Matthew Taylor
Chief Executive, NHS Confederation
Moving care out of hospital and into the community is a crucial innovation and one of the key improvements outlined in the NHS Long Term Plan.
Delivering care closer to home has significant benefits; not just improving outcomes for patients, but it can also improve productivity by way of easing pressure and resources on acute services.
Opportunities and challenges for a care closer to home model
There are many opportunities for community health services to use digital technology to deliver high-quality care for patients and communities closer to their homes. This includes services such as monitoring patients remotely; telehealth; holding virtual consultations; and giving patients digital tools to manage their conditions.
However, the community provider landscape is complex, with varied digital maturity. It can be difficult to share data between different providers, organisations and system partners. Without effective and securely accessible data-sharing, there remain challenges in developing a holistic view of a person’s health and care needs, as well as delivering integrated care through multidisciplinary teams. A lack of shared and interoperable data can also hinder integrated care systems in understanding their population’s health and intervention needs.
This is why we welcomed the £3.4 billion announced in the Spring Budget for NHS digitisation. However, it still falls short of the £6.4 billion annual capital funding increase we are calling for.
Community sector leaders are optimistic
about the potential for greater integration
across primary and community services.
Digital tools can help boost integration
Community sector leaders are optimistic about the potential for greater integration across primary and community services. Many are already working closely with primary care colleagues to deliver more integrated care.
West Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership is on its way towards finalising an updated digital strategy. This will set out how digital tools can be used to support the promotion of health and wellness as well as deliver high-quality care, allowing patients to use digital tools to access services and monitor their own health.
The team recently held workshops on digital improvement in community services across different sectors to help understand areas of overlap in services, the potential to align digital delivery with existing local programmes and to shape priorities going forward.
Healthcare digitisation requires support
While healthcare systems continue to make progress towards digitisation, some have further to go than others. With many systems under considerable financial pressure and high demand, they will need extra support to reap the full rewards digitalisation can bring.
