The Case for Connected Care Home Data

Care home residents are not a straightforward population to support. Many have multiple long-term conditions. A significant proportion have dementia and cannot always communicate what has happened at recent appointments, what has been discussed with other services, or what decisions have been made about their care. 

For Multi-Disciplinary Teams (MDTs) going into care homes, that gap in communication has always been a challenge. Before connected systems existed, finding out what had been discussed at a team appointment, or whether a referral to another service had been followed up, meant calling consultants, chasing memory services, and more often than not, drawing a blank. 

"We tried to go through the memory service and speak to somebody," one care home MDT nurse told us, "but it was more often consultant level, so we never actually found that information before." 

So teams did the best they could with what they had. Care plans in care homes, notes from previous visits, whatever the family could tell them. Information was there, but rarely enough to gauge the whole picture. 

There is a particular kind of clinical discomfort that comes from going into a visit without knowing what has already been said and done. Not knowing whether a palliative care plan has been put in place. Not knowing what the family has been told. Not knowing whether the deterioration you’re seeing is something other services are already aware of, or something that has slipped through the gaps. 

On top of not knowing enough information, there’s another thread running through care home MDT work that does not get enough attention either. Families of care home residents are often trying to understand what is happening with their loved one's care. What appointments have been made. Whether a referral has gone in. Whether the service they were waiting to hear from has even been in touch. 

When the MDT nurse can answer those questions confidently, something shifts. The family feels less alone. The conversation becomes less about chasing and more about care. 

"Because we can give them that information," one nurse said, "it's really important to them." 

That sounds simple. But in a system where information has historically lived in separate places, being able to give a family an accurate and timely update about their loved one's referral or appointment status has not always been straightforward. Thanks to Access Intelligent Care Platform (AICP), now it is. Referral status, appointment history, progress notes from connected services — all visible in one place, without the need for a phone call. 

One nurse described a palliative care visit that brought this impact into sharp focus. "Instead of going in not knowing anything about the circumstances," she reflected, "I knew what the progression had been. I knew what communication had been had. I knew what the family was doing. Just on that one visit, having that information probably saved me an hour. But it also meant I was able to focus on the patient rather than trying to build a picture." 

That hour matters, but the focus matters more. When a resident is at the end of their life, and a family is frightened, the last thing they need is a clinician who is still finding their feet. 

The benefits extend beyond individual visits. Care home MDT meetings bring together clinicians from different services to discuss the residents with the most complex needs. The quality of those conversations depends on the quality of the information people bring into the room. 

When MDT nurses arrive with visibility of what other services are doing, what has been discussed at recent appointments, and what care is currently in place, the meeting becomes more productive. The care home staff benefit too. They’re often working with limited information about the health side of a resident's care, and having a nurse who can speak to that with confidence makes a real difference to what gets agreed and acted on. 

"In terms of the MDTs now," one nurse reflected, "we're coming armed with a better set of data." 

Care home nursing is quietly one of the most demanding environments in the system. The patients are complex, the information is fragmented, and the expectation from families is that their loved one's care teams are talking to each other, even when the systems do not make that easy. 

Connected information does not solve all of that, but it does remove one of the most persistent barriers to doing the job well. Going in knowing what has happened, what has been said, and what other services are involved is the unequivocal foundation of good care.