Our Director of Operations, Nick Shah, joined a panel discussion and several representatives from other home care software providers at last week’s UKHCA Digital Solutions for Home Care event to discuss what makes technology successful within home care. Home Care Insight reported on some of the starting comments by all the panellists in this article.
Here, we look at some of the other key points that were discussed throughout the whole day . . .
Going paperless and being more efficient is a top priority
Moving to a digitised care management system, like CareLineLive, where there is one record for all client information, accessible by multiple users, was advocated as being a way to save time and focus on providing better care.
Staged on-boarding and staff training
To ensure complete buy in and a smooth roll out of any care management software, many agency representatives said that going live ‘in stages’ would be beneficial to ensure minimal adoption issues. For example, using the software in the initial weeks to manage a few clients and carers.
Additionally, people were supportive of ensuring agency staff were involved from the outset of implementing a new digital Care Management System and putting a structured training schedule in place. Having a champion within the agency that can promote the benefits for each system user and ensure they are correctly trained was also promoted.
The event attendees also prioritised certain features that were deemed important when choosing a Care Management System
A user-friendly system to ensure effective system use
One of the key pre-requisites when CareLineLive was developed was that it had a user-friendly interface that was intuitive and felt like second nature to every user.
The importance of eMAR
Having a system that included eMAR was cited as being crucial as it enabled home care agencies to be more responsive about the care they offer and helped to reduce errors in medication administration. Plus, agencies benefitted from a digital audit trail of all medication given for CQC purposes.
Multi-person communication is an essential
Care Management systems, like CareLineLive, must enable multi-person communication. The integration of CareLineLive’s Management Platform, Carer Companion Mobile App and Family & Friends Portal helps to complete the ‘Circle of care’, allowing effective communication in real-time between an agency, carers, the client and their family and friends.
Keeping Family Informed
The increasing importance of keeping family and friends up to date about a loved one’s care was also prioritised. CareLineLive’s system includes our Family & Friends portal that is a web-based password-accessed portal allowing family to access visit schedules and continuity of care confirmation at any time.
At CareLineLive we understand the challenges that home care agencies encounter, CareLineLive’s features have been influenced by home care agencies from the very beginning. CareLineLive is a cloud-based total Home Care Management system that digitises all of an agency’s workflows. This increases staff productivity and capacity, improves compliance with the CQC and enables higher quality care provision to their clients.
CareLineLive digitises client and carer rostering, real-time visit monitoring, task management and eMAR, invoicing and payroll automation and family communications.
Ultimately, CareLineLive gives home care agencies ‘more time to care’.