Evaluating Proactive Telecare Outbound Calling in Scotland Report: November 2022

A definite societal shift post Covid-19 has emerged as a catalyst for a more anticipatory, tailored, personalised telecare service that moves beyond reacting to crisis (Morrison et al., 2022). A recent two-part review of Telecare Call Handling Services in Scotland (Farr Point 2020, 2021) recommended a shift to a more proactive telecare model to support customers’ wellbeing and resilience, anticipate adverse events or crises, and take preventative action. During the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic, Councils and Telecare providers in Scotland rapidly introduced wellbeing calls to provide regular contact and additional support for citizens and Telecare customers who were isolating or shielding during Covid-19 restrictions (TEC Scotland, 2020).

Acknowledging this innovative approach, the Scottish Government’s Technology Enabled Care (TEC) programme funded four proof of concept, ‘Test of Change’ projects to understand the practicalities, benefits and feasibility of introducing a Proactive Telecare Outbound Calling approach, herein referred to as Proactive Telecare. This report presents the results of an academic evaluation of the experiences of three of the four test sites. The evaluation was commissioned and jointly funded by the Digital Health & Care Innovation Centre (DHI) and the TEC Programme.

Both the project and the evaluation were conducted over two phases. Phase 1 evaluation conducted a retrospective analysis of factors impacting on the implementation of Proactive Telecare Outbound Calling and captured the voice and experience of customers, carers and staff. Phase 1 was followed by a three month pause to assess learning, appraise options and agree next steps. Phase 2 evaluation aimed to describe the delivery model for a targeted cohort of customers and assess added value for customers, for the telecare service and the
wider health and care sector.

This evaluation has yielded a rich experiential data set which captures the reflective learning from planning and delivering Proactive Telecare for 178 customers in Phase 1 and 109 in Phase 2, across three different test sites and with five HSCP partners across central and southwest Scotland. The telecare delivery context differed across sites so no direct comparison is made between test sites. The customers targeted in Phase 1 and Phase 2 differed so the results for the two phases are presented separately, providing an individual site profile of the experience delivering Proactive Telecare.