As health and care systems become more integrated, service users and carers will increasingly experience differences in how they access and receive care. This is particularly true for the most frequent users of multiple health and care services, who are more likely to receive care from a joined-up team.
If done well, the benefits of integration to service users and carers could include: navigating the health and care system more easily, closer relationships with those responsible for their care, being more involved in decisions being made about their care, less duplication, less frustration, and fewer people that need care falling between the cracks.
But how will you know if your system is integrating well?
NHS England are working on a national integration index, which will be used to monitor whether integration is working at a system level. This will provide a way of comparing how effectively different systems are integrating and it will give some insight within a system on how different aspects of integration are working.
Although useful at a national and system level, these types of measures are unable to generate insight at a neighbourhood level about whether providers are working together effectively to improve the health and care experiences of service users and, if not, why? Getting this information will help integrated services and teams improve and deliver on the promises of integration.
At Traverse, we believe the best way to do this is to listen to the voices of service users, carers, staff, and other key stakeholders. By listening to peoples’ stories, creating space for conversations, and bringing people together to deliberate, you can gather rich, useful information that doesn’t simply assess performance, but that also tells you exactly what you can do to provide better integrated care and what difference these improvements would make.
Traverse is working with Joined Up Care Derbyshire to think about how integration could be measured at a local level. Traverse is working with Team Up, an integrated service delivering care for housebound people with frailty across Derbyshire.
We are interviewing service users, carers, operational and frontline staff from Team Up, people working in the voluntary and community sector, and people from Healthwatch to help answer these questions. We’ll be working closely with key stakeholders to develop a model for understanding whether getting care in a joined-up way is benefitting Team Up service users and carers, before thinking about whether a similar approach could be used by other integrated teams.
As health and care systems become more integrated, we believe it’s essential to be listening to the voices of service users and carers and embedding user experience data into decision-making around integration. We understand different systems have unique cultures, structures, and challenges that affect how integration is happening and how you can understand whether it’s benefitting residents. By working closely with stakeholders in a system, we can help you to develop a bespoke approach that complements and exceeds the insight generated by the national integration index.
