Ensuring safe and compliant medication support in home care
For home care providers, managing and recording medicines safely is one of the most critical responsibilities. In their November 2025 update, the Care Quality Commission (CQC), emphasises that good record‑keeping is fundamental to safe care. In a home care context, ensuring the right person receives the right medicine at the right time and that support is fully documented, reduces risk and supports high quality care.
Key aspects to ensure in your service
Medicines support can include:
- Reminding people to take medicines
- Helping remove medicines from packaging
- Administering some or all of a person’s medicines
- Handling ordering, collection and delivery
Legible, accurate records
Whether paper or electronic, records must be:
- Clear
- Signed and correctly time stamped (time and date)
- Inclusive of instances where a person has refused a medicine
Recording changes and medication related issues
If a medicine changes:
- The record must make this clear
- If a multi‑compartment compliance aid (blister pack) is used, each medicine still needs to be tracked
Self‑administration scenarios
If the service user manages their own medicines:
- This should be stated clearly and a risk assessment carried out
Retention of records
In home care settings, as elsewhere:
- Medicine administration records must be kept for at least eight years after care ends
By integrating these practices into your policies, training and monitoring, you help ensure your service meets the CQC’s regulations, particularly, Regulation 12: Safe Care and Treatment and Regulation 17: Good Governance.
Why home care settings need strong medicines administration records (MARs)
In home care, the challenges around medication management includes coordinating with family members, GPs, pharmacists or community nursing teams. This means:
- Timely, clear documentation is vital so that every carer knows what has happened and what remains to be done
- If multiple carers visit, continuity is critical, any change in medication or missed dose needs to be visible to all
- Visiting health professionals may administer medicines; the recording arrangements must ensure carers have access to that information
- For people self‑managing medicines, you still need to monitor risk and records must reflect how and when this is reviewed
When done well, medication administration records become more than a compliance task, they become a living tool to support safe, consistent, person‑centred care.
How CareLineLive’s eMAR supports safe medication management
The eMAR (electronic Medicines Administration Record) feature within CareLineLive supports home‑care providers in meeting the above expectations, elevating medicines governance, reducing risk and aiding oversight.
Real‑time, clear, legible recording
With CareLineLive’s eMAR, instead of relying on paper forms or separate MAR sheets, carers can record the administration of each medicine digitally and in real time. This ensures:
- No legibility issues or delayed recordings
- Date and time stamps are automatically captured (or easily entered) so the record is accurate
- Immediate visibility of refusals, missed doses or other anomalies, aligning with CQC guidance to record both when a medicine is taken and when it’s refused
Centralised access and visibility
Because eMAR is stored centrally:
- Supervisors and managers can monitor medicines administration across clients and carers, identifying patterns of missed doses, repeated refusals or required follow‑up
- When a visiting health professional intervenes (for example, a district nurse giving an injection), carers can access the record or receive alerts to changes, supporting consistent access
- Changes to medicines (dose, route, review date) can be updated swiftly and made visible immediately to all relevant carers, reducing the risk of outdated MARs
Medicine‑specific and person‑specific tracking
The eMAR in CareLineLive allows detailed tracking of each medicine for each individual, including:
- Name, formulation, strength, route and time/frequency (matching CQC guidance that the record should include these details)
- Special instructions (for example, “take with food”) or known allergies/reactions ensure that critical details are not lost in paper‑based systems
- When Monitored Dosage Systems (MDS) are used, the digital record can log this while still referencing each individual medicine inside the pack, supporting the CQC’s requirement for accuracy in multi‑compartment situations
Audit, reporting and governance support
Because the records are digital:
- You can generate reports showing medicines administration compliance, refused and missed doses and trends by carer or client, feeding into the provider’s medication policy, training, supervision and audit programme
- The system supports evidence of compliance with Regulation 17 (Good Governance), providing a clear trail of who did what, when and with which medicine
- For people who self‑administer, the system allows visual recording of risk assessments, reviews and monitoring, aligning with guidance around self‑administration
Alerts and reminders to reduce risk
The eMAR can be configured to alert carers when a specified medicine is due, when a review date is approaching or if a dose has been missed. This helps by:
- Reducing the risk of a dose being forgotten or delayed
- Ensuring medication changes or review dates are not overlooked
- Enhancing safety in a home care setting where the carer may be the only person present
See CareLineLive customer, Sussex Village Home Care, talking about eMAR here.
Confidentiality, security and retention
CareLineLive ensures that records are securely stored, access-controlled and retained according to policy. This supports the CQC’s expectations around confidentiality and retention (a minimum of eight years).
Practical tips for implementation in your service
- Update your medication policy to reflect digital eMARs: outline how eMAR works, who is authorised, audit frequency and what happens if the system is unavailable (for example, in the event of an internet outage).
- Train your staff on the eMAR system: ensure they understand how to record administration and refusals, log changes and escalate issues appropriately
- Monitor and audit regularly: use the reporting functions within CareLineLive to review compliance and escalate where patterns (for example, repeated missed doses) arise
- Communicate with service users and families: explain how medicines are supported, how records are kept and how relevant information can be accessed if appropriate
- Ensure backup processes: have contingency plans for when digital systems are unavailable (for example, power or connectivity failures) so medication support continues uninterrupted and records are captured
- Review self‑administration arrangements: where service users manage their own medicines, log risk assessments, review dates and charts showing how the person is managing
For home care providers, achieving safe medicines support is both a regulatory necessity and a hallmark of quality care. With the CQC stressing the importance of accurate, up‑to‑date and accessible medicines records, home‑care services must have robust systems in place.
