The pharmacist
who invented
pain relief for
case managers

Paul Insley, managing director of Ocean Healthcare, discusses how his discovery of the crucial role case managers play within neuro-rehab only fuels Ocean Healthcare’s desire to deliver the support they need

 'What's the point of case managers?'

This was genuinely the exact question I was asking myself 12 months ago when I left a career in pharmacy, to join Ocean Healthcare; a provider of complex care services based in Newton Abbot, Devon, for people in their own homes across the South West.

As a pharmacist, I was well versed (I thought) in how patients transferred from secondary to primary care and into community services.

However, I was also very naïve in assuming that primary and secondary care was joined up enough to support service users who sadly found themselves with life-changing medical or physical injuries or conditions who now needed not just constant expert medical care around the clock, but a whole raft of other supporting services.

I guess I wrongly thought the support would just ‘be there’ from the NHS or other local authorities.

Re-educating myself

I knew that at Ocean Healthcare, for the last ten years, we provided a service across Devon and the South West which focused on quality and consistent care to the many service users who were already with us.

But I quickly learned this was focused on local authorities who commissioned us.

I knew we were able to step in and provide care to the most challenging of packages, especially when other providers stepped away or handed them back – I know this as the commissioners told us!

They also told me they were surprised more case managers didn’t use our services.  “What’s a case manager?” I asked.

I quickly learned that case managers were the people who actually were there at a patient’s point of greatest need, helping stitch back together all the elements of their life so that they could focus on recovery and then, living the rest of their lives.

“I need to learn more about this,” I told myself.  

So having joined CMSUK I threw myself into online courses to learn about what a case manager does, and also attended the BABICM conference back in June….I was amazed!

I felt like the mist had cleared and I understood how vital case managers were to not just healthcare, but also to society.

However, I also learned, or at least had a tiny glimpse, into just how many conflicting priorities and pain points they had, particularly when it came to the medical needs of their clients.

I set about doing what I have been doing through my whole career – help to relieve other people’s pain! I wanted Ocean Healthcare to be the service case managers never knew they needed.

So, we redesigned our entire recruitment process, invested in a whole stack of carer welfare benefits (including the best pay rates in Devon) and built a whole new training centre focused on providing a whole heap of accredited, nurse delivered, clinical skills to carers.

Not just a class room, our state-of-the-art training centre in Newton Abbot (just south of Exeter) is equipped with hoists, medical beds, ventilators, suction pumps, training dolls and a whole host of other advanced equipment and teaching aids.  

This was all designed to make sure we could recruit and train the highest calibre healthcare assistants in the South West.

We also invested in various new software packages to managing clinical care plans, scheduling and communications which has transformed how we do business and crucially, communicate effectively with all stakeholders.

We also now have an entire strategy devoted to happiness. We were shortlisted at the recent HSJ Awards for ‘Workplace Initiative of the Year’ for our Live Happy, Care Well philosophy.

We actually employ a full time happiness manager, part of whose role is make care a happy and rewarding career.

“Well Paul, that’s all lovely,” I hear you say, “but so what?”

Well, for case managers, this means you don’t just need to not worry about how your clients will get reliable, consistent high quality healthcare, you wont even need to think about it! 

We will handle the whole lot, by a service run by advanced nurse practitioners, alongside a team of care team managers with one dedicated to each service user – our own mini internal team of case managers!

Do you want a consistent team of fully trained HCAs in place for your package? In less than four weeks? With a fully managed care plan, risk assessments and regular audits all signed off by a team of specialist nurses?

Tailored reports and comms that tell you exactly what you need to know? All with a single point of contact? And a service with out of hours support? Well, you can have it.

Any pain you have related to complex medical care needs of your users can be resolved by a simple call or email to us at Ocean Healthcare.

An entire complex care service built to take care of your clients medical needs so you can focus on everything else.

Or if you are in the Devon area, drop into our office. We always have the best coffee and cupcakes on hand so we are always ready to sit down and talk.

Our office is located at 45 Devon Square, Newton Abbot, TQ12 2HH.

Email us on care@oceanhealthcare.co.uk 

Contact us via the website here