Decision details

1. To approve the purchase of the electronic monitoring system Access CM from The Access Group for a three year contract a cost of £367,745 with the option to extend for a further one year at a potential total cost of £483,360.

2. The system is purchased through the Crown Commercial Service G-Cloud 13 framework. G-Cloud 13 is an online catalogue where public sector customers can buy cloud-based computing services such as hosting, software and cloud support.

In addition to the reasons for the decision (recommendation) outlined in Option 1, the Adult Social Care commissioning team use Access CM for contract monitoring purposes, identifying what is working well and areas for improvement using their reporting function which enables staff to view details on visits made, carer continuity, ECM compliance, and visit times to hold providers to account and monitor improvements.

Commissioned visit times are put on the system and matched against actual visit data for accurate payment?of services.  Brokerage colleagues use the system for arbitration and financial management, ensuring only commissioned hours are paid for.? Anything over the commissioned visit times are flagged, requiring providers to give more information as to why the time of the visit was greater than commissioned to see if the payment is justified.

Access CM is regularly used for contract monitoring purposes, identifying what is working well and areas for improvement, such as monitoring that double up visits are happening at the same time. The data has been used to evidence under performance and providers have implemented changes as a result.

Staff can view live visit data, enabling analysis of resident visits.  For example to observe times carers arrived and left visits or if a carer is currently on site. This can be useful for responding to complaints on punctuality or length of stay.  This data can be used as part of safeguarding enquiries such as evidencing details of visits or when reviewing residents if there are regular cancellations or service refusals.

Option 1 (RECOMMENDED) – Award a 3 year contract with the option to extend for a further one year, without the Customer Success Plan add on.

Option 2 – Award a 3 year contract with the option to extend for a further one year, with the Customer Success Plan add on.

Option 3 - Have no electronic monitoring in place.

Full details of the options can be found in the report.