Oxfordshire County Council began the
introduction of electronic monitoring last year and has now fully
implemented CM2000's CallConfirmLive system.
Home care provision in Oxfordshire has a budget of around
£22milion and is split 50/50 between in-house and 12 external
providers. Servicing around 2,400 users with around 28,000 care
visits per week.
Plans to introduce care visit monitoring came about following an
internal audit and best value review both of which showed that what
the Council were paying for wasn't actually what was being
delivered. Caroline Cappell ICT Project Manager for the procurement
and introduction of Electronic Monitoring remembers, "essentially
we were paying for what was being commissioned and not what we were
receiving and we were charging our clients on this basis".
Following the audit a formal business case for the introduction
of Electronic Monitoring was prepared. There were a series of
meetings to discuss the issues and identify the key benefits for
introducing Electronic Monitoring. Benefits included greater
transparency in service delivery, the need to only pay for what is
delivered, health and safety for care workers and continuity of
care (at the time Oxfordshire had 30 providers and it was difficult
to keep track of who was delivering what and where). The costs of
implementing two different types of system and the potential cost
savings of each were clearly identified together with the overall
costs of the project. The business case recommended a pilot in
order to check that Electronic Monitoring would meet the
recomm-endations of the audit.
The pilot took place over eight weeks with the internal team and
one external provider. The key success criteria for the pilot
were:
- making sure the system was suitable and easy to use by home
carers
- that the data was suitable for the operational staff
- and that the financial information was usable e.g. for
invoicing.
The evaluation of the pilot proved the business case and
resulted in a final business case and project initiation document
being produced prior to commencing procurement.
The pilot clearly illustrated that in order for Oxfordshire to
realise all the requirements identified for an electronic
monitoring system, including the ability to run reports for
invoicing purposes and assist with the future development of care
packages, a fully managed monitoring service owned and run by the
council was essential.
The provision of Electronic Monitoring was tendered through the
OJEC. There were 26 initial expressions of interest received back.
12 Pre-Qualification Questionnaires were sent back and of these a
shortlist of 7 suppliers were invited to tender. Following receipt
of the tenders they were scored against the selection criteria and
financial checks were then carried out. 5 of the 7 were then
invited to present at the final stage in the tendering process.
Following presentations the short list was reduced to three
suppliers and references were taken up. The final selection was
between 2 providers with CM2000's CallConfirmLive winning the
contract on the strength of; proven interfaces; ease of use for
care workers, the finance manager module and the company's
experience of implementing with multiple external providers.
Implementation commenced
with a roll out meeting at which a communications plan was drawn
up. In order to ensure everything went smoothly Business Manager,
Russell Day delivered a series of 'road show' meetings to introduce
carers to the system, groups of about 20 at a time. Russell recalls
that he used the CM2000 demo disc as well as delivering a short
presentation about the benefits to themselves, the benefits to the
authority, how it was going to work, information about training and
the roll-out timetable. "The presentation lasted around 10mins and
I allowed 50mins for questions. We had a lot of questions/concerns
but no backlash from carers or providers with only 10 complaints
from 450 carers and these were about the functionality of the
system rather than monitoring itself."
He continues, "Following the road show we held training sessions
for carers and managers using bespoke training materials. The
training ensured all those involved were fully conversant with the
system. We then wrote to all service users telling them about
introduction of visit monitoring, how it works and the
benefits."
Internal provision was implemented first. External providers
then followed area by area. Caroline says, "rather than go for the
big bang approach we decided to tackle one area at a time; North,
City and then South. This allowed us to learn as we went along and
was also because domiciliary care contracts were being re-tendered
at that stage in the project.
Post implementation providers meet every month to discuss and
resolve any issues and to provide feedback to the team at the
council.
Following a successful implementation of CallConfirmLive
Oxfordshire has gained most of the benefits identified in the
original business case and is eagerly awaiting implementation of
the Finance Manager module.
Advice Caroline and Russell would give to other councils:
- gain commitment to the project at director level
- appoint a full time project manager
- keep your evaluation team consistent throughout the procurement
process
- have a well thought through communications plan at the
beginning of the project
- at all times manage peoples expectations
- and finally, don't underestimate the task to hand, make sure
you have the resources you need and be organised from the
start.