About Capacity Tracker

Launched in 2019, Capacity Tracker provides a single data capture platform that provides valuable insight in to what support is needed most, and where.

It helps individuals make the right choice, ensuring they don’t stay in hospital any longer than is necessary when discharge from hospital to their own home is not possible. Having the ability to rapidly access provider vacancies across England in real-time helps minimise avoidable Delayed Transfers of Care and frees up beds in acute settings for other patients. The Capacity Tracker is used by health and social care teams to source vacancies for people throughout England – including out of area repatriation; it is quick and easy for providers to update and saves time all round preventing unnecessary calls being made. 

Capacity Tracker has a comprehensive suite of reporting analytical tools that provide strategic and operational market oversight and intelligence at national, regional and local levels.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, Capacity Tracker was mandated by the government and provided valuable insight, enabling support to be offered to providers in dealing with the crises.

Capacity Tracker continues to evolve thanks to the input from health and social care partners and users of the system. By having close engagement with user groups, this enables the Tracker to meet the changing needs and priorities of its users.

Diane Ashton, a care home trusted assessor at Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust said:

“It’s in the patient’s best interests to give them accurate information to help them make the choice that is best for them and Capacity Tracker does this. It takes away the confusion individuals and their families often associated with finding a care home and having the ability to search out of the area is an added benefit.

“It’s so easy to use you simply type in the postcode and search radius, and the results are immediate, it has made us so much more effective and efficient, and within 24 hours the patient is usually in their chosen destination.”

Ruth Holt, NHS England / Improvement (North East and Yorkshire) Director of Nursing/Independent Care Sector Regional lead, said: “Capacity Tracker is an excellent example of how a digital portal can have a significant impact on some of the day-to-day challenges faced by health and social care staff.”

What does the Capacity Tracker do?

  • Capacity Tracker provides strategic and operational market oversight and intelligence through comprehensive reporting analytics at national, regional and local levels.
  • Capacity Tracker provides a platform for Care Homes, In-patient Community Rehabilitation, Substance mis-use and Hospice Providers to make visible their vacancies and other critical information through minimum input to provide rich information across health and social care organisations, i.e. vacancies to help reduce the time taken to discharge individuals from hospital, PPE to enable rapid response from local/regional teams. 
  • Capacity Tracker provides direct access to make video calls to support the rapid discharge to care homes that supports the Trusted Assessor model and provides a dedicated hub for health care professionals to hold secure video calls to minimise avoidable DToC and more easily link health and social care teams to improve patient care.
  • Capacity Tracker provides the flexibility of capturing broad data sets across providers to support audit and infection control processes and better support collective planning across the health and social care sector to swiftly resolve issues through local or national actions.

What value does Capacity Tracker add?

  • Capacity Tracker provides a single data capture platform that provides valuable insight in to what supported is needed most, and where.
  • Capacity Tracker helps minimise the number of Delayed Transfers of Care (DToC) and reduces the amount of time clinical staff and discharge teams spend ringing around providers searching for vacancies. It’s fast, secure and completely free to providers and national, regional stake holder organisations working across health and social care. It’s simple to register with rapid set up that allows users to have access within minutes.
  • Capacity Tracker has 100% Integrated Care Board and Local Authority coverage, which supports cross boundary repatriation.
  • Providers can share their vacancies across England quickly. These instant updates can be made from any internet connected device, including smartphones and tablets which means the Tracker can be used 24-7, 365 days a year and at the user’s convenience.
  • As part of the Covid-19 response, additional critical information on PPE, Covid-19 outbreaks, admission status and workforce has been added to support national, regional and local oversight to enable a rapid response from health and social care teams to target support where it was most needed.
  • Capacity Tracker makes it easier and faster for care homes to fill their vacancies which provide more commercial security for providers and ultimately a more sustainable provider marketplace.
  • NECS’ Winter/Surge team has access to Capacity Tracker which helps them alleviate hospital pressures in their ‘system coordination’ role, working together with Foundation Trusts, Integrated Care Boards and ambulance trusts.
  • Online resource centre enabling us to communicate to care home managers directly.

Why do we need the Capacity Tracker?

    • c16,000 care homes with some 460,000 beds.
    • 36% growth in persons aged 85 and over will lead to a substantial increase in demand.
    • Being able to have a real time insight enables local, regional and national support to be better targeted.
    • Following Covid-19, financial pressures will affect far more care providers.
    • Sharing real time information across all key stakeholders encourages collaborative working and greater efficiencies across the health and social care system.
    • Improves the time taken to discharge an individual and therefore improve patient care by enabling those who need to transfer to a care home, hospice or community rehabilitation provider.
    • The Trusted Assessor model and ways of working have changed following the Covid-19 pandemic. Capacity Tracker helps facilitate the ‘new ways of working’.

Register here to join the rapidly expanding network of users or email necsu.capacitytracker@nhs.net to find out more information or to request a demonstration.