Technology transforming referral management at Lincolnshire Community
Cayder delivers solution within four weeks to pro-actively manage patients electronically across health and social care
Lincolnshire Community Health Services NHS Trust (LCHS) has deployed technology that allows healthcare professionals to pro-actively manage patient referrals and deliver care more efficiently in the community.
The deployment of Cayder’s Patient Flow Management System supports a countywide acute admissions reductions programme, which includes a focus on pro-active care, case management and early intervention to avert crisis and keep patients in the most-appropriate care setting.
The programme also responds in part to the significant growth in the number of people over the age of 85 in Lincolnshire.
Cayder, working closely with the trust, was able to roll out the solution within four weeks of the initial contact meeting.
The Cayder software is being used by more than 200 staff, such as service advisors and clinical leads, at LCHS’ contact centre. This takes calls from colleagues across health and social care to pro-actively manage any referrals that can be treated in the community, helping to reduce the number of hospital admissions.
The software helps LCHS staff quickly access the current location and status of patients under their care, allowing them to make better and more-efficient decisions on managing referrals. This supports the trust’s challenge in managing one of the largest healthcare communities, an area of 2,350 square miles with a population of 735,000.
Jo Cudmore, business lead for winter management at LCHS said: “Due to the huge geographical area we cover, we wanted to know what capacity we had at each community hospital and in each of our community nursing and therapy teams in real time. Now our teams are able to get information on our inpatients and those in the community through virtual wards very quickly on our electronic whiteboards in any of our four hospital sites.”
The trust is also using the software to help manage the progress of patients through treatment and then back into the community.
Cudmore said: “This has led to more-efficient communication for us as traditionally it was all done by phone, calling the local team who had to manually find out what was going on and confirming we had the right person in the right place. This technology lets us track our patients in real time, so our teams can communicate electronically, making the process much quicker.”
