2022 Wessex Anticipatory Care Audit

The Healthy Ageing Programme ran between 2007-2023. This work is no longer being updated; the information below is provided for reference only. If you would like further information about our Healthy Ageing Programme, please get in touch. 

On the 29 March 2023, Health Innovation Wessex welcomed 40 delegates to a virtual and interactive event to hear about the exciting findings from our Wessex wide 2022 Anticipatory Care Audit – Older People. At this event, we:

• Heard from national leaders from NHS England understand how the national anticipatory/proactive care picture is being shaped at policy level.
  
• Gained insight from our audit findings and the voices from our local community to understand the local picture of care.
• Connected with others working with health, care and voluntary sector colleagues across Wessex who are delivering anticipatory/proactive care.
• Generated conversations within our break out room sessions to set the pace for an innovative future for proactive care and prioritising initiatives to progress further across Wessex.

The Health Innovation Wessex Anticipatory care (Proactive care) audit event:

• Increased attendees understanding of the anticipatory care and proactive care provision across Wessex.
• Provided insight into how information is collected and shared with health, care, and voluntary sectors, patients, families, and their carers.
• Provided a robust evidence base to help systems understand patients’ expectations on the sharing of their care plans.
• Improved awareness of the different opportunities for patient engagement and feedback in developing care plans.
• Showcased best practice and opportunities, plus new ways of working to support anticipatory/proactive care provision.
• Helped organisations and integrated care boards shape the future of anticipatory care provision through identifying innovative solutions and recommendations for future development.
• Provided participants with an opportunity to connect and network.

A slide deck from the event can be downloaded from our resources section. A final report is available here or in the resources tab to the right of this page. 

Health Innovation Wessex Healthy Ageing 2022 Anticipatory Care Audit for Older People

“Working collaboratively with our health, care and voluntary sector partners, we have co-developed an audit to fully understand Anticipatory Care provision, across and within services and organisations. 
Our ultimate aim is to help support front line staff in managing patients appropriately, minimising duplication, variation, avoid missed opportunities and to and ensure the best journey for older individuals (over 65) living in Wessex, their families and their carers."
Cheryl Davies, Senior Programme Manager, Healthy Ageing, Health Innovation Wessex. 

Launched on 1 November 2022, the Anticipatory Care audit for Older People will help Wessex ICS’ understand the existing Anticipatory Care processes and systems in place, how these are shared and accessed alongside existing examples of best practice and operational challenges.

We received 58 responses from the audit from a number of settings across Wessex.

The findings from this audit will be used to inform future development of potential interoperability and innovative solutions and enhancements within and between existing systems.

Who completed the audit?

We encouraged our colleagues across health, social and the voluntary sector to complete this audit as a team, to enable conversations around present anticipatory care provision within:

• Acute settings (hospitals)
• Ambulance Service
• Care Homes
• Community Hospitals
• Community Teams
• Community Response Teams
• General Practice/Primary Care Network
• Hospice* 
• Social Care
• Voluntary Sector

*Whilst this audit did not focus on End of Life Care, we welcomed contributions from settings that provided this care.

We recommended completing the audit as a multidisciplinary team (MDT) during team meetings to optimise the completion of the audit or we are happy to facilitate a 30 minute virtual session to complete.

What value did completing this audit give to me/my team/organisation?

It has provided the ability to:

• Explore organisational anticipatory care provision
• Identify and showcase areas of best practice
• Identify areas of innovation
• Share approaches and learn from other teams and organisations in delivering Anticipatory Care
• Contribute to improvement of care provided to older people across Wessex

What are the planned outputs of the audit?

Data collected from will be analysed by the Health Innovation Wessex Insight team. Summary outputs will be shared with contributors and partners with Wessex ICS' at a feedback event during March 2023. There will be opportunity for Wessex partners attend, to connect with others, share emergent best practice and to hear the results of the audit. During the event we will look to identify areas where the Health Innovation Network could add value to support the delivery of Anticipatory Care in 2023/24.

Why focus on Anticipatory Care for Older People?

Anticipatory care benefits for individuals, families, and professionals:

• Allowing an individual to feel valued by listening to what matters to them in the context of their current and future health and care
• Supporting patient autonomy and quality of life through shared decision-making
• Involving and supporting family members, carers, and legal proxy decision-makers
• Delivering realistic, holistic, healthcare with timely investigations and treatments and fewer interventions of low benefit, including unwarranted hospital admissions
• Effective care coordination to reduce repeated conversations with different professionals and teams
• Helping to recognise and reduce health inequalities, and
• Enabling more people to die in the right place for them.

What was the purpose of the Health Innovation Wessex Anticipatory Care Audit for Older People?

• To identify the different terminology, used to describe Anticipatory Care
• To understand the extent of personalised care planning and multidisciplinary working to support Anticipatory Care   planning
• To understand the key information that is collected and shared with health, care, the voluntary sector, patients, families and their carers
• To identify areas of best practice and opportunities for new ways of working 
• To identify areas across Wessex that require further support in providing interventions and support to patients, carers and families
• To understand the roles and responsibilities of individuals providing anticipatory care.

The audit asked questions on:

1. Definitions, terminology and how you share Anticipatory Care plans and information within health, social care and with the wider community
2. Personalised care planning
3. Engagement with patients. clients, families and carers including patient experience
4. Multidisciplinary working and co-ordinated care approaches
5. Your organisational interventions to support Anticipatory Care planning, including signposting, service provision and proactive guidance.
6. Opportunities to identify improvements for Anticipatory Care planning provision within your setting and sharing of best practice approaches.

Background to the project

The purpose of the Health Innovation Wessex Anticipatory Care Audit was to identify the baseline across settings to fully understand anticipatory care provision.  

We recognised that other surveys relating to anticipatory care are in circulation and endeavoured to focus our questions to reduce duplication, identifying other data sources to triangulate where possible.

In addition to the audit, working alongside our local community, through community conversations, we have developed an inclusive approach to capture the voices of individuals and their understanding of anticipatory care.

Data collected from this audit, is being analysed and shared with contributors and partners with Wessex ICS' at a feedback event during March 2023.

If you have any queries or would like to use the audit tool in your locality, please do not hesitate to contact us.  

Further information and resources developed by NHS England can be found on NHS Futures Platform