Brokerage software vs commissioning software – Which one is best to improve your care commissioning
Problems with public sector tendering can be difficult to manage. Digitally transforming processes and investing in brokerage and commissioning software is a good way to overcome these problems, but it can be challenging to know what software is best for your local authority.
If you are a Director, Care Commissioner, Social Worker, or work within the care commissioning cycle in the UK then you will already know the social care challenges have been exacerbated by the pandemic, cost-of-living crisis, and staff shortages. This has made it very difficult for some local authorities to meet demand and commission the care and support needed.
It is not just social care needs that have risen dramatically, local authorities have also seen that housing needs have increased too. With many individuals seeking social or temporary housing, the long waiting lists leave vulnerable people living in unsafe conditions, worsening their health and wellbeing, and increasing their reliance on more health and social care support.
So how are local authorities overcoming these issues? What options are available and what is the difference between brokerage and commissioning software?
Access Adam Care Commissioning is dedicated to empowering local authorities across the UK to optimise their service delivery. Recognizing the increased new responsibilities of our English colleagues, we are committed to ensuring their readiness for the new CQC inspections. In adhering to all applicable legislation and guidance, we facilitate the seamless adaptation of support services to meet evolving demands.
By the end of this article, you will be able to identify the differences between commissioning and brokerage software and the best way these tools can be used to identify which solution is best for your local authority.
Brokerage software vs Commissioning software – What’s the difference?
Brokerage is a wide-ranging term describing the process that helps people with a variety of needs access the support they need. Brokerage software is a platform that is specialised in facilitating and streamline the process of managing and commissioning the support needed.
Brokerage software is often more client and outcomes-oriented to focus on individual arrangements it even allows councils to include their own personal KPIs and Contract Management benchmarks to look for a package most in line with their citizen's needs and their local supply base. It can be used in a variety of ways across the health and social care market to commission the care packages needed, as well as manage temporary housing to help individuals live in happier, healthier, and safer homes.
Similarly, commissioning software can provide tools for organsiations to source and secure the providers needed on a much larger scale. Often commissioning software can help manage the logistics around expenses and provide real-time updates when the quality of a provider changes or no longer suits the requirements needed.
Brokerage software vs Commissioning software – Are they important?
Having both brokerage and commissioning software in place is crucial to help local authorities digitise the commissioning life cycle. When used correctly, both tools manage demand and resources to deliver the citizen support needed quickly, within your local community whilst adhering to all legal regulations. The combination of both tools has been known to benefit several departments: Contracts and Commissioning, Brokers, Social Workers and even the council’s own Quality Assurance team.
Brokerage solutions and commissioning software can help local authorities secure quicker and more compliant temporary accommodation, as well as arrange social and health care packages that can easily be adapted and updated to improve the health and wellbeing of your community.
Below is a table to directly compare the benefits that both investing in brokerage and commissioning software can have on your local authority.
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Benefits of the solution |
Brokerage Software |
Commissioning software |
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The table above demonstrates whilst both software solutions offer very similar benefits, brokerage software tends to be used for specific cases, and the biggest benefits include commissioning more personlised care to improve an individual’s accessibility to the care and support services they need.
Commissioning software on the other hand tends to work best when supporting a whole community and local authority to easily adapt to specific needs when they change. This allows better control of budgets and resources to make better data-led decisions. It also provides the opportunity for local authorities to examine their providers and ensure their compliance so they can intervene when standards are not being met.
Both types of software enable individuals to receive safer and better-quality support regardless of the focus, saving time through digitising administrative tasks, making it easier to ensure that all commissioning and brokerage decisions made are based on clear criteria and objectives.
Where commissioning software tends to work better for larger organsiations and communities it also encourages better co-production where local authorities can work with different stakeholders to arrange, commission, and deliver the care and support needed. This way local authorities can have better population health management to ensure no individual is left with their needs left unmet or left on long waiting lists as resources can be shared effectively and quickly.
Problems with public tendering
We asked, you told us. Our National Survey showed one of the biggest problems with public tendering is managing demand with the availability of providers.
More than 90% of UK SMEs say the public sector should do more to remove tendering barriers. With the demand for both social support and social care increasing and local authorities’ increased responsibility to provide this care and support, these barriers must be overcome.
In the latest green paper, Transforming Public Procurement, the study found that the biggest barrier to public tendering was the complexity of the procurement process itself, with 70% of respondents saying when they had previously bid for public sector work they had experienced varying degrees of success, with only 45% of respondents regularly being successful.
One in ten respondents stated that they had given up bidding for public sector contracts and 21% said they have never bid for public sector work, meaning that over 30% of the surveyed SMEs are not engaging with opportunities and missing out on valuable contracts.
With both demands increasing and a limited number of providers wanting to bid for contracts being able to commission both the care and support needed within a community is increasingly difficult. Some of the other main challenges include:
1. Funding shortages
As well as managing demand and limited availability of fully compliant providers, another key problem with public sector tendering is having the funding. Having limited funding can make it difficult for local authorities to arrange support that meets all complex needs.
Arranging and placing individuals in temporary accommodation, for example, can be extremely difficult and often can leave many families in poor-quality housing, which in turn, declines both their mental health and wellbeing.
2. Catering to all complex needs
As well as the increasing demand, there is also a massive variation in care needs. This can be challenging for local authorities to commission as they need to ensure they both have the workforce and resources available to cater to all these needs, as well as ensure all providers have had the training needed.
