When Wes Streeting announced his three key shifts for the National Health Service (NHS) at the Labour Party Conference at the end of September social care’s ears were burning. A move from analogue to digital, hospital to community and sickness to prevention is a move towards care. Clearly social care has a big part to play in the future of the NHS. And technology plays a crucial role in the future of social care. When applied correctly digital solutions empower us to improve both efficiency and outcomes. Which offers care technology a central role in the government’s ongoing attempts to stage a digital revolution in health and care. We all know the why, given social care’s enduring challenges. It is uncovering the precise, who, what, when, and how of the matter that remains something of a mystery.  

We recently headline sponsored the Home Care Association (HCA)’s Tech & Homecare conference. A day of insights, inquisition and understanding for leading home care providers and technology suppliers. On the day our CMO, Lee Gilbert, hosted a panel featuring a who’s who of digital rostering and AI suppliers discussing data, while The King’s Fund’s Pritesh Mistry joined HCA’s CEO Dr Jane Townson OBE to ask, ‘How can technology solutions help move care closer to home?’. The latter a conversation underpinned by the recently published, Nourish Care sponsored, study exploring ‘The reality of, and potential for, digitally enabled care in the community’. Reflecting the collaborative spirit of co-development that defines modern, outstanding care, these conversations detailed a variety of ongoing efforts to move social care from analogue to digital. Their success, their missteps, and the road still ahead. 

Chair: Lee Gilbert, CMO, Nourish 
Nuno Almeida, CEO, Nourish 
Steve Sawyer, Managing Director, Access Group 
Robin Batchelor, CEO, everyLife Technologies 
Matthew Bond, CEO, Borderless 
Abeed Mohammed, Co-founder, Birdie

There is already a wealth of positive examples of technology improving care quality. Providers applied digital solutions to a selection of the challenges they face. Both The King’s Fund research, and each of the panellists, presented their own positive instances. Pritesh detailed several different, key, areas that are already befitting from digital solutions, such as communication, care co-ordination and personalisation. Dr Townson added to this during their conversation, highlighting some Local Authority’s recent adoption of ‘magic notes’ as an example of technology changing people’s lives. 

The panel built upon these cases with a specific focus on utilising existing data in systems. Matt Bond shared how Borderless share and aggregate data to pass benefits to individual people by finding the gaps in your existing service. The other four panellists all pointed to the efficiency their respective rostering platforms bring to care providers. When Robin Batchelor brought attention to the current inflection point in care technology it resonated around the room. Nuno Almeida agreed, “We’ve spent 14 years building the foundations. It’s not rocket science; the rocket science lies in your ability to react to needs.” 

That is the crux of the matter, when we move from analogue to digital, we have to retain our focus on people’s needs. The ability to react to these needs is defined by our ability to engage with them. One of the biggest fears about moving from analogue to digital is based in the apprehension of losing the human touch that has always guided health and care in the UK. A fact reflected in two of the recommendations from the King’s Fund’s research. The need to ‘Shift culture to embrace the public’s digital capability’ and ‘Support staff to embed tech in their roles’. Neither of which are groundbreaking discoveries, but do require fresh ideas to address. Such as Scottish Care’s Care Technologist role. We know the potential of carers, their adaptability and commitment to any idea that can improve outcomes for their community.  

What we need to do is make engaging with, and championing, care technology a simpler process. Which is not something that can be done overnight. “Asking people what is important to them is the biggest gap in our data,” admitted Nuno during the panel. “But this is also a big opportunity for us, asking, ‘What will really make a difference?’” The more we can involve people in the design process, the more ‘frontline’ feedback we can apply to our development. This co-production keeps people at the heart of care technology, which is crucial as we move to put technology at the heart of care.

Dr Townson concisely summarised this issue during her talk with Pritesh. ‘Technology for technology’s sake is not progress’. Innovation cannot be disruption in care, the standard approach for technology entering a new sector. The responsibilities are too great. We have to understand the barriers and develop enablers for adoption in the workforce and communities they support. Any one software solution aiming to promote wrap around care and support needs to ask itself a simple question. ‘How will the care providers work alongside our tech?’ 

