Organisation: north central London Integrated Care System

Our consultancy team worked with North Central London Integrated Care Board (NCL ICB) and five local boroughs between 2021 and 2023 to support care homes to improve their level of digital care.

Challenge

NCL ICB aims to ensure care home residents receive proactive, well-planned and personalised care, helping them to lead the happiest and healthiest lives possible. Health and social care services were not fully connected with a knock-on impact to the quality and timeliness of care residents received.

The ICB needed support to deliver the Digital Care Home Programme, which would identify where training, technology and digital solutions could be used to modernise care delivery and facilitate joined-up care between organisations.

Solution

Over a two-year period, we delivered the Digital Care Home Programme, including:

• maximising the engagement of care homes, through reviewing governance structures and developing communication strategies
• delivering training and support for over 4,000 care home staff
• leading cross-ICS strategy development and funding applications for new care tech.

Our work enabled care homes to:

• meet key data security standards
• improve information governance standards
• pilot digital tools such as remote monitoring and acoustic technology
• increase connectivity and engagement between community care providers and primary care.

We set up the programme up for success, and NCL ICB and local partners continue to deliver it.

Outcomes

Over the past two years, the programme has delivered the following outcomes:

For care home residents:

• In 2023/24, the proportion of care home providers using digital care records increased to 58%, enabling more joined-up, coordinated care for residents.
• Remote monitoring tools are now being used by 146 care settings, with over 1,000 residents receiving benefits such as early detection of illness or deterioration and reduced time spent in hospital.
• Care homes with remote monitoring experienced a 28% reduction in ambulance call-outs and a 15.7% reduction in avoidable admissions.
• Acoustic monitoring tools in 10 care homes alert staff when residents need assistance, leading to 36% fewer physical checks, 52% more restful sleep and helping to reduce falls.

“Seeing the number of high-risk night-time falls drop to zero is fantastic. It’s a major relief knowing our most vulnerable residents are safer at night,” Care home manager, Azalea Court Care Home

For care home staff:

• Staff have improved skills around managing complex health needs and find it easier to deliver high quality care.

System benefits:

• The use of alternative clinical pathways to keep people at home where appropriate, means there is less pressure on hospital beds.
• Increased collaboration across the whole of the North Central London health and care system is benefiting other areas of work.