Brokerage in social care and healthcare – what is it?

Brokerage in social care and healthcare was mainly brought in due to personalisation of care and personal budgets bringing in new skills and jobs across the market, with brokerage being one of them.

In health and social care, brokerage is a process that facilitates access to appropriate services and support for individuals or communities. The process often tends to include assessing needs, identifying the available resources, and coordinating the delivery of healthcare and social services at the best price possible.

However, there are some differences. For example, brokerage in healthcare includes coordinating care plans and ensuring smooth transitions between levels of care.  Whereas, a brokerage in social care can also include linking individuals with social services such as housing support, and counseling to address the wider social determinants of health. Aged care brokerage services, in particular, specialize in connecting older adults with services and support specifically tailored to older adults' needs including residential care, home care, and assistive programs.

Brokerage in health and social care – why is it important?

Brokerage in health and social care is important for several different reasons. Ultimately it serves as a facilitator and connector to address the complex, ever-changing, and varied needs of the community. The list below demonstrates some of the main reasons why brokerage is important for the health and social care market.

1. Tailored Support

Brokerage in social care and healthcare is beneficial as it ensures that individuals receive better person-centred care that is proactive to delay future care needs and connect individuals to support services that address their specific needs.

2. Allows Efficient Resource Allocation

If you are currently involved in the commissioning processes for health and social care services, you will most likely be aware or are currently dealing with current budget challenges which in turn lead to resources being stretched which is making it harder to reach demand.

Brokerage allows more efficient resource allocation by identifying and matching individuals with the most relevant services that best match their needs. That way services do not end up overprescribed, demand can be reached quicker, care workers and support workers are no longer overworked, and resources are being used effectively.

3. Better coordination of services

Another benefit of brokerage services in health and social care is that they help facilitate more seamless coordination and transitions of care between health and social care services to prevent fragmentation and promote a more holistic approach to an individual’s wellbeing.

Having seamless transitions between different care services is something that the CQC will be assessing in the new CQC inspections of local authorities. So having efficient care brokerage services not only improves the quality and the coordination of care services, it also helps to demonstrate a high continuity of care between services to the CQC to get the highest rating possible.

4. Improved Outcomes

By connecting individuals with the right services at the right time and at the right place, both health and social care outcomes can improve. Local authorities, healthcare services, social care services, and both domiciliary and aged care services can use outcomes-focused care to shift from a reactive care model to a proactive and preventative one that caters to every need.

Here future care needs can be delayed, and independence can increase, especially in more vulnerable populations. These improved outcomes can then allow care and support services to continuously enhance their services to improve outcomes further to improve the overall health and wellbeing of individuals and their communities, whilst reducing the pressure on the health and social care market to make it more sustainable in the future.

In general, brokerage across healthcare and social care acts as a bridge to promote efficient, effective, and proactive person-centred care across the market that focuses on delivering care and support that caters to every individual to improve outcomes, reduce demand, reduce costs, and transform your care delivery to improve services further in the future.

How does brokerage in healthcare and social care work?

Similar to digital procurement, brokerage in healthcare and social care tends to work following 7 common steps, with it sometimes varying depending on context and the care that needs to be delivered.

1. Assessment

Brokerage cannot take place without an initial assessment. During the assessment an individual’s needs, preferences, and circumstances are gathered to determine what care is needed, and where best this care should be delivered whether it’s within the hospital, a care facility, or at home.

2. Availability of Services

After determining the individual needs, the next step is to clarify what services and providers are currently available to match those needs and preferences.

3. Matching

Once the availability of services has been investigated, now it is time to match the services with the individual based on the results from the initial assessment.

Often at this stage, this is where brokerage and procurement can merge so suppliers, providers, and care facilities can be evaluated on numerous criteria including price, quality, and compliance. Here different services can bid for the work and the best bid according to the criteria will be selected.

4. Coordination

To make the transitions between care services or settings seamless and to deliver the best quality care, time needs to be spent to ensure the coordination of care is effective. At this stage, any logistical challenges should be identified to decide how best to mitigate risks and challenges or overcome them.

5. Examining and Review

As we are most likely to be aware, care needs and demands can constantly change and increase. Regularly assessing the effectiveness of the services provided is vital so care plans can be adjusted accordingly to continue to meet the individual’s needs both now and in the future.

6. Advocacy

To ensure the individual is involved within the brokerage process and involved in making their own care decisions, your local authority must act as an advocate to ensure their rights are upheld, and so changes to care plans are made when necessary without limiting the quality of care delivered.

7. Documentation

One of the final steps within the brokerage process is the ongoing documentation. Keeping accurate records of assessments, service plans, and communications of the brokerage process is vital to ensure all information is in one place.

Unfortunately, some local authorities struggle to keep all this documentation in one place and rely on multiple spreadsheets to keep these records. Others have digitally transformed their brokerage, procurement, and commissioning services, so that not only are records digitalised, they can all be found in one place to make the ongoing reviewing and updating seamless to continue improving the quality and continuity of care across the community.

Challenges of brokerage in health and social care

Across all healthcare and social care brokerage services despite it offering many benefits, it is important to note there are some challenges to be aware of. Some challenges can occur across all types of care brokerage services whereas others are more niche.

The most common challenges across all health and social care services include:

1. Fragmented Systems

Both healthcare and social care services can be at risk of fragmented systems. Healthcare systems often consist of multiple providers, specialties, and settings leading to potential fragmentation of care and coordination.

