Agenda item

32.1     The Head of Assessment and Care Management introduced the report which outlined the current performance of Health and Social Care Connect (HSCC) and the future direction of the service. There are currently 9,000 to 9,500 contacts per month with the service, across both public and professionals.

32.2     The following points were made in response to the Committee’s questions:

·         Some of the outstanding activities listed in the project closure report have now been completed but much is ongoing work, for example with locality teams and communities of practice.

·         The department’s target is for all assessments to be undertaken within 28 days. Many assessments initially completed in HSCC are directed on to other teams for more detailed assessment. There will always be some complex assessments which take longer but there is monitoring in place to check that an extended period is appropriate. There has been an impact on performance from the implementation of the Liquid Logic new care management system, and the aim is for ongoing year on year improvement against target.

·         The telephony system measures waiting times and dropped calls, provides a message on queue position to waiting callers and the option to leave a voicemail. The current rate of dropped calls is c15% but these can be due to a range of reasons, not always due to the length of wait. HSCC is continuing to refine systems and to investigate more sophisticated systems as part of the NHS 111 project. In addition, the service is working to match resources to demand (peak remains 9am to 5pm). Professionals can press a button to be diverted quickly into the Health Hub – this is the area with the most growth in demand.

·         A Sustainability and Transformation Plan (STP) level Board (with East Sussex representation) has been established to take forward urgent care commissioning work, including re-procurement of NHS 111. This will take a more structured approach, including learning from other procurement and transition processes. This wider approach will not slow the pace locally but will feed into it and influence.

·         The development of a clinical hub is in conjunction with the Urgent Care Centres which operate out of hours and will be an alternative to A&E.

·         Broadening the opening times of HSCC presents opportunities to prevent demand elsewhere in the system, particularly from using clinical decision making as opposed to risk adverse algorithms.

·         The programme for developing the clinical hub has learnt lessons in terms of getting senior staff in place early, and is aiming to have clinical directors in place within the next 4 to 6 months. Recruitment of staff will be challenging in terms of having a limited pool to recruit from but the service will look at using technology to provide access to clinical advice, rather than necessarily having specialists in the hub at all times. There are plans to house a support service used by GPs to access advice from acute clinicians (the Professional Support Line) within the clinical hub and virtually integrate the two.

·         The workforce and organisational development (OD) component of East Sussex Better Together is very aware of change management issues and offers support to managers and teams. The programme is accessing support days from Health Education England regional OD experts focused on cohorts of staff who will need to change. HSCC recruitment and retention has been influenced by the investment in training at the outset.

·         HSCC handles a higher number of complaints than the 29 cited in the report but much of this work involves redirecting these to other services the complaint relates to. The complaints listed are those relating to HSCC itself and complaints about other services are recorded elsewhere. There is an additional process for obtaining customer feedback.

·         Services wanting HSCC to manage their referrals present a case for inclusion in the Directory of Service and there is an audit process to decide on accepting new services.

32.3     RESOLVED to note the report.