The North of England Commissioning Support Unit (NECS) developed the Capacity Tracker for the UK market back in 2017. The Capacity Tracker was originally a digital insight tool to help protect hospital capacity and minimise delayed transfers of care between acute hospitals and nursing and residential care homes. During COVID, the tool was quickly adapted and mandated by National Health Service England and the Department of Health and Social Care to track COVID cases in more than 15,000 care homes across England as well as other care settings such as community rehabilitation, hospices and substance misuse facilities.

The UK tool captures information such as PPE requirements, COVID status and workforce requirements. This gave commissioners of the service intelligence to identify when an aged care facility needs additional support or needs to be closed to admitting new patients due to COVID prevalence levels. Information has also been summarised and reported to the Department of Health and Social Care and national NHS England teams to inform responses at a national and regional level.

As the need for data changed, Capacity Tracker evolved, almost weekly to provide Government with the required intelligence in care home settings. It quickly became the single source of contemporary relevant information across the aged care sector. It is proven technology and has been essential in the UK’s response to COVID.

Sharing with Australia

During 2020, NECS launched the Capacity Tracker in Australia. The tool was purpose built for the Australian market to allow residential aged care facilities (RACFs), GPs and Pharmacies to share their so-called ‘business continuity’ information in real-time. This allows Primary Health Networks (PHNs) to have a ‘single version of the truth’ and enables them to quickly offer targeted support when it is required and also better support the coordination between primary care and aged care.

For PHNs, the Capacity Tracker is a valuable tool which provides real-time information about COVID infections, workforce, PPE supplies and residential aged care bed availability. The system’s functionality also offers standardised reporting including real-time status, trend analysis and the use of visual mapping which gives even greater insight for PHNs.

For providers, the tool takes seconds to update and, because it is web-based, there is no software to install and it can be accessed via mobile devices. By linking RACFs, GPs and Pharmacies, the tool can also offer an effective response for PHNs in other, non-COVID, emergency situations such as bushfires or cyclones where it’s imperative to quickly re-home affected residents.

With the current roll-out of COVID vaccinations across Australia, the Capacity Tracker has been further refined in collaboration with PHNs to capture the vaccinations of patients and staff in RACFs and GPs as well monitoring the supply of the vaccines in RACFs, GPs and Pharmacies. This gives PHNs real-time oversight over the success of their vaccination programme.

The tool is currently live in 4 PHNs across Australia (Hunter New England and Central Coast PHN, Western New South Wales PHN, Gippsland PHN and Central Queensland, Wide Bay, Sunshine Coast PHN).

The Capacity Tracker has proven to be a vital tool in the response to COVID-19 in the UK and Australia. It also offers longer-term benefits which protect hospital capacity by improving patient flow and allowing Acute hospitals to see aged care bed vacancies as well as building resilience and governance into a health system.

Learning Points

The key ones to take from NECS work in Australia are:

· International organisations are often interested to understand what’s worked well in the NHS. Sharing learning from the NHS can be extremely valuable for non-UK markets.

· When NECS entered the Australian market, COVID was at its peak and a pared-back version of the UK Capacity Tracker was introduced as the Australian market needed a solution at pace. NECS have now set up a Customer Forum to consider pertinent features from the UK version as well as collaboratively determine new priority features applicable to the Australian PHN network.

· NECS is an organisation that prides itself on continuous improvement and has a pedigree of working with customers in an agile way to ensure its products remain fit for purpose. They are currently exploring how the tool could be developed further to support other areas such as Mental Health capacity or any other situation that requires multiple users to access contemporary real-time intelligence.

· There are mutual benefits to sharing information across systems. A good example is how NECS incorporated the Primary Care functionality in the Australian version into the UK version.

Testimonials

“Because of the Capacity Tracker, the Primary Health Network (PHN) can easily see where GPs are who could be able to support RACFs facilities, meaning that patient care can continue.”

Executive Manager for Commissioning at Hunter New England and Central Coast PHN

“A lot of information we previously held about aged care facilities and practices were held across several different systems, and we didn’t have an accurate ‘source of truth’ directory. Through implementing the Capacity Tracker, we now have this as it has brought it all together.”

“It’s easy to implement and a good value for money system. It has enabled the PHN to take a more active role in regional service coordination.”

Executive Manager for Commissioning at Hunter New England and Central Coast PHN

“I am grateful for Capacity Tracker as an ‘extra set of eyes’ over the practices, so nothing gets delayed or missed – especially while we are managing such a large workload on the Coast! I’m getting great feedback from practices about how easy it is to update, and they really like the resources section too.”

Primary Care Improvement Officer at Hunter New England and Central Coast PHN

If you would like further information or a demonstration, please contact:

Jason Speck, Service Manager, NHS North of England Commissioning Support (NECS) Email: jason.speck1@nhs.net Website: https://www.necsu.nhs.uk/