How Transformative Tech In Social Care Could Help Speed Up Hospital Discharge

techUK priorities: NHS waiting lists

Waiting lists are a symptom of other weaknesses in the wider healthcare system. There is constant pressure to unblock beds to reduce waiting lists. The major reasons however for delayed discharge are related to provision of care packages.

“With winter on the horizon and the NHS already at full capacity, technology may be the only way pressures are eased on the health sector this year.”

- How transformative tech in social care could help speed up hospital discharge, SocialCareToday

The Curam platform enables the fast and secure discharge of hospital patients. Whereas hospital teams struggle to ensure patients are safely discharged, Curam offers a seamless, assured service using the Curam app. On average, a Curam carer can be sourced in less than 2 hours from the posting of a job, often in minutes.

Returning the patient to their home quickly and safely enables more patients to be discharged per day, freeing up more bed capacity for other patients. The Curam discharge process ensures a smoother patient discharge, which should reduce frustrations for discharge and social worker teams. Faster discharge leads to less time spent on the process, for both discharge teams and nurses.

There are 30+ Local Authorities with their own Curam portals that currently enable social care teams to source a carer, and these portals can easily be aligned to the hospital discharge teams requirements. Curam also has direct payment clients from 70+ LAs who are using the platform, and in theory we can also enable these LAs to access our faster discharge processes.

Curam are constantly developing their APIs to improve the integration of these processes, further improving the effectiveness of the discharge of patients.

Another major issue affecting capacity in the NHS are readmissions. When premature or poor discharge routines are followed, these will inevitably impact waiting lists. It is essential therefore that patients need to be discharged safely, and into an appropriate location, often their own homes. Over the past 10 years, emergency admissions have risen, and readmissions have followed that growth trajectory (as described by The Nuffield Trust and The Health Foundation), indicating significant scope to improve current dispatch care packages.

Readmission will also occur if the ongoing care regime does not effectively manage the patient’s recovery, or prevents the return of symptoms or the initial underlying condition. Within the app, Curam has developed a Care Assessment Plan and Health Vital tracking capability, which enables the carer to monitor basic vitals, and to report any issues to healthcare partners.

The King’s Fund estimates the cost of delayed discharge to the NHS is £1.7bn. Releasing capacity can obviously therefore create significant bed capacity improvements, plus hundreds of millions of pounds in cost savings.

In 2021, The Nuffield Trust and The Health Foundation reported readmission rates to be at 16%, within 30 days of discharge. These historical trends are affected by the Covid-pandemic, as emergency admissions fell. However, re-admissions fell at a lower rate than the decline in admissions. This indicates that readmissions are not purely a function of the admission rate.

techUK priorities: Supporting the workforce through training, selection, retention and modernising working practises:

Free training expands training access and enhances carer capability by removing financial costs as a barrier to the carer’s skill development.

Carers in the UK can acquire the latest skills and knowledge for free through the Curam app. Curam also provides free insurance and membership of NACAS to all approved carers. These features help to develop a community of carers, who can access knowledge and support, and help achieve and promote high professional standards.

Digital tools, enabled via the Curam app, ensure the application of ‘knowledge in the home.’ Health Vitals tracking means that carers can monitor the real time status of a client’s condition, providing valuable assurance to the client.

As the number of carers available to attend to clients in homes in the UK is vastly greater than the number of community-based nurses available, therefore the potential for early intervention is far greater. This can mean more patients being identified earlier for health vitals breaches, or other issues requiring more medical support. In addition, this enables the scarce and relatively expensive nurse resources to be targeted at data-led priority cases. This carer-based intervention is at a lower average unit cost than a conventional nurse-led service; District Nurse v. Carer, £25 hr / v £18 hr.

The Curam Care Assessment Plan and Family App allows more sharing of basic patient symptoms / vitals with clinicians and / or MDTs (clinical decision makers in hospital). This can reduce inappropriate use of nurse and other clinical staff, and focus on treating the right patient at the right time. Time saved, and the frustrations of professional healthcare workers are significantly reduced.

Curam carers can monitor patient symptoms and health data in the home, which can then used to predict deteriorations in conditions before they occur, triggering appropriate active medical interventions.

Any further information, specifically on hospital discharges, contact Gerry Toner at +44 7976 271 533 or gerry@curamcare.com