| Case Study 1 Ceredigion County Council for The Welsh Systems Consortium The Welsh Systems Consortium (WSC) consists of 8 Local Authorities and was formed in 2001 with the objective of procuring social care IT systems which more effectively met their needs, at a competitive cost, brought about through close collaboration and partnership. Following the successful purchase and implementation of a departmental client index system, OptiCare Systems Ltd was approached to provide a consultancy service to evaluate the benefits of optimisation within Home Care services. Ceredigion County Council agreed to act on behalf of the consortium and run pilot studies where clear comparisons between manually produced home care schedules could be made with those which had been subject to an automated optimisation process. The Local Authority covers a rural coastal area in west Wales and has a population of 78,000, with Aberystwyth being the main centre of population and Aberaeron the administrative centre of the Council. The Initial study was carried out across an existing patch, measuring an optimised solution against the work schedule compiled in the traditional, manual way and used to provide the service. A second study was then carried out designed to compare an optimised solution with a manually devised schedule for a large, newly introduced patch which had been produced utilising all of the skills and experience of senior and first line managers together with the local knowledge of care workers and senior care workers. In both cases significant benefits were demonstrated which are described in more detail below. 1st Pilot Study
This study area consisted of 68 service users who received 1,165 visits over the week, provided by 53 carers and comprised of 556 hours care time. Once the information for the specified patch and period had been captured and translated into a digital format it became apparent that a significant number of the visits were not feasible, in that the specified carer had no travel time allocated or was due to start one visit before the preceding visit had finished. This is by no means unusual, as care workers in practice very often have to adapt their work schedule to enable it to be achievable, either by arriving later than the scheduled start time, or cutting the preceding visit short to ensure that they can make the next one on time. Initial analysis of the pilot patch showed that 17% of visits were in fact not feasible in this way. One of the areas that optimisation can improve is 'unused contract hours' - the time that Care Workers are paid as part of their contracted hours, where it hasn't been possible to allocate sufficient work. Ceredigion have developed a way of using this time productively, by allocating any time that is available in this way to deliver Meals on Wheels. As this work is often allocated at the last minute, it was decided that it would not be practical to include this in the optimisation study. Consequently, although the optimised solution shows significant savings in this area and better utilises this time for the provision of Home Care, it should be noted that the delivery of Meals on Wheels has not been taken into account. As a result of the initial optimisation the following savings were identified, (see table 1).
Although an 8% saving is a significant amount, it was considered that the potential optimisation benefits had been constrained by the relatively small size of the patch. It was anticipated that this level of saving would be further increased when optimisation was applied to a larger area, giving scope for a much wider range of potential solutions. 2nd
Pilot Study
Having fine tuned the Council's business rules and conditions of service for use with the optimisation engine during the first pilot study, it was agreed to optimise a second area which was fundamentally different in structure, having a much higher level of intensive home care and number of visits where 2 Home Carers were required. This study area consisted of 45 Service Users receiving 903 visits during the week comprising of 455 hours of care time, provided by 23 carers. In addition, this patch had been recently created from the amalgamation of two smaller patches. A process in which a significant level of staff time had been invested, analysing the best way to deliver the service, utilising the skills, experience and local knowledge of care workers and managers alike. Over 60 hours was spent in this process, resulting in a work schedule which reflected all of the Council's best practice planning attributes. Because of these 2 factors; the complex care needs provided in this area and the significant amount of time and effort spent in the initial design of care worker schedules, it was considered that it would be a demanding test against which the optimiser should compete, (see table 2).
Despite the significant amount of time invested in the production of a manual schedule, the optimised solution still identified financial improvements although these, as expected, were smaller than in the first pilot study. However, once an estimated cost of the staff time involved in producing a manual schedule had been included the benefits were more accurately demonstrated. Key
Findings
The key findings from the 2 pilot studies show that an optimised schedule; • Delivers financial savings, even when compared to a manual schedule which has been compiled using significant levels of planning resources. • Ensures that every home care visit is feasible, with sufficient time for care workers to travel between visits and spend the allocated time with each service user. • Is produced in a fraction of the time required for the traditional manual method, having consistently utilised all of the Council's business rules. |
 Ceredigion area showing Care Worker Schedule Click to enlarge |
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