Pritesh highlighted the need for this focus in his research with The King’s Fund. One of the recommendations from this research underlines the need to ‘develop strategies for co-developing digitally enabled services’. Specifically raising the point that developing a strategy for co-development and patient-led service design will help to direct digital service development and strategy. While this suggestion calls for action from ICSs, ICPs, the NHS and the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), it speaks to all digital suppliers and providers in social care. The move from analogue to digital in care must involve people at every step, or it is sure to get lost.

Nuno spoke about the need to ‘crawl, walk, then run, to get to data quality’. A process that rings true for all forms of digital technology. When The King’s Fund recommends ‘A national vision to guide local decisions’ it is not calling for a direct mandate. It is asking for a personalisable framework. ‘A guiding national vision, with local flexibility as to how it is achieved. One that will help to align the efforts of technology innovators, health and care providers, and leaders designing improved community-based services.’  

The HCA’s conference was an example of just that endeavour. A selection of leaders, creators and providers sharing experiences and ambitions to help shape the future of care as we move from analogue to digital. One based in the commitment to collaboration that makes care the beating heart of our communities. After all, if you’re going to solve a mystery machine, it’s best to do it with a gang. 

‘Co-production’ is a long-standing practice and a newly minted hot topic in social care. It is based on our ability to involve all relevant people, or ‘stakeholders’ as they say in corporate meeting rooms, in the process of care design. It guarantees that the people who are utilising a care service are involved in the production of that care. An undertaking that lies at the heart of person-led care.  

If people with support, families and commissioners expect this of care providers, then it is only natural that those care providers should demand it from their software suppliers as well. 

At Nourish Care, co-production is central to our design process. It bridges our technical expertise with our user’s care experience to produce effective, efficient solutions. Our user’s input guides our development, with feature requests, feedback forms and beta testing being just some of the essential ways we keep our user’s experience central to our development.  

The latest Innovation to emerge from this process is our new ‘Time Off Management’ functionality for Nourish Rostering and Community. We know that managing rosters is one of the most demanding aspects of providing home care, for both coordinators and carers. We developed our Time Off Management feature to address these challenges directly based on extensive user feedback, advice and industry insights.  

Our new functionality is designed to simplify your time off processes, making it easier to manage leave, maintain coverage, and ensure a smooth operation for everyone involved.  

The features of our new Time Off functionality are all directly tied to the feedback and input of our users. 

Holiday schemes allow for a group of settings to be built and then applied to relevant carers. This grants customisability and flexibility to coordinators while removing the need to configure each carers holiday settings individually. You can group holiday accrual, reference periods, pay methods and more to make the complexities of specificity a simple activity. 

We found the denominator of our feature requests for time off functionality was customisability. It is the most effective way to support the varied and at times unpredictable home care provider’s scheduling needs. 

Features like year start dates for holiday accrual, carry over time settings for different time off types and pay calculations all vary from service to service, and across different governments and geographies. For example, the holiday pay reference period in the UK is 52 worked weeks while in the Republic of Ireland it is a 13-week reference period. It was vital we build these features with the freedom for our users to customise the settings and wrap them around their unique service. 

We have also included a manual entitlement adjustment for coordinators for precise control when desired. A need we discovered when talking to a lot of the participants in our beta testing phase. 

Of course, it wouldn’t be Nourish without analytics and reporting functionality as well. We have a fantastic analysis page to help administrators keep track of their carers time off. It includes a calendar view of all booked, requested and refused time off, a chart of absence types e.g. holiday, sick, bereavement, a table view of the adjustments made to their carer’s entitlement, a table view of requests, their status and the option to filter or edit them as desired. 

We built several key new time off functions into our carer app as well. This gives more insight and control to carers. With our new Time Off Management functionality carers can request leave directly from the rostering app, simplifying the process of requesting time off for a variety of reasons including holidays, sickness and bereavement.

