An AI-driven home healthcare group has put forward five recommendations for the Government to make “rapid progress” on improving the health and social care sector.
Cera is urging the Labour Government to act given its focus during the General Election campaign on creating a ‘home first’ approach to social care.
The five recommendations include:
Accelerating hospital discharges by improving partnerships between hospitals and care providers
This would be done by encouraging the ‘Trusted Assessor Framework’ to be taken up nationwide. These allow a trusted assessor to assess a patient’s needs while they are still in hospital, so a care plan can be put in place.
The care group said: “Encouraging more widespread adoption of these frameworks will help solve the crisis in Britain’s hospitals, freeing up beds for new patients, improving NHS productivity and ensuring patients get the care they need at home.”
2. Making working in care more of a career, using the Employment Rights Bill
Cera is calling for a Digital Care Passport to be brought in, showing the skills a carer has gained so these can be transferred into a job outside of care
3. Introduce incentives to encourage providers to embrace innovation, prevention and home-first care
The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) is being urged to conduct a consultation looking at financial and non-financial incentives for social care providers to embrace innovation and find new, more efficient ways of keeping people out of hospital
4. Advance healthcare research for by making clinical trials more accessible for people of all ages and demographics, with a particular focus on over-65s
Cera is calling for (non financial) public support for partnerships between social care providers and life sciences companies aimed at giving older people the opportunity to safely take part in clinical trials.
5. Use technologies such as AI in health and social care by creating a Responsible AI Taskforce for Health and Social Care
The taskforce would bring together tech pioneers with experts from across the health and social care sector, as well as experts in deploying AI to recruit, train and retain large workforces.
Cera uses AI technology to prevent hospitalisations by picking up early signs of when a person is felling unwell or at risk of a fall.
More than 40 percent of the company’s workforce have advanced in their careers with the group by moving up into better paid roles.
Chief care officer, Charlotte Donald, said previously that working in the sector can be very “rewarding”.
She said: “As the population continues to age and Cera continues its work to take more care out of residential homes and into people’s homes, we want to encourage people not to overlook a career in care.
“This is an exciting time for the sector as providers like Cera drive innovation and new, more sustainable models to provide care for our growing population of over-65s. We need great talent, and hope to see more people from diverse backgrounds applying to work with us.”
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