As we move towards the greater integration of services, it has become increasingly important to understand what is meant by integration and how to measure it from a user perspective.
There is currently no effective approach in place to measure integration, and current practice around collection of patient experience data, mirrors the delivery of services, in that it is currently measured by each service separately.
Connections are not made that would help to address the difficulties individuals have understanding and navigating pathways, which is essential if we are to move towards more joined-up care.
It is recognised that one single measure of integration would be too narrow to capture the very large number of potential pathways, however ensuring the consistent measurement of person-centred, coordinated care is essential to effectively design and implement an integrated care service that works for both users and care providers.
Derbyshire is currently working with the King’s Fund and Traverse to develop a prototype for a local Integration Index, in partnership with the ‘Team Up’ project team.
Team Up Derbyshire is an ambitious programme in Derby and Derbyshire that aims to create one team across health and social care who see all housebound patients in a neighbourhood.
The overall aim of the service is to keep people safe at home and provide the best, most seamless, care, keeping people out of hospital wherever possible. Team Up Derbyshire aims to ensure that person-centred care services are provided at the right time, in the right place, by the right person. As a result, people should be able to live well, for longer.
This team is not a new or ‘add on’ service – it is a teaming up of existing services – with general practice, community, mental healthcare, adult social care and the voluntary and community sector all working together. Hence the initiative lends itself well to the development of a local integration measure, which will help to measure from the patient and/or carers perspective, whether joining up care in this way provides a better experience for patients and better health outcomes.
This work is in the early stage, please contact ddicb.engagement@nhs.net for updates.
Alongside this work there is also a National Integration Index in development, which is led by NHS England. The aim is for this index to go live in all systems across England by April 2023.
The index will provide early intelligence as to the impact of Integrated Care Systems, hearing from people and carers who rely on multiple services to provide a unique perspective on how well care is being joined up. The likelihood is that this will be a longitudinal measure, so that we can track experiences over time.
Traverse, Joined Up Care Derbyshire, and the King’s Fund are currently looking for people across Derbyshire to part in interviews for a research study.
The health and care system is going through the process of integration, which means that different teams and organisations across health and care will be working together more closely.
We want to understand how to measure whether integration is resulting in better experiences for service users and carers. We want to make sure we’re asking the right questions, in the right way, so that the experiences of those people that integration affects are listened to.
For us to understand more about your experiences, we would like to invite you to take part in a one-to-one interview with a researcher. In the interview, we will be asking you questions about what good health and care would look like to you, and questions about your experiences giving feedback to health and care services.
Involving people and communities in our work is an essential part of making sure that effective and efficient health and care services are delivered. Within Joined Up Care Derbyshire, we have a variety of different ways to ensure that we reach out, listen to, involve, and empower our people and communities to have a voice on a continuous basis. We have developed a variety of different methods and tools that can be used by all our system partners.