By not catering to all complex needs your local authority is increasing the risk of delivering poorer quality care and not following all the legislation leading to reputational damage and hefty fines.
3. Ensuring quality and safety of care services
Even when your local authority has been able to manage demand effectively, another major challenge is ensuring all the providers you are working with are fully safe and compliant and not putting individuals at risk.
Local authorities have been using a variety of different approaches to delay future care needs and increase independence, it is essential that all providers are fully compliant and can support the specific care needs, without it you are at risk of higher hospital admissions and reliance on primary care.
4. Workforce shortages
Another challenge most local authorities will already be aware of is staff shortages. With many care workers leaving the profession and issues surrounding recruitment, it can be problematic to arrange the homecare needed. This in turn puts the quality of care delivered at risk.
5. Market fragmentation
The social care market can be fragmented, and lots of small providers can make it difficult to manage and coordinate services quickly. In situations where care needs can change and care emergencies can take place, it is vital local authorities can manage all their providers efficiently so they can both communicate and coordinate with them to get the best outcomes possible.
Equally, when arranging temporary accommodation local authorities can struggle to onboard providers and landlords that are willing to offer their accommodation for temporary housing. Currently, there is a lot of stigma surrounding the need for temporary accommodation including fears their properties will be ruined if used for temporary accommodation.
To avoid this stigma and reluctance it is crucial local authorities can raise awareness of the benefits of temporary accommodation and how working collaboratively with other stakeholders can make the process of seeking more permanent housing for individuals and families a lot quicker to break the homelessness cycle in your community.
6. Prevent hospital discharge delays
Currently, there is a lot of pressure on hospitals and the social care market to reduce discharge delays and allow individuals to continue to recover from illness or injury in their own homes to reduce bed blocking and pressure on residential care homes. However, without sufficient brokerage or commissioning software in place, this process is taking longer than needed, running the risk of unsafe discharge and readmission. Even in 2023 many councils are still using email and phone to advertise packages.
7. Improving accessibility
One of the additional challenges that local authorities must manage and overcome is improving their accessibility so all individuals have access to the support they need. Through working collaboratively with different stakeholders this can happen ensuring no individual is left without the support they need.
However, this isn’t always as easy as it seems. Being able to manage the different complex needs across different demographics and understanding how the wider social determinants of health can also impact their health and wellbeing can be a challenge, and many individuals, including more vulnerable ones, can be left on long waiting lists or experience fewer opportunities to get the support they need.
8. Managing public expectations
One of the final problems with public sector tendering is managing public expectations. This is not just end-users expectations, but their loved ones, and their care providers too. Without setting the expectations needed to be delivered or highlighting any potential delays straight away, problems can’t be addressed and it can be less likely that timely support will be delivered, and care providers can be more likely to no longer offer their services.
How can Access Adam Care Commissioning overcome the problems with public sector tendering?
To overcome the problems with public tendering both investing in brokerage and commissioning software can be great solutions and help improve health outcomes. At Access Adam Care Commissioning, we understand that both brokerage and commissioning solutions aim to help different-sized organisations and groups. That is why our commissioning platform incorporates features from both typical brokerage and commissioning software to help local authorities of any size commission the services needed.
We also like to go one step further by providing solutions to help improve the procuring process across housing and transport too, so we can help improve accessibility and allow equal opportunities to every individual in your community to improve their health and wellbeing and most importantly their quality of life.
Here our system helps your local authority digitally transform your procurement processes to manage your workflow in one single platform and improve the efficiency and accuracy of provider placement, whilst consistently having full visibility of the market to enable faster, safer, and higher-quality placements regardless of the service or care needed.
Our customers have found that through streamlining processes their administrative costs have reduced allowing them to make decisions 25% faster.
As discussed above we highlighted that finding fully compliant providers can be significantly challenging to meet demand. By using our we can ensure you only ever work with fully compliant providers where our automatic checks will remove any incompliant providers from your registered list. This has helped local authorities see an increase in competition for their bids and the time to complete invoicing and payment processes has reduced by 35% from 28 days to 18.
Our unique brokerage features display each provider’s offer and suitability for every placement, reducing the need for manual communication and time spent sorting out each placement.
Mick Hancock, Group Head of Commissioning at Milton Keynes Council states that
“Milton Keynes Council has worked with Access Adam for several years, principally about home-to-school transport, home care, and housing. The council has seen the benefits of Access Adam in relation to the efficient processes we now have in the three areas we employ.”
Best ways to use commissioning and brokerage software in local authorities
This article has highlighted the importance of both commissioning and brokerage software in local authorities to overcome both the problems with public sector tendering and the problems in the health and social care market. By explaining why both solutions are important, this article has highlighted the different benefits each software can provide.
This article has also explained different problems with public sector tendering and how they are impacted further by the challenges facing the social care market currently. It is vital to digitally transform your procurement processes to make onboarding compliant, quality providers at the best price easier to avoid long waiting lists, help increase independence, and reduce hospital discharge delays.
At Access Adam Care Commissioning, we want to make this process as easy as possible across home care, healthcare, transport, and housing, so no individual has to go without the support they need. Our commissioning platforms for each sector are made with experts to make procuring providers as simple as possible to provide employees 100% confidence they are placing individuals and patients with the support they need.
To find out more information on how we are helping to overcome the challenges facing the social care market download our commissioning guide today.
Contact us now and see first-hand how our unique commissioning and brokerage platform helps cater to every need within your local authority so you can commission and deliver the best quality care and support needed without going over budget and leaving anyone without the support they need.
