Breaking down silos, the key to modernising integrated care systems - Alan Kennedy, Health & Care Sector Lead, Content Guru
The delivery of care in England has seen its biggest shake-up in recent history following implementation of the new Health and Care Act [July 2022]. The act is an acknowledgement by healthcare leaders that responding to ever increasing demands for healthcare requires a new and more connected approach. Leading this change are 42 new Integrated Care Systems [ICS], which together with their boards and statutory partnerships have responsibility for the commissioning and delivery of health and care services across the NHS.
Whilst the background to these changes remains complex, the NHS has a lot in common with other advanced healthcare systems around the world, all of which are having to respond to the impacts of an ageing population, workforce shortages and increasing patient expectations for high quality and effective care. These same patients are also expecting a more joined up and personalised experience as they encounter a range of different service providers during their treatment.
Whilst the COVID-19 pandemic undoubtedly exposed these and other structural weakness in health and care delivery, it also highlighted the importance of partnerships working across organisational silos when needing to develop new services at scale and more quickly.
As the NHS moves into an increasingly uncertain world, it’s important that these lessons are not lost as we move beyond the pandemic. For example, the NHS has tried for years to develop more integrated care for service users with an urgent healthcare condition. This ambition has resulted in the deployment of cloud-based integrated communication technologies at national level, to help reduce the time it takes to answer a NHS 111 or 999 call anywhere in the country. This initiative was the result of partnership working embracing public and private sector partnerships, focussed on the delivery of inter-connected services at scale.
Building on these experiences, they suggest that ICS’s are now in a great position to benefit from the NHS’s growing expertise in deploying cloud-based data and communication technologies at scale. For example, an ICS wide communications cloud could help to consistently manage demand through a combination of cloud queuing, automated routing, multichannel, AI and other advanced communication technologies.
Once deployed, an ICS should expect to deliver a range of service benefits, including:
- An ability to match inbound demand with available services across multiple providers.
- Delivery of more personalised care for callers based on care history, previous encounters and preferences expressed by care plans.
- Delivery of a smoother experience for patients by matching their reason for calling with the right service, first time.
- Dashboards and real time alerts re service demand flows across the ICS.
There’s no doubt ICS’s face a daunting challenge during 2023. However, despite this, recent experience in the deployment of modern cloud-based communication technologies suggests that this is an opportunity waiting to be grasped by ICS’s with a vision to move beyond the delivery of care based around organisational boundaries.
Content provided by Alan Kennedy, Health & Care Sector Lead, Content Guru. For more information please visit www.contentguru.com.
