Patient empowerment within the NHS
Patient centred care has always been a key tenet for NHS staff, but often the organisations & structures within which they work have not enabled the true empowerment of patients. There are a multitude of factors, from organisational, to political and cultural, as well as financial and technical, which have created this environment.
The impact of this has been a system, delivered with excellence by NHS staff, but with underlying symptoms that without resolution will continue to disempower patients and impede the vision set out in the NHS Long Term Plan. Block sees the following, as some of the most critical challenges to ensure patient empowerment becomes widespread over the coming decade:
- Patient access: Block believes the challenge of access comes in two forms. The first is in terms of access to clinical services, ensuring patients receive the right care, at the right time, in the right setting. The second is in the form of access to systems and data, if we are to effectively empower patients, we need to provide access to relevant data, both clinical and administrative in a coherent, transparent and timely way.
- Patient waiting times: In many ways connected to the issue of access, but Block sees the challenge of waiting times, both Emergency and Elective, as so critical, that it warrants a specific mention, made worse by the impact of Covid. Increased waiting times continue to create challenges for the NHS in being able to empower patients through accessible, flexible, and timely access to the care they require. Therefore, understanding how this issue can be mitigated is key to future patient empowerment.
- A disconnected patient experience: The focus on the integration of care through firstly STP’s and more recently ICS’s and PCN’s shows the importance of connecting care settings. In doing so the NHS will resolve many organisational and process inefficiencies, but critically it will also improve the experience that patients have when interacting with NHS services. Patients see the NHS as one organisation, but often the experience they have is of the gaps that exist between disparate organisations. Often this has led to patients having limited control ovee their care and a lack of continuity of care across care settings.
- Cross care setting inefficiency: Inefficiency between care settings has historically led to challenges for patients in receiving truly joined up care and this, in turn, has impacted on the NHS’s ability to empower patients to take greater control of the care they receive. A notable example of this is the issue of delayed transfer of care DTOC, where challenges of releasing medically fit patients back to a non-medical environment due to challenges in other care settings, means there is no opportunity for patients to progress.
- Healthcare inequalities: One of the biggest challenges faced by the NHS is the issue of inequalities in the way care is delivered to vulnerable patients’ groups. Block believe if we are to deliver empowerment to patients, we need to consider how to tackle health and care inequality to provide the best to all patients.
NHS Implication
The shift required to empower patients to create a more effective NHS and to deliver better health outcomes has many implications for NHS organisations. Fundamental is being able to provide new models of care that allow improved access and choice to patients. Whether this is driven through service improvement or digital innovation, at its heart it is about reimagining how care is delivered and how the patient becomes a more active participant in the care that they receive.
Crucially it is about prevention rather than cure, giving patients the right information, education, and access to new models of care to allow them to take control of their conditions and reduce reliance on traditional models of care, centred around organisations, rather than the individual.
Below we describe the areas we see as key to delivering patient empowerment during the next decade:
- Personalised care: The NHS focus on personalised care continues to develop with a commitment in the Long Term Plan to reach 2.5 million people by 2023/24, with this figure then doubling within a decade.
- Digital inclusion: A focus on digital inclusion is critical for the NHS to progress, but this is not just about the delivery of technology. Educating patients to develop digital skills and gain confidence, as well as providing connectivity and access are also critical to digital inclusion.
- Patient choice: Choice sits as a core component of personalised care, but Block believes it is more fundamental than this. Choice is key for all patients in terms of access to care, including the choices given through digital means.
- Service integration: Is a key principle within the Long Term Plan and a focus that’s been strengthened in the government white paper: Integration and Innovation. This shows how the breakdown of organisational barriers during the pandemic has created an environment for collaboration, and empowered patients in very challenging circumstances. Block believes this continued progress is critical to longer term empowerment.
- Population health: The significant and positive implications of a population health approach have become even more obvious during the pandemic, all of which indicate the empowering impact on patients. From the effective use of data to make proactive and timely decisions, to the importance of preventative care, allowing public health to improve care outcomes for communities. Population health has become a key component in delivering care outcomes during the next decade.
- Proactive / preventative care: Block believes the importance of prevention over cure will continue to grow. Becoming a mantra for the NHS and its patients and empowering them to take control of their health before conditions develop or decline. Mental health and cardiovascular disease are two examples of this focus shown within the Long Term Plan.
Digital Opportunity
Empowering patients to take control of their care through digitally enabled services, while also supporting and equipping staff for a digital future are critical components to the transformation of the NHS over the next decade and articulated in the Kings Fund paper Closing the gap. Block believes the opportunities for empowerment are endless and our development of products and services show many examples of ways in which we can support that empowerment:
- Software defined networks: We believe the scale, flexibility, and control that our SDA networks provide (from both a LAN and WAN perspective) affords huge opportunities to leverage IoT technologies and empower patients to engage with their care in a completely new way. This approach will support not just foundational use cases such a location aware tracking and wayfinding, but the development of more innovative telehealth solutions that provide an opportunity to engage in a remote, but clinically rich way.
- Collaboration: Block’s collaboration solutions provide a foundation from which patients can engage in a more flexible and appropriate way with clinicians and in doing so deliver far more effective interactions. Whether that be through a virtual consultation or through better access to clinical services, using omnichannel contact centre solutions, our focus on providing a consistent and connected experience for NHS staff and patients alike is key to the development of our solutions.
- Cloud : Our cloud services enable patients, and the staff caring for them, to utilise applications in an accessible, scalable, and secure manner. Improving the patient experience and ensuring care can be delivered appropriately, consistently, and flexibly.
- Mobile clinical workspace: Our innovative desktop provides accessibility and flexibility to the NHS workforce in a secure and performant wrapper. In doing so it ensures that clinicians have the tools to work flexibly from both a geographic and organisational perspective and this provides patients with a workforce who can better serve their clinical needs.
As beneficial as we believe our technology is to the empowerment of patients, we cannot stress enough the importance of digital inclusion. Without its consideration nothing will change, apart from the delivery of technology that is not fully utilised. As is set out in NHS Digital’s Digital Inclusion Guide, the benefits are wide ranging from improved self-management of long term conditions and lower cost of delivering services, to a reduction in loneliness and isolation. Block believes digitally empowering the patient will transform services and deliver an improved clinical outcome in equal measure.
