worsening issues like staff productivity and patient care. Where technology has improved, most changes have focused on hospitals’ needs, in an attempt to boost the efficiency of services and reduce wait times.
However, hospitals tend to focus on short-term treatment, in comparison to community care which centres on providing long-term solutions. Therefore, changes to community care technology is also of importance as this would, “reduce the need for people to access already over-stretched hospital-based care, but would also provide more effective, higher-quality care in the community to enable people with ongoing care needs to live independent and full lives.”
Why is Digitally enabled care in the community important?
Improving community care will enable people’s needs to be met closer to home, support people to take charge of their health care, and help reduce the pressure on our NHS.
In addition, the UK is facing the challenges of an ageing population, with many people living with more than one long-term condition. This mean more care in the community will be needed, and in particular, specialised care in order to manage different combinations of conditions.
Therefore, the digital world of care needs to be built and improved to deal with such a challenge. However, the current setup has varied results.
Current Use:
There is a great deal of frustration around the disjointed approach to care services, across both staff and patients.
“Technology can be an important enabler of joined-up care in the community, but people’s experience of communication and shared care information is variable.” For example, there is continued reliance on letters, which can create safety risks or lead to people experiencing needless harm- patients may end up spending a significant period of time in pain whilst waiting for communication between services to be completed.
“A second individual recounted how they hold their own medical information in patient-held records, then download this information and email it to the hospital before an appointment. This approach avoids repeated questions and improves the care experience but creates additional burdens on people who draw on services.”
There are some care systems available, which attempt to improve the link between all electronic records, however not all providers have digital records. On top of this, the separation of care into different sectors has impeded the use of technology. The introduction of apps and portals has benefitted some, however these systems mirror the sectorisation of care, which has left people having to piece their care needs together across various apps and portals.
“I have five medical apps on my phone because the different hospitals have different systems. Why can’t I just have one?” – Person who draws on services
Staff Experiences:
Staff are just as frustrated about their experience of using digitally enabled services. Struggles with connectivity issues, poor battery life and heavy laptops, such problems interrupt workflows and affect productivity for the likes of district nurses, occupational therapists and others working out in the community.
“We heard how staff are frustrated with systems that are built for hospitals but need to be used in the community, which has a completely different context. We also heard that when technology is commissioned in hospitals but used in community settings, community staff can find themselves unprepared and unsupported to integrate the technology around the individual.”
Technology should support staff to do their jobs efficiently, but that’s not the reality.
💚Broomfield Care’s position:
We at Broomfield Care aim to work as paperless as possible, to ensure information is being shared and dealt with in a quick and efficient manner.
Our IT system careline live helps us with this process and we are privileged to be able to work with such a useful program. Even so, we will continue to support our clients to the highest of standards, regardless of how connected they are to the online world or not.
We are proud to be contributing to the digital push of care as this helps not only our staff work more efficiently, but helps our clients and their families have access to all the details they could possibly need to help monitor their health and maintain their independence.
