Wirral Connects to Online Bed Vacancy Service

Wirral residents and care homes are set to benefit from a new online service designed to simplify the process of locating suitable residential care beds and help reduce one of the causes of bed blocking in hospitals.

The Metropolitan Borough of Wirral is set to begin using an online and email bed vacancy service, called BEDVACS, supplied by Bettercaring. More than 200 homes are participating in Wirral BEDVACS service.

Bettercaring says its online service is already in use with 12 local authorities across England, Scotland and Wales.

The Bettercaring database will provide up-to-date information on bed availability in Wirral and will provide passwords to care workers for speedy online access to the system. Participating care homes participating can update their bed vacancies online, so that users of the service can immediately view the updated information.

Social workers can logon to the system and quickly and easily find homes with vacancies. Benefits are said to include making it easier to place people in appropriate accommodation, assisting in earlier discharges from hospitals and minimising the disturbance to the lives of those who require care.

Julie Ogley, assistant director of social services at Wirral, told E-Health insider that the main benefit of the system was the amount of time saved in having to find a residential care bed. Previously a member of staff had to phone every local nursing home to get a picture on vacancies.

“We are intending that it becomes the main information source for our staff on places available in care homes,” she explained. “It will really speed up the process of finding care bed places.”

Ms Ogley said that her department was now also investigating how the Bettercaring system could be used to provide information on what domiciliary care is available locally, information that is currently very difficult to get hold of.

“If you think about what holds people in hospitals it’s usually either the availability of a care bed or packages of domiciliary care,” she explained.

Because of the potential for reducing bed blocking and better integrating health and social care the costs of the first year of the service is being funded by the local Change Agent Team, part of the NHS Modernisation Agency.

“Bettercaring links Local Authorities looking for residential care with those in the independent sector who provide it,” said Anna Bailey, Bettercaring’s sales director.

She added: “BEDVACS will also help the Local Authority minimise the problem of delayed discharges from hospital and the penalty charges that are soon to be imposed on Local Authorities following legislation”

Bettercaring’s website holds a comprehensive database of more than 22,000 local authority and registered care homes in the UK. Care professionals and the public can access this information for free, using the online search to find care homes that match specific criteria.

Bettercaring was established by the Stationary Office in 2001, and is now wholly owned by OLM Group