Weekly Communication week commencing 05/09/2022

Dear Colleagues

Please see your weekly overview update on behalf of the Director of Adult and Community Wellbeing (DASS) and Director of Public Health (DPH)

Adult Social Care Digital Transformation Fund

Please see the attached document

Importance of Capacity Tracker Reporting this Winter

Dear colleagues,

Last month marked the first set of mandated data reporting in the Capacity Tracker under the Health and Social Care Bill, and we would like to take this opportunity to thank you once again for the high response rate. We recorded 93% of care home provider locations and 79% of home care settings updating their data. Your continued efforts to share data with us through Capacity Tracker are greatly appreciated, with many providers continuing to submit data on a daily basis.

As you will be aware, this Autumn and Winter, while COVID-19 continues to circulate, we also expect to see a resurgence of flu and other respiratory viruses. This is likely to place significant additional pressure on the social care system as well as on healthcare. For this reason, we are writing to ask for your continued support to keep data updated in the Capacity Tracker so that can be relied on by NHS and Local Authority teams.

Although data is now mandated to be provided only monthly, local operational NHS and Local Authority teams need more timely up-to-date information. This is key to producing the most up to date overall picture of protection and needs across the sector and to enable us, working together with system partners in the NHS and in Local Authorities, to better manage the challenges and target additional support as needed. For example, by enabling the NHS Vaccination Programme to direct resource to the right place in the most timely manner, we can ensure that we are protecting the most vulnerable, together with those who care for them.

Specifically, we request your support, as providers of social care services, to:

  • Keep bed vacancy data up-to-date, ideally on a daily basis to avoid duplication of daily ring arounds by Local Authority discharge teams and to support effective discharges of patients from hospital.
  • Keep workforce data up to date so that our understanding of the recruitment and retention challenges in the sector is as timely as possible.
  • Record the number of employees, and for care homes the number of residents, known to have received the flu vaccine and COVID-19 Autumn Booster at least weekly.
  • Record confirmed and suspected COVID-19 cases in staff and residents so we can monitor prevalence of the virus and target support appropriately.
    Please contact Capacitytracker-guidance@dhsc.gov.uk if you need non-technical assistance on how to answer the questions in Capacity Tracker.

Please contact necsu.capacitytracker@nhs.net for further information and technical support.

Guidance for Capacity Tracker is at: https://capacitytracker.com/resources/category/61/whats-new

Your sharing of this information, that is of vital national and local importance to keep communities and services safe from the virus, by alerting us to what further action we must take together is greatly appreciated.

Thank you again for your continued engagement.

With kind regards
DHSC

Capacity Tracker Changes

A refresh of Capacity Tracker has taken place today – please find an overview of these updates below.

Updated questions | Vaccinations

  • To reflect new guidance, providers will now be asked just three questions about vaccinations:
    • Number known to have received a full primary course of COVID vaccination
    • Number known to have had an Autumn booster
    • Number known to have had this season’s flu vaccination
  • Clear instructions appear about the criteria for each response when a user hovers over a question
  • For more information about vaccination questions, please use the following guidance

Updated reports and bulk upload

  • The following reports have been updated due to the refresh of vaccination questions:
    • Vaccinations (previously Covid vaccinations)
    • ASC Home Care collection
  • Click here for more detail on changes to reports and the associated csv files, and here for the bulk upload

New report | Unavailable for Admissions

  • This report shows you a breakdown of the different reasons why providers cannot accept admissions to vacant beds.
  • To find it, go to the ‘Occupancy & Vacancies’ section under ‘Reports’ and select ‘Unavailable for Admissions’

For more information on these changes, please click here.

With kind regards,
Capacity Tracker Team on behalf of
DHSC & NHSE/I

Many Thanks

Performance Support Officer
Provider Development Team

Documents