Primary Integrated Community Services (PICS) has partnered with EcoOnline to help protect lone working health and social care professionals during home visits. PICS is an independent provider of high-quality patient care and specialist primary and community care management services in the East Midlands.

 

PICS delivers services free at the point of access for patients in their community and between hospital and home. The company provides support for independent General Practice and federations of GPs with expert management services and clinical oversight of specialised staff, including allied health professionals. Owned and led by GPs, PICS works collaboratively with primary care networks and local health and social care organisations to design and deliver care that puts patients first.

Healthcare professionals at PICS often visit patients alone at their home to support acute cases, long-term conditions and end of life care. They may support patients with complex social and emotional needs including poor mental health, which puts them in a potentially vulnerable position. Entering a patient’s home comes with an element of the unknown. There could be aggressive animals present in the home, trip hazards, aggression and hostility from individuals within the property, and potential alcohol and substance abuse.

 

Unfortunately, healthcare professionals are often at higher risk from violence when carrying out their work. In the latest annual NHS staff survey, more than one in four (28.5%) said they had experienced harassment, bullying or abuse from patients, relatives or members of the public, almost one in seven (14.9%) experienced physical violence. The core value which underpins the work PICS does is “We Care”. PICS “cares” about ensuring the safety of colleagues who are carrying out their daily duties and providing an extra layer of protection to empower them to provide excellent care.

 

Prior to the introduction of EcoOnline, lone workers would call a centralised Care Coordination Team at the start and the end of the working day to check-in. All staff are trained to dynamically risk assess according to their working environment and if lone workers found themselves in a difficult situation, they would call their manager to ask for the “red folder”. However, there were issues with this approach, as it relied on staff remembering to call their managers and having enough phone signal in remote areas to make the call. It was also potentially difficult for staff to be able to make a call to their managers if they were under duress.

 

Since launching EcoOnline, managers are confident that their staff are protected whilst visiting patients at their homes and out in the community. Currently, 75 lone working employees are protected by EcoOnline, with the potential of rolling this out across the organisation in the future. Emily Wright, HR Advisor at PICS, says, “we decided to launch EcoOnline in July 2020 as planned, despite the disruption and pressures being caused by the first lockdown in the UK. With the complications of establishing COVID-19 safety procedures and supporting our colleagues as they continued to provide excellent care for vulnerable patients during the pandemic, we were concerned that rolling out a new piece of technology could be time-consuming and complicated. However, the entire rollout was smooth and fast, the training was excellent and we were fully supported to adopt the lone worker solution by the EcoOnline team throughout the process.”