Fife Health and Social Care Partnership has boosted its capacity to deliver services to users by over 30% in the past year through the adoption of mobile working solutions.
As the third-largest health and social care partnership in Scotland; Fife has introduced technology from Totalmobile to some 900 of its home care workers across the council’s catchment area. This includes mobile workforce management and dynamic scheduling solutions.
These enable greater efficiency in the scheduling of visits and for carers to see their daily rota on their chosen mobile device out in the field, while also responding in real time to changes or cancellations.
Workers can also capture and submit information on their mobile devices when with clients, therefore reducing the need to return to the office to fill in forms.
Fife Health and Social Care Partnership, working together with colleagues in Fife Council's Business Technology Solutions, increased capacity by 30% so teams now deliver more than 22,000 visits per week.
In addition, where there are last-minute changes in a service user’s care needs, or cancellations due to illness or family circumstances; the teams can respond and flex their working shifts in real time without any impact on the wider service user group. This is improving the care experience of the public and that of the staff directly.
Jim Darragh, chief executive of Totalmobile, said: “Fife set out with a clear objective of transforming care at home through the effective use of mobile technology.
“We are very pleased to work with them, and they are experiencing significant benefits as a result.”
Charlie Anderson, head of ICT at Fife Council, added: “It’s fantastic to see a solution which so directly improves our service delivery and supports our staff delivering highly-valued care services throughout Fife.
“The Totalmobile solution is a great example of how technology can be applied innovatively to meet the challenges councils and their partners face in delivering better public services in 2018.”
And Jamie Robb, mobile and systems integration manager at Fife Health and Social Care Partnership, said: “The main benefits the organisation gets from using the solution are a reduction in travel time, an increase in capacity, and the ability to do more with the staff we have.
“That has allowed 33% capacity gains. We, therefore, effectively give back a day-and-a-half to every care worker per week, allowing them to do more in the same time for the benefit of service users.”
This use of this cutting edge technology recently gained recognition at the Fife Business Awards , where the Care At Home team won the Success Through Innovation’ Award.
