Data insights in health and social care

Health and social care data use a broad range of information across a variety of sources related to health and social care services and patient interactions. Having this data is crucial for improving care quality, operational efficiency, and public health outcomes.

To manage health and social care data effectively, health and social care providers, professionals, and local authorities must turn data into insights to be able to see the bigger picture of the market. Once sophisticated data insights are secured, better market oversight can be achieved, helping health and social care professionals and local authorities work collaboratively to commission the care and support services required, without going over budget or leaving an individual without the support they need.

Data insights in health and social care are vital therefore as they refer to the valuable information extracted from various data sources to improve decision-making, enhance the quality of care delivered, optimise resource allocation, and identify trends and patterns that lead to better outcomes.

By not only collecting data insights but monitoring and analysing them, better person-centred care plans can be created to tailor services to individual needs. The real challenge however is being able to turn data to insight to action effectively, quickly, and safely.

What is an actionable insight?

 

Actionable insights are meaningful findings that result from raw data. In health and social care, actionable insights are data-driven finding that provides clear, specific, and practical recommendations for improving patient outcomes or service delivery.

What makes an actionable insight different from data insights in health and social care is that these insights are not just informative but also directly lead to actions that can be implemented to achieve measurable improvements and results.

An actionable insight is important as it drives action leading to results to facilitate more data-led and outcomes-led decision-making across the wider care circle, which in turn helps reduce pressure in healthcare settings.

In an environment where there is constant pressure, increasing demand, and limited budgets, actionable insights help to overcome issues such as data overload, systemic challenges, resource inefficiency, fragmented care, and health disparities to pave the way for more effective and equitable health and social care that both improves outcomes and quality of life.

Actionable insights in care – What are the benefits?

By using actionable insights across social care correctly there is a wider range of benefits that the individual and their families can experience, as well as care providers, health providers, and local authorities.

The examples below demonstrate some of the key benefits actionable insights have across health and social care.

1. Better personalised care

By leveraging care data, care providers and local authorities can deliver tailored care plans with the individual to concentrate on what matters to them.

2. Better preventative care

Using actionable insights, predictive analysis can identify at-risk individuals to ensure early intervention and preventative measures are commissioned mitigating risks before something critical happens.

3. Optimised resource allocation

Actionable insights allow better allocation of resources, staff, and equipment to address the care needs of the community more efficiently, reducing waste, and improve service delivery.

4. Streamlines workflows

As well as being able to identify changing care needs, actionable insights can identify inefficiencies across care service processes to address the gaps and areas of improvement to advance outcomes.

5. Cost-savings

Actionable insights help improve efficiencies in service deliveries reducing discharge delays and avoidable hospital admissions leading to significant cost savings to be reinvested to improve service deliveries further.

6. More outcomes-focused care

Using actionable insights provides a robust foundation for making clinical and administrative decisions based on evidence rather than intuition to improve outcomes.

7. Fosters strategic commissioning

Actionable insights help local authorities and social care providers inform long-term planning to adapt to changing needs and prioritise initiatives.

8. Improves Engagement

A better understanding of individual needs through using actionable insights enables better joined-up care that matters to the individual, increasing their engagement when making care decisions that are important to them and their needs.

9. Improves Accessibility

Actionable insights help to identify barriers in care and service deliveries to improve access for underserved and vulnerable populations so no one goes without the care and support they require.

10. Better integrated care

Ultimately actionable insights in social care are vital as they facilitate better communication and coordination among different providers to ensure seamless, integrated, comprehensive care. Here gaps in provision can be identified quicker to build a stronger multi-disciplinary team focused on putting the individual at the heart of everything they do.

Here actionable insights enable better outcomes to be achieved for individuals and their communities while ensuring sustainable and efficient operations.

Data to insight to action – how to use actionable insights in social care?

 

As discussed above, data insights are used to describe valuable and meaningful observations to help make better-informed decisions. Actionable insights provide specific recommendations for taking tangible actions. They are specific, relevant, clear, and understandable, supported by evidence. But, how can social care providers turn data into actionable insights?

The steps below demonstrate some of the most important steps to follow when using actionable insights in social care.

1. Define the specific goals wanted to be achieved
2. Decide what needs to be answered and what issue these actionable insights will solve
3. Gather the necessary data
4. Choose appropriate data analysis techniques to identify patterns, trends, and next steps
5. Translate these insights into actionable recommendations and plan out the specific actions needed to be taken
6. Continuously monitor the impact of the changes and measure the outcomes against the predefined KPIs

By systematically collecting and analysing data, generating actionable insights, and implementing targeted actions, social care organisations can significantly improve service delivery outcomes. This, in turn, enables data-driven decisions leading to meaningful and measurable improvements across social care, which as a result, helps reduce the increasing pressure on healthcare services and professionals.

Actionable Insight Examples in Social Care

There are many examples of where actionable insights improve outcomes across social care. The table below demonstrates multiple examples of how better joined-up social care can be delivered by having better data insight knowledge.

