Now we are approaching the start of winter, there is a lot to plan and get ready in care homes across the country. From winter maintenance and repairs to keeping residents healthy and warm and starting to make Christmas preparations, the care home manager’s to-do list can often seem endless.
However, in among all of these things, there is one very important thing to remember. The benefits of switching from a paper-based care planning system to digital care planning software are multiple. Here are five key areas that software such as Care Vision can really help care home managers and their staff enjoy a smoother, more efficient final two months of the year.
Consistent, confident medical care
Many people who live in a care home are there primarily to receive medical support for an ongoing condition, disability or illness. Care Vision provides care staff with the tools to enable consistently excellent medical and healthcare support. For example, the eMAR digital medication logging tool helps medicine dispensing information in one place.
The most up-to-date information is always available, allowing staff to make immediate changes and write handover notes around dosages, timings, prescription changes and allergies. Additionally, care planning software provides comprehensive medical records for external medical and healthcare professionals who might need to be involved in residents’ care. These could include hospitals, hospices, therapists, nurses and general practitioners.
Familiarity and routine
Many care home residents find great comfort in seeing the same friendly faces among the staff every day. Many go on to develop close relationships and friendships with specific carers, which can contribute significantly to their mental and emotional wellbeing. A digital care management software system like Care Vision enables named carers to be linked to residents and their interactions to be supported through shift management and adding relevant details to residents’ personal records about their preferred members of staff.
In order to prepare residents for any temporary changes in their normal care team, managers can use Care Vision to let family members know in advance if any favourite staff members will be going on annual leave or will be absent for any other reason. When employees switch shifts on a regular basis, special staffing requests can also be accessed and considered via the rota planning and shift management tools.
Safe and sound
A secure, electronic sign-in system for visitors to your care home keeps everyone on site safe and aware of who is supposed to be around – and who is most definitely not. Personal information provided via an electronic visitors signing in book can be password protected and accessed only by those who need the information for authorised reasons. Paper visitor books, on the other hand, cannot be protected in this way, and can be accessed by anyone wishing to flick through the pages.
Additionally, an electronic visitors book maintains a comprehensive record of who has visited the care home, what dates and times they have done so, for how long and the person they came to see. This makes it easier to spot any concerning trends and add comments to notify the wider team of possible security threats. In addition to keeping residents and staff safe, this also gives family members who live further away peace of mind.
Money matters
The responsible running of any care home or facility depends on maintaining full and accurate records of all financial data. Care Vision provides users with tools that are comprehensive, intuitive and compliant with care industry and financial auditing standards. Everyone, including staff, residents and families, will feel more confident knowing that money related to staff salaries, residents’ fees and supplier invoices is all accounted for documented and audited via care planning software.
Furthermore, if important financial information is readily available and accessible, any questions can be addressed quickly. This type of meticulous financial reporting frees up time for staff and manager to focus on more interesting aspects of their work, such as spending time with residents, instead of getting bogged down in bureaucratic red tape.
Supporting your staff
Care staff inevitably find completing their various tasks far easier when they know where to find the information they need. The same is true for care home managers; having somewhere efficient, secure and reliable to organise payroll, plan staff rotas, monitor residents, keep track of medical and social wellbeing needs, plan entertainment and schedule training can greatly improve their working day.
Simply put, Care Vision helps care teams free up time for interacting with residents, factoring in breaks and time off and reducing stress brought on my too much to do in the day.. The money saved by not having to deal with several different management systems at once, or hiring new staff when previous incumbents burn out from admin overload can also be used to improve meals, enjoy day trips and buy items for the whole community to enjoy.