To bring hospital care to sustainable levels, emergency activity in hospitals needs to reduce by 15% according to The King’s Fund. To achieve this significant reduction, community care services must be improved.

This is not just about provision of community care services, but also about transformation of those that exist - integration with other services, coordination across them, and the introduction of digital tools that improve efficiency.

An Academy of Medical Royal Colleges report recommended that to make the crucial progress in integrating community coordinated care with primary care, steps have to be taken to improve factors such as communication between staff, with an emphasis on the quality of handovers.

Why do we need community care?

Recently, the Care Quality Commission stated that for a growing number of people, care goes beyond a single visit to a single service, and that much still needs to be done to work towards ‘Integrated Care Systems’ (ICSs) - which provide community and primary care coordinated solutions.

With rapid expansion of the over 65 population in the UK - who are growing at a faster rate than any other age group - our healthcare needs are changing. An increasing ageing population is likely to cause additional strain on primary care services, and this is why integration of care into the community is key in keeping the NHS sustainable and resilient to forthcoming obstacles.

How can digital tools help coordinate community care?

As the UK’s demographics change, so does our approach to managing the healthcare landscape.

In a time of such transformation we must turn to solutions that will boost clinical outcomes, promote better integration across community care, and free up time to enable our healthcare staff to do what they do best - look after patients.

Instead of 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 yet to be done, would save significant time.

Recently, Infinity Health was appointed to do just this in providing a community care coordination solution in the short-term assessment, rehabilitation and reablement service (STARRS) at London North West University Healthcare NHS Trust.

Moving to the Infinity digital task management solution 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 via Infinity.

With Infinity, a number of STARRS’ staff opt to attend handovers virtually, reducing their combined weekly number of journeys by 14 and saving 10.5 hours a week. These numbers equate to an increase of 27-55% in STARRS’ capacity to see patients if the figures hold true across the service.

An Academy of Medical Royal Colleges’ report stated that patients should have no concerns about loss of information or tasks when moving across healthcare settings or involving other staff in their care. With a digital task management solution, integration and coordination across the healthcare landscape is possible - working to improve efficiency and giving a boost to overall clinical outcomes.

Infinity Health can assist you with community care coordination. If you’d like our help, or to arrange a demo of Infinity’s digital solution, please get in touch with us at [email protected].