Recently social media and advertising campaigns have been used to identify carers with positive results, however the best and most trusted approach remains through Primary Care and specifically GP engagement with the carer.
For decades we’ve struggled in primary care to identify carers. We’ve trained our care navigators, included ads on screens, and included posters in waiting rooms. Despite all this effort the majority of our carers remain unidentified / and un-coded in our GP systems / records.
Working in North Lincolnshire, Social Enterprise Bridgit Care have developed and proved a process that can be used by GPs and their existing systems to code carers automatically.
The process is simple. The existing system used within practices for sending text messages (SMS) is configured to send two messages.
1 – The first text message automatically codes patients as carers.
2 – The second optional message provides identified carers with access to both online support and the local carers support team phone number.
This process takes hours to set up and can be fully automated by the practice. There is no additional cost as it just uses the existing text system (e.g. Mjog) and automatically codes the carer into SystmOne or EMIS.
For the practice we trialled this process at we saw an additional 100 carers instantly coded. If the same approach was taken across our 9000 GP surgeries that would be an extra 900,000 carers identified and signposted for support.
This case study includes the approach document that can be adapted and used locally by a Local Auhority or Integrated Care System, to engage GPs, explain the approach, and quickly set up your local campaigns.
