The challenge
Jason Felstead, Lead for Quality Improvement for Oxfordshire County Council, explains how an automated data feed (API) from Capacity Tracker supports data intelligence gathering for Adult Social Care in Oxfordshire and, more widely, the Integrated Care System of BOB (Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire).
The council has invested in an automated data feed from Capacity Tracker to support the commissioning of adult social care services in Oxfordshire that will feed into the council’s bespoke dashboard on a daily basis. This will provide detailed performance data to senior leaders and brokerage teams as well as external providers.
Our response:
Previously, the council had to manually pull the information from Capacity Tracker and populate the dashboard every day. The automated data feed from Capacity Tracker will provide up to date, detailed information to the commissioning and brokerage teams to review Adult Social provision, commissioning decisions and will help them to address health inequalities for Oxfordshire and the surrounding areas.
Jason says Capacity Tracker gives the council a picture of the last 24 hours – this could range from capacity in a home or in the community and indicate issues such as workforce. “If the data reveals an operational issue, we can contact the care provider to understand what the issue is and identify any support they may require”.
The process relies upon provider engagement to regularly update the system. “The council will use the tracker data and proactively contact providers to request occupancy information is updated and remind them of the importance of doing so on more regular basis.” This will, in turn, support the brokerage teams to quickly, effectively and safely place residents with providers that meet their needs.
Longer term, Jason added, “The regularly updated data will provide strategic market insight, as trends will be captured. This provides commissioning teams with useful data, to make informed decisions, based upon the market conditions and needs of Oxfordshire residents.”
Outcomes
How do you use the data?
“The data will form part of our data warehouse, allowing us to ask questions of it alongside data around hospital discharge and CQC ratings. For example, in Quality Improvement we look at the occupancy levels for the care homes to understand which Providers have a reduced occupancy level that may impact the financial position of the care home. The dashboard will be updated every day and be made available to those who require the information and areas will be able to use Power BI tools to analyse the data in a way which works for their needs.”
What’s the future for the council in using Capacity Tracker?
“We are always looking at how we can improve how the information from Capacity Tracker is displayed and easily interpreted. Using Power BI will be a gamechanger for how we use our intelligence within commissioning”.
Is the dashboard easy to replicate?
“Yes, another council could replicate it. It would be a case of displaying their information in the right data fields. Inputting would probably be the hardest bit.
“Capacity Tracker is a single source of information, which avoids us having to use multiple systems to draw data from or constantly call care providers to ask for their current data.”
“The only way we can get the data is via Capacity Tracker. Any other way would be from a variety of sources, so it would be difficult to collect, subject to more inaccuracies and more labour intensive.”
“Capacity Tracker is a single source of information, which avoids us having to use multiple systems to draw data from or constantly call care providers to ask for their current data.”