Background 

The health and social care sector is under significant and increasing pressure from post-COVID waiting times and the cost of living crisis. As a notoriously complex and under- resourced sector, innovation is not easy. However, community interest company Provide Community, a social enterprise delivering more than 50 health and social care services across England in NHS and community settings, had a vision to blend excellence in healthcare with the dynamism of a business venture. Its strategy was to transform services, nurture agility and share learning and innovation, and it believed this could only be achieved by creating and fuelling a culture of innovation, changing mindsets and investing in new ways of working.

Approach 

With innovation as a cornerstone, the not-for-profit organisation was keen to encourage new ideas from its 1,200 colleagues. It came up with an Innovation Tree, designed to engage employees in problem-solving and nurturing bold and creative solutions that promise a return on time, effort and resources and can be shared for the benefit of the wider community in health and social care. A successful collaboratively developed pilot involved its Child Health Information Service (CHIS) team creating a digital triage system to minimise the delay between a child’s Accident and Emergency attendance and clinical review. Previously, a high risk due to vast amounts of paperwork, the project involved multiple agencies and partners, with objectives including uploading A&E attendances, reducing processing time and building reports and algorithms within the electronic patient records system.

Outcome

The resulting digital triage system revolutionised children’s A&E visit data processing. Amassing over 66,000 attendees’ data, it enabled a 100% upload of A&E attendance records within 24 hours, streamlined clinicians’ work, trimmed down processing hours and identified children in need of care faster. All these advantages translated into almost £66,000 in savings annually. The changes also ensured better record review, quick information access for strategy discussions and faster clinician response. The success was shared and adopted in neighbouring regions, while information sharing capabilities have been improved through an eRedbook and the Brigid App, which enables clinicians to remotely view A&E data , particularly beneficial to those making home visits.

There could have been a commercial opportunity in the solution but all stakeholders in the project have agreed that all learning will be made available to any other organisation who wishes to benefit from this. Starting in one hospital, spreading to four and now across the country, the solution has been developed in a way that allows for rapid and easy expansion without the need for additional servers, software or licences, reaffirming Provide Community’s commitment to transform lives through innovation.