Improving social care hospital discharges

Contents:

  1. Project timeline

Stockport’s Intermediate Care system identified a number of challenges in delivering its Discharge to Assess model, as their integrated partnership causes issues with the sharing and availability of quality data. 

A potential solution to transform how they work together for customers as a partnership, is an Adult Social Care Digital Patient Journey Management System. 

Stockport’s project team will conduct an investigation into this solution, which would record each part of a patient’s journey to inform the most suitable pathway for them outside of hospital care. 

Potential benefits for customers and the project partners include:

  • the ability to view capacity and demand data at an operational and strategic level
  • the ability to see where an individual is in the system, how long they have been there, and if they are ‘stuck’
  • the development of in-house tools to manage patient flow are no longer needed
  • instant access to data will allow the planning of journeys and capacity, and support decision making

This is a local, regional and national challenge, and is reflected in the latest government focus around discharge and ambulance turnaround. Stockport expects this to be a potential scalable solution.

  • instant access to data would allow the planning of journeys, capacity, and support decision making

This is a local, regional and national challenge, and is reflected in the latest government focus around discharge and ambulance turnaround. Stockport expects this to be a potential scalable solution.

Project timeline

March 2023

The project is awarded £82,000 in funding through Round 6 of the Local Digital Fund to begin a discovery phase.

April 2023

Craig from Stockport Council presenting the initial plans for their project
Craig from Stockport Council presenting the initial plans for their project

The project has recently begun its discovery phase and the project team have met with key stakeholders from the health and social care sector, including the charity sector, to outline their goals. The team has run workshops to understand the hospital discharge process, involving a group of around 15 people.

The team has also identified data leads for each part of the process and started meeting with them to better understand data availability and quality. They are trying to identify quick wins and determine which part of the process to focus on for the most significant impact in the least amount of time. The partner councils, Manchester and Oldham, have been involved in some of the workshops, and the team is exploring whether there is a common solution for process and data issues.