Carers can use the app to review their remaining time off allowance and keep track of requests. We centralised all this information to further our app as the leading carer support platform in home care. Information is power for a carer on the go and with this new functionality we continue to develop our ‘all-in-one pocket’ solution. It provides an overview of their currently accrued time off and helps to make the process of defining availability and accrual more straightforward for everyone involved. 

Carers can use the app to review their remaining time off allowance and keep track of requests. We centralised all this information to further our app as the leading carer support platform in home care. Information is power for a carer on the go and with this new functionality we continue to develop our ‘all-in-one pocket’ solution. It provides an overview of their currently accrued time off and helps to make the process of defining availability and accrual more straightforward for everyone involved. 

For non Nourish users who want to learn more about our approach to co-production and working with us to support their home care service, book a demo. 

We have spent years working on our rostering system to make this as quick and straightforward as possible. Something we could only achieve thanks to co-production with our users through our beta testing processes. We spoke to Samantha Rabvu, Care Manager for TLB 24/7 Healthcare, about her experience participating in our Time Off Management beta. 

“We were paper based for annual leave requests,” explained Samantha. “Which meant someone had to fill in a form and scan it or take a picture of it. Then we were constantly just printing so I could give it to the person who’s approving annual leave. So when the offer to take part in a beta test for time off came along I just thought. ‘I don’t know what it is going to look like, but it sounds like something we could really use.’

“It offered the chance to cut out the middle man, the printing, and give power to both our carers and our coordinators. It was the chance to move to real time updates, rather than requests from a variety of platforms. In December last year we had a whole lot of annual leave requests. Honestly, we lost track of them due to the volume and variety of requests. Which was a major concern for us. So, when I saw that you were building something that could show us how many people are asking for time off and those who are already taking time off before approving any more, it was a game changer for me.” 

“I felt very involved,” said Samantha. “I could see the team was really drawing out our feedback with the questions they asked. ‘How is it going?’ ‘How are you guys using it?’ ‘Are there any adjustments we should make?’ I felt like a real partner that the things were saying were being considered. When we saw one of our suggestions in the next update it was amazing. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one suggesting it, but it was awesome.  

“We were involved throughout the process, even my team here was quite involved. Any issue that they had, they knew they could bring it to me, and I would pass it on. That way we always got things resolved.” 

“They were on it,” said Samantha, “They were on the money. It was so easy. If there was an issue, I’d send a screenshot and they were on it, we looked at it in depth, it was awesome. I had a main contact point but worked with several different members of your team. I just knew that they were there. They had our back, no matter what.  

“They are awesome, friendly, approachable, and we could rely on them 100%. Even the way bad news came was awesome. When something wasn’t ready, we always knew that it was still in development, it’s just not ready yet. We understood because of the communication, and we trusted your team.” 

“We’re on the right track,” said Samantha. “This was a great starting point for me. It was fantastic. Even though I was a little unsure at the start, digital wise, this isn’t something i had a lot of experience with. The process helped us to develop skills and tactics on how to navigate the rest of the digitalization roadmap, which is great.  

“So, I’m hopeful. I’m looking forward to it, it’s exciting, because I feel involved in the process. I feel like we are growing with you, and we can build something great together.” 

The future of social care will be shaped by co-production throughout the entirely of our sector. Lived experience, collaboration, data sharing, all fold together under the guiding philosophy of teamwork and community. We received over 150 feature requests for more advanced time off functionality. Which was the starting point of our development cycle, and a continuing example of our approach to digital social care solutions. 

We still have a long way to go, and we are very excited about the journey. Why don’t you join us? 

Home care software is baked into the future of social care. We witnessed a huge increase in the uptake of digital systems across social care over the past 3 years. A change accelerated by government policy and funding. This considerable uptake brought with it a range of advantages and benefits for care providers. For example, digital rostering systems like Nourish help providers to simplify processes, reduce administration times and record more detailed information. With digital systems becoming commonplace in social care there has never been a more urgent time to switch to Nourish. Admissions for the funding available through Integrated Care Systems will close at the end of November. Even for those providers who are still getting up and running choosing the right digital rostering system is crucial for many reasons. 

