Integrating Care
The modern care agenda now focuses on integrating care for the individual where services are provided by different organisations (both health and social care) closer to home, or in a more appropriate care setting than the traditional acute hospital. This offers the prospect of vastly improved , much safer and hugely more efficient and affordable care. The development of these community services now requires fit for purpose information systems that track care across different settings and offer clinicians the opportunity to share service user information between multiple organisations. A prime enabler of this is the ability to have interoperable systems across health and social care organisations.
There have been many areas that we have addressed with our clients over considerable time, in integrating pathways and processes, mediating between parties, and developing and deploying integrated information. Working with health and social care organisations in Surrey, Sussex, Berkshire, Plymouth and West London, we have addressed development of more integrated working, embracing also boundary issues with housing and education. Across the spectrum, whether with the Common Assessment Frameworks for children and older people, the development of community-based intermediate care services, the development of integrated emergency response services, or with adult community mental health – the needs have several aspects in common:
Integrating pathways and processes
Our scientific tools used to visualise and then model new ways of working have helped teams to form around new common language in pursuit of common objectives. Defining joined-up pathways can help reduce avoidable duplication, but only when modelled is it clear to see the impacts upon skill-mix and workforce cost.
Mediating between parties
Some concepts played quite differently in health and social care – for example, eligibility criteria for accessing care. Our expert approaches to mediation enabled clearer focus on aspects where agendas of different parties were aligned, and for more alignment to have been found than had been expected. Consequently we established a greater sense of win-win, than initially of win-lose / lose-win.
Developing and deploying integrated information
Integrated working requires integrated information – this area still has a long way to go! However, Medical Mosaic has long been at the forefront of development, running the national pilot of integrated health and social care information, across primary and secondary healthcare and social care in Surrey.
For more information, please email David Crook.