National funding award for Stockport digital project to improve hospital discharges to social care

The council will use the money from the Local Digital Fund to explore overcoming the blockages to hospital discharges for those waiting to go into adult social care.

The proposed solution is to develop a digital patient journey management system that tracks a patient’s steps through different parts of the system and triggers alerts where blockages occur, or people are ‘stuck’ in the system. Having instant access to demand and capacity data across health and social care partners would increase the visibility of who is ready to be discharged and vacant capacity in the system.

Councillor Malcolm Allan, Cabinet Member for Finance and Resources says: “Improving the processes of hospital admittance and subsequent discharge to their own home is a national problem. This award reflects Stockport’s track record of using data to develop digital tools to resolve problems. We will be exploring a solution that will benefit around 55,000 people per year in Stockport and has the potential to be scaled up nationally.”

Councillor Keith Holloway, Cabinet Member for Health and Adult Social Care, says: “Streamlining how we work together, how we communicate and pass information to each other, and how we record and report data from the systems we use will help us to transform Stockport’s Intermediate Care offer, use existing capacity more effectively and improve the overall experience for the individuals who use our services.”

Stockport Council is leading the project and will work closely with project partners Manchester City Council, Oldham MBC and Stockport Foundation Trust (NHS). Stockport’s award was one of 16 council-led digital projects selected from 50 applications for this round of Local Digital funding. The Local Digital Fund aims to make local government services safer, resilient, and cost-effective and has awarded over £16 million since its launch in 2018.