Nourish gives you the tools to take full control over your home care administration. This means more than rosters designed for simple and swift use. It means a robust system compiling the wealth of data your teams naturally gather to provide you with a clear overview of what is happening in your community.  

With Nourish you can schedule your carers and clients up to four weeks in advance. Repeating these schedules with ease to improve consistency across your service. Of course, as all home care administrators understand, nothing ever goes totally to schedule. Nourish home care rostering is designed with drag and drop functionality that makes changing your schedule on short notice easier than ever. Our home care software includes a ‘recommend a carer’ feature that is scored based on a range of data points you choose and weight. Such as: familiarity with client, travel to appointment and relevant skills for the appointment’s tasks. So, you can adjust quickly, decisively and with confidence. 

Digital rostering offers benefits beyond simplifying existing paper processes. Nourish Rostering and Community unlock a range of features that put new innovations and fresh information at your fingertips. Call monitoring is a straightforward way to record actual appointment times. Nourish includes geographic location and a range of electronic call monitoring options to suit your needs. Care providers, especially those with local authority and council contracts can attest to the benefits of a robust call monitoring system. 

Crucially, with a quality home care software like Nourish, you can access data at a level previously unattainable with paper. This data is easily presentable and evidencable in trends and reports. You can track different factors regarding your team and community to give you a more detailed overview of your service. These details, like travel times and medical administration, can be fed back into your service to drive positive outcomes. As well as acting as informative evidence for your regulator. 

Nourish home care software supports care providers across your service. Home care requires a great deal of administration and organising. Beyond the design of schedules and care packages there is the crucial matter of making sure everything is in order, and everyone is properly paid. This can be quite daunting for people when they are just setting out their new home care service. Especially those less familiar with operating a business.  

Our invoicing and timesheets are a simple way for you to organise your payroll. You can use Nourish to set specific pay rates and charge rates, to match with the responsibilities of your teams and the services they provide. Our home care software includes comprehensive time-off functionality. Allowing you to set the rate at which holiday is earned, and for your team to manage and request leave through the Nourish home care app. 

Big changes are rarely simple. But with the future of social care coming at us at its current speed, now is the simplest time to do it. The best home care software comes backed up with a human team. People who will work with you to make sure you get everything you need from your system. At Nourish we pride ourselves on being person-led and community-centred. We are incredibly excited about the future of social care, and we’d love to share it with you. 

If you want to find out more about working with Nourish book a demo! 

Professional development in social care is a fundamental building block for the future of our sector. Skills for Care’s ‘Workforce Strategy for Adult Social Care’ details several benefits of investing in care eLearning and training. These range from driving quality care to improving your ability to recruit and retain care workers. Fundamentally, the impact of professional development in social care reverberates through every aspect of your service. At Nourish Care we appreciate that there are many white papers, plans and strategies for improving social care. The challenge lies in finding the time, energy and platform to pursue them.  

That’s why we are so excited to announce the latest member of our Nourish Partnership Programme, MyAko. MyAko are a Skills for Care and CPD accredited eLearning provider. We’ve partnered with them to deliver an all-in-one digital learning solution for home care agencies. Our platform links directly to the Nourish Rostering app. Enabling easy access for your staff and offering a streamlined way to manage training compliance. With over 100 thousand active users MyAko’s comprehensive library of courses covers a range of topics. Their platform has over 60 courses dedicated to professional development in social care, including Care Certificate, Safeguarding Adults and Children, and Moving and Handling People. Crucially, they are committed to continually developing and adding to the courses they provide.

We linked our home care rostering platform directly with MyAko to streamline your experience. This means you will have full access to a range of MyAko’s care eLearning features directly through Nourish. Shape the development of your teams by assigning and tracking courses. You can keep an eye on progress and monitor compliance throughout the duration of these courses for more organisational oversight as well as downloading certificates upon course completion. This gives you a throughline for recording, reviewing and reporting your teams training. So not only can you provide professional development in social care, you can evidence it as well.  

