Date posted: 4th November 2016

Recently, the CQC undertook research into the integrated care for older people in homes. Gathering evidence from a range of sources, including site visits and speaking to older people and their carers about their experiences, the Care Quality Commission aimed to look at the effective co-ordination of care and understand the current flaws of integrated care services. Here, CPIMS look at the research findings.

The delivery of integrated care for older people

While the research phase illustrated many initiatives that focused on the delivery of integrated care, further investigation demonstrated a lack of action when it came to putting the plans into practice. In many cases, providers and commissioners were focused on improving the way the services work together. However, there was considerable variation between the care provided and experiences of older people.

Integrated care service finding

Following the research, the CQC published a report where they outlined their research findings. Below is the list of discoveries, based on how integrated care services are working together and their impact on the experiences of older people:

The CQC found:

  • Widespread commitment to delivering integrated care
  • Organisational barriers made it difficult for care services to identify older people who were at risk of deterioration or an unplanned emergency admission to hospital
  • Examples of joint working in delivering health and social care, but these were often inconsistent, short-term and reliant on partial or temporary funding and goodwill between different providers. They were not a mainstream part of the way in which services were planned or delivered around older people
  • Monitoring and evaluation was often not carried out locally or was insufficient
  • The lack of connection between services often resulted in older people and their families or carers needing to take responsibility for navigating complex local services. This could result in people ‘falling through the gaps’ and only being identified in response to a crisis.
  • Older people often had multiple care plans because professionals did not routinely link together and share information.
  • Older people were not routinely involved in decision making about their needs and preferences.
  • Older people and their families or carers did not routinely receive clear information about how their health and social care would be coordinated, in particular if there were changes in their circumstances or if there was an unplanned or emergency admission to hospital.
  • Local leaders achieved integrated person-centred care by working closely across health and social care services to share information, reduce duplicated efforts and use resources more effectively.

Recommendations to improve the integrated care for older people

The CQC has provided some recommendations which would help care providers plan and implement initiatives to improve integrated care for older people. Some of the recommendations include:

  • Health and social care leaders should develop and agree a shared understanding and definition of what integrated care means for the population in their local area, and then work towards delivering this shared aim.
  • NHS England and Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (ADASS) should lead on developing an agreed methodology and data set for identifying people at risk of admission to secondary care or deterioration.
  • Older people should be meaningfully involved in making informed decisions about their care needs and care planning – in particular about the outcomes that are important to them – based on the existing national and local guidance.
  • Commissioners and providers in an area should ensure that information and support for older people and their families or carers is available, and this sets out connections between services, and how the people’s accessibility needs will be met.
  • The National Quality Board, in partnership with the National Information Board, develop and share a set of validated data metrics and outcomes measures for integrated care with person-centred outcomes at the heart of decision making about service provision and based on a consistent, shared view and definition of integration.

You can read the full CQC report regarding the integrated care for older people here.

CPIMS are leading care providers for individuals with neurological injury. Specialising in spinal cord and brain injury, we pride ourselves on providing individual care for individual people. Contact us today on 0844 371 0616 or alternatively email denise@cpims.com.

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