Likewise, social care services can be provided by various local authorities, non-profit organisations, and private providers, leading to potential fragmentation in care delivery and gaps in the service.

Aged care brokerage services are one example of this, as often the aged care system caters to lots of complex needs and can be fragmented with multiple funding sources, service providers, and eligibility criteria, making it difficult for individuals and their families to navigate and understand.

2. Complex Needs

Across all of health and social care brokerage, there are complex needs to adapt to. This can include individuals living with more than one long-term condition leading to the need for multiple specialists and services, or Individuals living with complex social, emotional, and practical needs that require coordination amongst multiple services, providers, and agencies to ensure all needs are addressed, particularly older adults.

3. Access Barriers

Access barriers across health and social care can also inhibit the effectiveness of brokerage services. Socioeconomic factors, geographic location, and insurance coverage can create barriers to accessing needed health and social care services, making the brokerage process more complicated.

4. Technology integration

As you are most likely to be aware digitising records and processes transforms care deliveries. But, being able to integrate different technology solutions including electronic patient records, telehealth and telecare services into the brokerage process requires overcoming technical barriers to ensure computability and usability for all stakeholders.

5. Workforce Challenges

It is no secret that the health and social care market has been experiencing both staff retention and recruitment challenges. This, in turn, has led to overworked workforces, burnout, more leaving the profession, and longer waiting times and delayed discharges for individuals, causing the brokerage process to be even more complex, resources stretched, and individuals left waiting longer for the care they need.

6. Changing Regulations

One of the biggest challenges when brokering health and social care is changing regulations and compliance. New regulations, for example, may require new standards and protocols that affect the way services are delivered or managed.

Changes in regulations also can lead to documentation changes which can influence the efficiency and effectiveness of brokerage services. It is crucial therefore to stay informed and adaptable to regulatory changes for brokerage services to maintain quality and compliance.

Brokerage care services – how can technology overcome the challenges of brokerage in health and social care?

Like healthcare and social care services in general, leveraging technology opens plenty of opportunities to advance services, outcomes, and care quality, and digitalising brokerage services within health and social care is no different.

Investing in technology solutions offers numerous opportunities to streamline and digitalise your brokerage, procurement, and commissioning services altogether to build a stronger multi-disciplinary team that focuses on delivering the best quality care and the best price possible.

Below are just 3 top examples of how technology can help overcome the challenges of brokerage in health and social care to help improve brokerage care services and care outcomes further.

1. Digital Platforms

Investing in digital platforms streamlines communications and coordination between service providers, commissioners, bidders, and the individuals themselves facilitating better resource allocation to cater to a service that best meets the individual need.

At Access Adam Care Commissioning, our end-to-end solution allows your teams to act quickly and locate trusted suppliers within your selected timeframe to provide a high-quality service for the individual to meet their requirements. Here our solution has been able to help local authorities filter bidders to best meet your proposal and improve the quality of services you deliver.

2. Telehealth and Telecare

Both telehealth and telecare are gaining more popularity as a solution to deliver better integrated care across health and social care. Having services that have these types of technology solutions ready helps broker care services easier.

Here telehealth and telecare services can easily adapt to individual requirements to help increase independence and allow for more timely interventions. At Access TEC we go one step further by allowing smart alerts to be created so carers and loved ones can be notified of any behaviour changes before something more critical takes place.

3. Electronic Health Records

Digital health records ultimately centralise all patient information in one place to promote seamless communication between stakeholders to ensure better continuity of care.

Our Access Rio EPR system empowers healthcare providers to improve their outcomes with a system that supports the vision to hold one integrated health record for each person to deliver the highest quality and most efficient care delivery possible.

By having patient records digitalised, care brokerage services can quickly retrieve the real-time information they require to understand a patient’s needs to improve care coordination and ensure efficient referral processes, avoid delays, and give individuals access to the care and support they need quicker.

Brokerage care services – Summarising how The Access Group can help

In this article, I have reviewed what brokerage is across health and social care and how it is important to help transform care models to deliver better proactive and preventative care. This article has also explained the key stages that are involved in any brokerage service across health and social care but how there are some differences depending on who the care is being catered for.

Likewise, there are common challenges all health and social care providers can experience when brokering their services. Aged care brokerage services in particular often leads to providers having to accommodate to more complex needs where some older adults may have multiple conditions that need support from multiple stakeholders, and for this to happen effortlessly a better co-production approach would be needed.

Through addressing the challenges of brokerage services across health and social care, this article has highlighted how different technology solutions can offer better opportunities to health and social care providers to broker higher-quality services catered to every individual need, at a fraction of the price.

At The Access Group, we focus on providing integrated solutions to empower professionals across health and social care to deliver better outcomes-focused and preventative care.  By helping you digitally transform your health and social care services brokering the care services needed for each individual is easier, more efficient, and at the best price possible, without stretching your budgets.

At Access Adam Care Commissioning, we help filter your bids automatically based on your criteria so you always work with the best service available that matches your community’s needs. Find out first-hand the benefits our customers have experienced using our brokerage solution today by exploring our commissioning case studies.

Contact us now and let’s help you transform your brokerage services for the better to improve your care coordination and have seamless communication with different stakeholders to deliver the best person-centred care possible.