Signing up is as straightforward. Simply head over to the Admin eLearning section and click the “Sign Up” button to get started. Once activated you can set up Course Assignment Rules to establish mandatory courses for your team, based on your existing regions or job titles. It is also possible to set up unique training per person when it’s needed. You’ll find this option in the Individual Course Assignment section. 

You pay for courses with course credits, which can be bought directly through the platform. The cost of courses ranges from 1-3 credits depending on the topic. This gives you the flexibility to pick and pay for courses suited to your company’s needs. There is a report available for your course credit purchases as well to help you keep track of your costs. You can also establish pay settings to ensure that your teams are compensated for their learning time.  

MyAko boasts a range of courses covering a variety of relevant topics for social care. Including professional skills, safeguarding and clinical best practise. With over 60 courses to choose from you can shape your training to the needs of your community. Here are some examples. 

The Care Certificate is an agreed set of standards that define the knowledge, skills and behaviours expected of specific job roles in the health and social care sectors. Developed jointly by Skills for Care, Health Education England and Skills for Health because of the need for official certificates in our sector. The Care Certificate consists of the 15 minimum standards people considered ‘new to care’ need to cover which should form part of a robust induction programme. MyAko’s course covers the 15 standards within the Care Certificate and checks the knowledge of the learner through the end-of-module assessments.  

MyAko offers courses that are directly tied to care skills, as well as ones that help develop other professional skills necessary to provide outstanding care. The appraisals course aims to provide the learner with general knowledge surrounding staff appraisal skills and the role it plays within the workplace. This course is a combination of both theoretical knowledge and interactive activities, designed to help the candidate learn, and practice. This develops crucial leadership and management skills for your staff and helps provide a pathway for further development.  

Duty of Candour is a common expectation from all health and care providers. It requires care providers and managers to act in an open and transparent way with people receiving care or treatment from them. While this seems straightforward from the outside all carers can appreciate the delicate touch it requires. This course shows learners that promoting a culture of openness is a prerequisite to improving customer safety and the quality of our health and social care systems. Upon completion of the course, your team will be able to classify Duty of Candour and recognise best practice. Another key point is how you can distinguish between various levels of harm and associated actions and additionally which of these are notifiable safety incidents. 

We recently released a new training matrix report. This report is available to all Nourish home care users, regardless of if you sign up for the new care eLearning courses. This exportable report provides an overview of your team’s training status, as a result making it easier to track who’s completed their training and who may need a refresher. For more information about your new report, log in to your Nourish Rostering system and check out the Training Matrix Report guide found in the Help Centre. With this new report we aim to make managing your team’s learning and development more efficient and straightforward. 

Training is a crucial part of developing the future of care. It is vital we engage with professional development in social care to continue to take charge of our own sector. Empowered care teams deliver higher quality care with more job satisfaction. Investing in care eLearning can help with the recruitment and retention of your workforce as well. With Nourish and MyAko you can lay the foundations for your future success.

Find out more and sign up today! 

Our founder and CEO, Nuno Almeida, is featured on Care Home Professional’s cover for July 2023. 

Nuno shares his thoughts on the social care sector, the growth and future of Nourish and how we align closely with the ambitions of our customers. 

“We think we have the best product in the market. What makes the difference is our understanding of how a good digital product – with the right integrations, data science, sector knowledge, when all brought together – can translate into better outcomes for people needing care. We can do this from a single care home to hundreds of locations with a variety of types of care.”

Read the full interview here

We all understand the importance of valuing and respecting those we care for, when we speak about how you can truly deliver dignity in care, it might be hard to conjure up an exact idea of what that really means or looks like. Luckily Dignity in Care has come up with the 10 Dignity Do’s – an easy list that describes the values and actions of a high-quality care service that respects and upholds people’s dignity to the highest standard.

A Dignity Champion is a person who believes that being treated with dignity is a basic human right, not an optional extra. They believe that care provision must be: compassionate, person-centred, efficient and effective, and are willing to take action in order to achieve this.

