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Case Study |

Home care optimisation – Dorset Council

Home care optimisation – Dorset Council

The council recognised that there are a high number of individuals who are recognised as needing homecare support but unfortunately unable to receive a package due to constraints in capacity.

The home care optimisation programme was designed to covered four project areas:

  • Brokerage process – Identifying and developing improvements of the brokerage process to reduce processing time.
  • Zonal optimisation – Providers working collectively to make best use of capacity in a whole area.
  • Technology enabled care – Allowing some care visits to be done virtually rather than a physical
  • Trusted practice – Providers completing annual reviews on the council’s behalf through delegation of authority to reduce the outstanding number of overdue annual reviews.

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Challenges

Areas for improvement included:

Brokerage process

  • Better information at the front end.
  • Elimination of separate spreadsheets.
  • By using a direct Mosaic feed, we get better data consistency and enable improved performance reporting.

Zonal optimisation

  • Establish GDPR policies to enable data sharing with stakeholders.
  • Work collaborative between home care providers to find better solutions and optimised capacity.

Technology enabled care

  • Difficulties in the instillation of new equipment to those individuals that have an established package of care.
  • Push back from family members on use of new equipment.

Trusted practice

  • Understanding of process flow (internal/external).
  • Further understanding requirement for trusted reviews of strengths-based practice and legal literacy and the care act 2014.

Approach

Dorset Council took a partnership approach to delivering this piece of work with the Dorset Care Association (DCA), Partners in Care and home care providers to improve use of home care resources.

As Dorset is a rural area, considerations were made through the design of the programme to combat the national challenge of recruitment in rural and aimed to reduce travel time and the environmental impact.

The collaboration between Dorset Council, Dorset Care Association, Partners in Care and the home care providers allowed open discussions around financial barriers and the adaptation of Dorset Care Framework (DCF) rates. So far, the programme has currently delivered a net benefit of circa 750k.

Outcomes and benefits

Brokerage process

  • Reduction in the time to place a package of care. The project achieved a reduction of 86% from an average of 29 days to an average of four days.

Zonal optimisation

  • Care and support package optimisation. This resulted in changes in how packages are delivered, including package swaps and time changes. In addition, this has freed up capacity to allow support for those who otherwise remained on the waiting list and has an environmental benefit of reducing carbon admissions.

Technology-enabled care

  • Target clients shifted from existing older adults to those with short term interventions that require ongoing support.

Trusted practice

  • Net reduction in care hours. During the trials there was a circa £10k per annum saving through a reduction of care and support. The average time spend in undertaking a review was reduced from 1.5 hours to 1 hour on average.

View the original case study article at ourdorset.org.uk [PDF]