Example	Insight	Action
Reducing Hospital Readmissions	Data shows that older adults living with more than one long-term chronic condition are more likely to be readmitted to hospital within 30 days of being discharged.	Implementing a post-discharge follow-up program includes regular check-ins by social care workers, home visits, and coordination with healthcare providers to ensure the individual’s safety and medication management. Using technology enabled care devices enables daily activities to be assessed, learning routines of the individual to send out alerts when behaviour changes before something more critical happens. As a result support is given before emergency hospital admissions are required allowing individuals to remain safely living in their own homes.
Enhancing support for caregivers	Figures in staff turnover for social care workers demonstrate that high levels of care worker stress and burnout lead to a decreased quality of care and an increased workload due to many leaving the profession altogether.	Ensuring access to support programs on managing workloads and mental health support provides the emotional support and resources required to prevent burnout. Using actionable insights enables better and more informed care planning to spread care visits evenly to prevent burnout.
Enhancing mental health services	Analysis of service utilisation data indicates a growing demand for mental health services among children and young people as well as adults but a shortage of available providers.	Using a population health approach communities can identify the at-risk populations to increase the appropriate mental health services needed to promote awareness and destigmatise mental health issues across the community.   Investing in early intervention and preventative services such as social prescribing helps individuals address the wider health determinants they may be experiencing to improve community mental health and better address health inequalities.

 

How can technology help utilise actionable insights?

Technology plays a crucial role in transforming data into actionable insights across social care by providing tools for data collection, analysis, visualisation, and implementation.

As the health and social care market shifts to more preventative care deliveries investing in preventative and early intervention digital solutions helps facilitate better-coordinated care.

Below are two main examples of how The Access Group ensures care providers, health and social care professionals, and local authorities best utilise actionable insights to improve outcomes by putting the individual at the heart of their care journey.

1. Enhances community health and wellbeing

 

By harnessing actionable insights, there are many ways they can be applied to improve outcomes. Using actionable insights in digital social prescribing helps improve overall community health and wellbeing by allowing health and social care professionals and providers as well as local authorities work together to identify at-risk populations and accommodate the support services needed to better address the wider social determinants of health across the community.

Here by using actionable insights better population health management approaches can be used to enable stakeholders to work collaboratively to co-produce social prescriptions that matter to the individual while building stronger multi-disciplinary teams and identifying common mental health needs in the community for future support services.

As a result, community engagement in preventative and early intervention support services increases, the dependency on primary care and GP attendance decreases and strengthened support networks and multi-disciplinary teams create supportive environments where individuals thrive independently by being able to manage their health and wellbeing more proactively. With 1 in 5 GP appointments currently being for social reasons, using actionable insights to improve mental health support can significantly reduce GP’s workloads enabling individuals to get the support they need quicker before further mental health decline.

Action Together found through investing in our digital social prescribing software their GP attendance was reduced by 65% by referring patients to social prescribing. By using the data they collected and turning it into actionable insights, Action Together has a directory of services that caters to all the mental health and social needs of the community to cater to every need. As a result, they have delivered to date over 13,000 appointments across 455 different interventions to improve the mental health and wellbeing of the community.

2. Revolutionise care deliveries

 

As discussed above, actionable insights, when used correctly, have the potential to revolutionise care deliveries. Technology enabled care powdered by actionable insights is no different.

Technology enabled care and actionable insights allows more personalised, efficient, and proactive care to enhance outcomes, promote preventative care, optimise resource allocation, and improve communication and coordination to increase independent living.

Access Technology Enabled Care (TEC) specifically allows us to partner with local authorities and care providers to bridge the gap between health and social care by offering both at-home and mobile telecare and telehealth solutions. By combining both traditional reactive alarm functionality with proactive insights into the activities of daily living, Access TEC provides an integrated digital solution to enable a more proactive and preventative approach.

Here actionable insights provide early indicators to inform proactive triage, care decisions, and demand management, enhancing care planning, resource prioritisation, and operational efficiency for sustainable, cost-effective care deliveries in the most preferred setting of the home. This, in turn, puts individuals at the heart of their care journey prolonging their independence both inside and outside the home.

Luke’s story below demonstrates the benefits our technology enabled care offers in action and how our personalised smart alerts via our dedicated mobile app make it even easier to avoid negative impacts on an individual’s health and wellbeing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rq5wzW_2xwY

We go one step further at Access TEC by making it even easier for care professionals to access actionable insights by integrating our Home Hub with our care planning software, as a result care professionals can access all the information they need in real-time in one centralised place to be better informed of any care changes before scheduled visits and before something more critical happens.

Data to insight to action – Summarising the importance of actionable insight in social care

In this article, we have addressed the importance of turning data into insight and then into action and what are the best ways to utilise actionable insights across social care to improve care deliveries.

By acknowledging the benefits of having stronger data insight knowledge this article has addressed how when used correctly actionable insights help overcome the challenges being experienced across the health and social care market.

This article has highlighted some examples of actionable insights in health and social care to demonstrate how they can be used across different care services to improve both physical and mental health.

By addressing the benefits of having better insights, this article has demonstrated our portfolio of integrated care solutions to allow your care service to deliver better joined-up coordinated care to support independent living while reducing social isolation and loneliness.

Here our social prescribing software helps prevent further decline in mental health by offering early intervention services through population health management approaches.

Equally, our technology enabled care services help care providers go one step further by accessing actionable insight on the go via a mobile app so they can be informed of any behaviour changes before something more critical happens.

Learn more about the benefits of the actionable insights our technology enabled care solutions can provide you to deliver better coordinated care by downloading our TEC guide today.

Contact us now and we can show you first-hand the benefits of transforming care deliveries from reactive to proactive straight away.