How Autumna can improve the discharge process and ensure more patients return home or into care settings safely and quickly
No one wants themselves or a loved one to be in hospital when they don’t need to be. Yet in North West London (NWL), around 14% of hospital beds in NWL are occupied by patients who are medically fit to be discharged.
Autumna is the UK’s largest directory of later-life care providers, offering families and professionals a transparent, user-friendly platform to search and compare care homes and home care services. Autumna’s D.A.D (Dashboard for Accelerated Discharge) tool, aims to significantly reduce hospital discharge delays by enabling faster, more informed decision-making about care placements.
The platform addresses a critical challenge in health and social care: patients being medically fit for discharge but facing delays due to placement bottlenecks, sometimes taking up to a month to find suitable care. Debbie Harris, Autumna’s Managing Director, described the tool as “Rightmove for social care,” with the ability to cut search time to under 60 minutes by providing real-time availability, easing pressure on NHS discharge teams and local authorities.
The D.A.D tool builds on Autumna’s free Care Finder service, used by thousands of families every month. Of those, 22% are searching on behalf of someone currently in hospital, and 75% find a placement because of a shortlist generated by Autumna.
Following a submission to ICHP’s Innovation Exchange, Autumna engaged in a series of co-design sessions facilitated by our expert team. This began with an Innovation Surgery where the platform’s applicability to local system pressures was explored. ICHP then convened a regional workshop with local authority and NHS discharge and brokerage teams across North West London, enabling open dialogue on current pain points and potential solutions.
ICHP provided tailored support by:
- Mapping system-wide priorities to Autumna’s capabilities
- Facilitating workshops and knowledge exchange with end users
- Planning integration with local discharge pathways and brokerage workflows
- Supporting regional webinars for further engagement and scaling
Autumna benefited from ICHP’s ability to align innovation with strategic needs, broker introductions with key stakeholders, and create a learning environment for rapid feedback and iteration
Through this collaboration, Autumna’s tools have gained traction across NWL, with multiple boroughs exploring the D.A.D tool to streamline hospital discharges.
The July 2025 Discharge Optimisation: Innovation Spotlight webinar illustrated the impact through real-world stories:
Joshna’s case – A 92-year-old who wished to remain at home after a hip fracture. Initially supported by informal carers, her needs increased over time. Using Autumna, her sons (both in their 70s) quickly found suitable professional home care, enabling her to remain at home for a further two years. When she eventually required residential care, Autumna helped identify options near both sons within hours, reducing her hospital stay to just four days.
Thomas’s case– After a 12-month hospital stay with no suitable placement found, a senior nurse used Autumna to send his case to 58 local care homes. Within six days, a suitable home was agreed upon by all parties, and staged discharge began. This replaced a year of unsuccessful traditional searches.
Early feedback from webinar participants highlighted the potential to “replace days of phone calls and emails with a single, intuitive search,” saving time for families, discharge teams, brokerage teams, and ward staff.
The ICHP-brokered workshop highlighted four key applications:
1. Empowering families (especially self-funders) to make quicker care decisions
2. Providing a self-service route when funding is unavailable
3. Reducing placement times in complex discharge cases
4. Enhancing brokerage workflows and reducing administrative burden via the D.A.D platform
ICHP and Autumna are planning further regional webinars and follow-up workshops to deepen adoption. Local authorities and NHS partners are being supported to embed the platform in their workflows, with the goal of demonstrating measurable time savings, improved patient flow, and enhanced user experience.
Expansion to other regions is being explored, positioning Autumna for national scale. Pilots of the D.A.D dashboard are actively being sought, with a setup time of just a few weeks.
In NWL alone, Autumna could help us in saving an estimated 75,000 bed days. If scaled nationally, Autumna could not only release frontline staff time and reduce administrative burden but transform how families experience discharge – getting patients and residents to the right place for them, faster.
“We can’t, in 2025, still be phoning and emailing care homes asking if they have a bed. This tool changes the game.” – Matthew Wyatt, Senior Innovation Manager, ICHP.
“94% of care providers told us the hospital discharge process needs to be more streamlined. This is the solution.” – Debbie Harris, Managing Director, Autumna
