Managing caseloads in Community Nursing is in many ways more complex than caseload management on hospital wards, in part because the nurses work in geographically dispersed locations. The logistics of sending nurses to people’s homes for them to carry out monitoring and treatment is one element, but staff also must coordinate with different specialists that may be involved in care, and communicate about necessary tasks with others (for example: GPs, physiotherapists, hospitals, social care, mental health services, local authorities, care agencies and care homes, hospices, the patient and their family).

It can be difficult for nurses to get in touch with others caring for the same patient, and this sometimes leads to the requirement for additional visits. The wider clinical and care teams do not have visibility in real-time, which can also make it a challenge to make appropriate decisions at the right time.

Outdated healthcare caseload management

Managing caseloads in Community Nursing is logistically challenging; they meet one another only in meetings at fixed times, often use paper and handwritten notes to plan care and share information, and historically have had poor access to systems allowing them to coordinate and manage caseloads effectively.

Managers of Community Nursing services often have little visibility of what is happening in real-time. This makes it difficult to understand the workload, allocate the workforce, manage performance, and ultimately provide the right care to patients.

The need for integration, coordination, and communication

In the NHS, a lot of focus has been on digital transformation of acute services, but with an increasing focus on Integrated Care Systems, community services are also in desperate need of change, particularly in the area of caseload management, handover, and communication.

We must turn to solutions that will promote better integration between community and other services, improve care coordination, improve efficiency, and ultimately give staff enable health and care staff to do their jobs safely.

How can digital tools help caseload management in Community Nursing?

Real-time information sharing within teams

Instead of community nursing staff spending time calling or meeting colleagues to share information about patients, or to check progress on clinical and operational tasks, a digital platform where they could see a real-time catalogue of tasks completed and to-do would save significant time and and ultimately improve patient safety. No tasks would be missed or duplicated, and the entire clinical team would be able to see in real-time what was happening.

Recently, Infinity Health was appointed to do just this in providing a caseload managements solution in the short-term assessment, rehabilitation and re-ablement service (STARRS) at London North West University Healthcare NHS Trust. Staff log new tasks and mark tasks as completed on Infinity for their colleagues to see, reducing the need for multiple phone calls, messages, and physical meetings to track progress.

The Infinity healthcare caseload management solution now saves the STARRS team over eight hours a day and means that they no longer have to rely on handwritten notes or lists, instead updating tasks and patient information in real-time

Cross-discipline communication

With Infinity’s digital caseload management solution, integration and coordination across the healthcare landscape is possible. Staff members from different disciplines and organisations can access caseload information and delve into granular detail about patients and the tasks that need to be done them.

This instant real-time access from any location reduces some of the frustration of managing caseloads in Community Nursing - staff no longer have to spend time in physical meetings, writing letters, sending emails and instant messages, and making phone calls to share information with other colleagues involved in patients’ care.

In the STARRS team for example, a number of staff are now able to attend their morning handovers virtually, so they can go straight to their first patient instead of to the hospital first. This has reduced their combined weekly number of journeys by 14 and saving 10.5 hours a week. Senior colleagues in other departments have real-time oversight of activity and can provide advice and support easily.

The time saved equates to an increase of 27-55% in STARRS’ capacity to see patients - without extra staff.

Staff allocation and skills mix

For leaders supporting teams with managing caseloads in Community Nursing, the granular data collected by Infinity, about what tasks are done by the team and when, provides a clear audit trail. The data can also be used to analyse and understand demand and allocate resources.

In this way, rotas and recruitment can be optimised and tailored to the health needs of patients, making for more efficient and effective services.

Resource planning

The data collected by the Infinity healthcare caseload management tool can also be analysed in multiple ways to understand geographical and temporal trends in the needs of local patients, for example helping to identify if a particular area has patients with similar health problems. Over time, the data may also be used to not only respond to current trends, but predict future ones.

Understanding these would enable Community Nursing teams to respond in a way that is flexible and appropriate, and use resources in the most efficient way possible.

A new era of healthcare caseload management

Managing caseloads in Community Nursing is complex and requires coordination with multiple teams and organisations. Patients are often vulnerable and have multiple long-term conditions, and rely on the skills of community teams to keep them safe and out of hospital.

For too long, Community Nursing teams have struggled with inadequate healthcare caseload management tools, and even without the additional burden of current shortages in workforce, they deserve better. Infinity is one vital solution that can be part of the Community Nursing digital toolkit to improve managing caseloads and clinical safety for the benefit of both staff and patients.