The Independent: Autumna’s Quest to Improve Healthcare in the UK

Our founder Debbie Harris is featured in The Independent, referred to as “a champion of elderly care with a solution that will undoubtedly make a difference for millions of people and the country’s healthcare system.”

Over 4.4 million bed days are lost each year because of delays in discharging patients

A lack of access to appropriate care options costs the NHS an estimated £820 million a year. The true cost of this failure is the ever-growing list of vulnerable older adults who need help now.

The current discharge process results in longer delays and a lack of trust between care providers and discharge teams. Debbie Harris, founder of Autumna – a platform designed to help older people find care, intends to change this.

Harris intends to fix one of the UK’s most pressing issues today

It’s an issue that will become even more acute this winter: delays in discharging patients who are well enough to leave hospital.

“More often than not, these beds are occupied by older and more vulnerable people,” Harris explains. “They’re well enough to leave, but only if there is some sort of care package in place at home, or possibly in a residential or nursing home, to prevent readmission.”

Harris continues, “It’s finding that available social care package – specific to the needs of the patient - that is so often the stumbling block and the thing that produces the ‘bed-blocking’ and ‘corridor-care’ headlines that seem to come around every year.”

How do discharge teams help older adults find care currently?

It’s a tedious process that involves manually calling care homes that can’t always pick up because they too, are overwhelmed and busy prioritising the day-to-day care of their patients.

To add to the issue, the information that discharge teams have on local care services is sometimes months out of date, and that affects their ability to find appropriate care quickly.

Unfortunately, that results in wasted time calling care providers who can’t help, with the same outcome; a vulnerable patient who just wants to leave the hospital.

Different hospitals have different processes for discharge

In addition to the time-consuming nature of these calls, Harris also believes not every available care provider gets contacted.

“I often read that there’s no capacity to take any more hospital discharge patients, but that’s not what the care providers are telling me.”

This is backed up by a survey conducted by Autumna

• Of 40 care homes located within a seven-mile radius of one particular hospital in the South East, 32% of them said they had never been contacted by their local discharge team.
• Of the ones that had, 63% were unhappy with the level of information provided by the discharge team
• 54% cited difficulties getting medical staff to provide the extra patient details they needed.

“The general impression we got was that there was a level of distrust between hospital staff and the care providers,” says Harris.

It doesn’t have to be that way

Harris and her team at Autumna have created pioneering software designed for discharge teams to find appropriate care for their patients. It’s called D.A.D (Dashboard for Accelerated Discharge) and it’s a plug-in-and-go solution that just needs good Wi-Fi.

While Harris pushes for the changes needed to implement D.A.D in the healthcare system, professionals, unpaid carers and patients are already relying on their consumer-facing software that’s been available through the Autumna website since 2021.

“It’s in effect an online assessment tool and allows you to enter details on the type of care you need, whether you need permanent or respite care, it asks about your funding situation and of course, location,” explains Harris.

Autumna - is a kind of Rightmove for social care. Harris’ personal experience in trying to organise her aunt's care left her jaw-dropped at the impossible and chaotic nature of finding care for someone who is self-funded.

“I began formulating the idea for Autumna,” Harris recalls.

Autumna began initially by listing care homes, before introducing home care and live-in care agencies in early 2020 and then every retirement living development in the UK by 2021.

“Our goal was to get every elder care provider under one roof, with lots of searchable data presented in a format that was easy to navigate and easy to compare – in effect, the opposite of what was available at the time.”

Patients are becoming impatient

Autumna has over 3000 people using this tool every month and of those, 21% are in a hospital bed waiting to be discharged.

“Again, we did some research, and of those 21%, the average time they had been waiting was 31 days.

We were pretty shocked. As a result, we’ve noticed now that patients are alerting the discharge teams to our service.”

Discharge teams would be shocked at how many services they may be missing out on

In one case, a Welsh hospital discharge team, who had tried, unsuccessfully, to find a place for an elderly gentleman for over 4 months, sent a request into Autumna, just before heading out to lunch. 

When they returned 40 minutes later, they were stunned to find that Autumna had found him a place.

Bed blocking is a dangerous cycle that needs our full attention

“If there’s no bed available for the person waiting in A&E, or waiting for their operation,” she explains, “then the wait has to continue. And if there’s no room in A&E, then the queue moves to the ambulance waiting outside. And if the ambulance is occupied it can’t pick up anyone else.”

“Beds occupied by patients well enough to leave hospital are a bottleneck that can only be ‘uncorked’ by a much more efficient link-up between the hospital and social care.”

“It’s not rocket science, but it can’t be done without the Autumna database.”

Harris believes her Autumna platform, with its highly curated UK database of more than 26,000 social care providers listed, together with a product called D.A.D could provide that link up.

“At Autumna, we’ve spent years building up a knowledge base that addresses every aspect of the questions that are asked (and answered) along the elder care journey. And armed with that information, we’ve built a searchable database with more detail than anything else available in the country.”

How can D.A.D help the discharge process?

“D.A.D. sits on top of that database and automatically filters the details, enabling it to send hospital discharge teams shortlists of available care providers who can meet the needs of any specific patient on any particular day.”

“Because of the level of detail and the quality of the information in the Autumna database, we’re able to cast a much wider net, hit only those care providers who we know will be able to help and as a result get a much higher quality of engagement from those with availability.”

Debbie is crafting a brighter and more comfortable future for the UK’s ageing population

“The format inevitably leads to a raising of standards across the sector as care seekers become aware that they have more choice and care providers work harder to make sure they’re chosen.”

Continuing a legacy

"My mother looked after the elderly people all her life in the Buckinghamshire village where I grew up," she reminisced.

"She had lots of people she would pop in and see, run errands for, and check on them. I never realised it until recently, but I feel that, in a way, I am carrying on that positivity."

You can read Autumna’s feature in The Independent here.

Autumna is available for everyone, every day

Rising demand for impartial guidance on elder care options has resulted in a free advice line that’s available seven days a week. Call Autumna on 01892 335 330 or request a free shortlist of care options to be sent directly to your inbox.