Most impressive digitally-enabled health/social care service
This category recognises health and/or care services which have embedded digital tools and services into improving people’s experience and outcomes as well as improving efficiency. It also recognises digital tools and services designed to be embedded in a health or care service You may have created a new digital technology or be using existing technology to make a big difference to people’s lives.Locala’s Digital Journey – Locala CIC is a social enterprise in West Yorkshire, delivering community health services to the people of Kirklees.
Our vision ‘Seeing Care Differently’ has as a key aspect the adoption of a digital culture. In response, we invested substantially in technology and launched the ‘Digital Journey’ (DJ), a whole organisation approach to adopt a digital culture. Strong leadership, energy and passion were deployed to transform service delivery.
This has enabled us to cope with increasing demand, release time to care, enable a timelier and more convenient patient experience, and improve efficiency.
Website: www.locala.org.uk
More about Locala's Digital Journey
We face significant pressures of demand with growth in activity and complexity. We wanted to: release time to care, enable a timelier and more convenient patient experience, whilst improving efficiency. The DJ covers a suite of technology initiatives which when taken with cultural change fundamentally transform care. We now have robust electronic access to: • SystmOne • Local acute hospitals clinical systems • Clinical guidance e.g. Marsden manual, policies • Local intelligence, through links to appropriate websites • Online equipment requesting • Unified communication system i.e. Microsoft Lync for instant messaging, telephone and video conferencing (VC).
The Locala workforce were engaged through multi-faceted strategy, including: • Pre-roll out/ roll out training, with electronic ‘how to guides’ • A week of activities designed to encourage sharing successes • A marketing campaign to inspire clinicians to try a VC with a patient • A series of videos demonstrating successful practice • Clinical colleagues, seconded to the transformation team, safeguarding time to support peers to adopt the technology in clinical practice • Identifying and supporting ‘change agents’, clinical colleagues with additional access to support and training, to promote good practice with peers • Weekly blog celebrating success stories.
Robust connectivity enables clinicians to work in an agile way, having the same technology experience at any location. Clinicians are knowledgeable about what technology/ information is available to support them and patients. Clinicians have confidence that their technology works, securely and easily, at the point of care. The first 12 months of implementation saw a 33% increase in clinicians who agreed technology was improving both the quality and efficiency of their clinical work.
Real time access to SystmOne enables safe, efficient, patient centred care as clinicians have information at their fingertips e.g. care plan, medication history, test results, consultant letters etc. Clinicians capture details of the contact at the time, enabling others to view the complete patient record in a timely manner and enabling a rich stream of clinical data that supports performance monitoring and service improvement. Two thirds of all our health care records are updated within two hours.
The deployment of Microsoft Lync provides the opportunity for clinicians to do ‘virtual consultations’ with patients using the VC facilities. The examples below highlight how this has improved the quality of patient experience, care, and organisational efficiency. Staff nurse, Jill, was able to access a second opinion through VC to the Tissue Viability Nurse sharing her desktop to show a ‘before’ picture of a leg ulcer, and showing the leg ulcer in real time. The TVN gave advice during the call preventing any delay in treatment and the cost of a visit by the specialist nurse.
A student referred to Podiatry with a painful infected ingrown toenail had a VC with Ian the podiatrist, He was scheduled for nail surgery the following week, and a follow up appointment was done by VC as he had gone back to university. Providing more timely and convenient care. Easy access to VC is improving communication within and across teams, leading to improved integration by enabling colleagues to meet virtually and access support when needed.