“I have handed out Dignity in Care 10 Point ‘Dignity Do’s’ Cards to all staff in my care home – each time we have a team meeting we focus on one of the 10 Dignity Do’s and discuss what we can do to meet that challenge. Each meeting results in us making changes to the way we provide care.”

– A Dignity Care Champion

Dignity Champions are those in a care organisation that champion and uphold the 10 Dignity Do’s, as well as advocate and share the importance of dignity in any form of care. This includes:

You can find out more about becoming a dignity champion and the 10 Dignity Do’s by visiting Dignity in Care’s becoming a champion or register page. Another helpful resource is the Dignity Champion’s Toolkit for Action, which includes actionable insights, ideas and advice for people in a range of different care roles to help make a difference and bring dignity to care.

There are many ways that the Dignity Do’s can help care groups, teams and organisations improve their level of care and adapt to offer a continuously improving level of service. Championing the Dignity Do’s is only the start, we believe that in order to provide the highest quality care, moving to digital care planning enables you to create personalised care plans, record care accurately at the time of providing care and understand and act on trends about those you care for. By using digital, you can be much more efficient and spend more time providing person-centred, quality care.

To find out how care software and technology can be used to enhance your care service, or help you to better care for those you support, book a demo or get in touch with the team.

Thank you to Warrington Community Living for sharing the following article on their website. We love hearing how Nourish‘s digital platform  is helping and improving care services across the country!

We’re all taught that oral health is essential to keep our teeth healthy but what does this really mean? Poor oral health can lead to malnutrition, pneumonia and a weakened immune system which can make it harder to recover from common illnesses. Studies are being conducted to see whether dental hygiene has any links to dementia. So how can we encourage better dental hygiene?

Getting people you support to the dentist is no easy feat. Dental practices aren’t always accessible, medical settings can be quite distressing and getting there requires accessible transport and extra staff. Instead of taking the people you support to the dentist, why not bring the dentist to you? Domiciliary dental services provide dental care right at home.

Some local NHS trusts offer training on dental health for a few members of staff, appointing these staff members as Oral Health Champions. These Champions undertake the training and the responsibility of training existing and new staff.  Ensuring your service is working to the NICE guidelines and the Oral Health policy could also become part of the Champions’ role.

Activities are a simple and fun way to encourage conversations about good oral health. Brushing your teeth may not seem fun but, depending on the people you supports abilities, it can be! If you have any keen knitters, download knitting patterns for knitting teeth, tooth fairies or tooth fairy pouches for grandchildren, young relatives and friends’ children. Arty people could have a go at crafting teeth and toothbrushes out of leftover cardboard and painting them. If you have any connections to a local school or nursery, invite them over (Covid-19 permitting) for a lesson on mouthcare. You could even have a sensory afternoon of science experiments, making elephant toothpaste, growing plaque with yeast and sugar and, egg brushing.

The Nourish platform allows dental hygiene to be logged, tracked and managed and provides an Oral Health Assessment Tool (OHAT) for new admissions. In Nourish, you are able to plan, manage and evidence dental appointments and visits and use the OHAT for regular reviews on the oral health of those you support. The Alerts and Warnings function can ensure appointments and reviews are not missed. Because dental health can have a significant impact on the general health of the people you support, the ability to monitor means early intervention is possible.

Many of us use some kind of technology to monitor our health and well-being. We’ve got fitness trackers, smart watches, sleep trackers, fluid logs, gym apps and so much more. We input our data and track our progress so we can see where and how we can make changes to improve our health. And just as it can improve our health, data and analytics can improve your care management too!

With this in mind, the same concept is now being applied in the care sector. Care teams are now able to use a digital system to record notes and assist with daily care. Moving away from a paper-based system comes with a whole host of benefits, one of which is the huge amount of data that can be analysed, which has great potential to improve the way care and support is provided. 

In order to look at ways in which care can be improved, measurable data is needed. Not only will this help to spot any initial areas for improvement, but the continuous monitoring of data allows you to accurately measure the effects of any changes made. A data-driven approach to care can really help care teams to better understand those they support, and feel confident they are providing the safest daily care to each individual. 

Fears surrounding big data 

Although the idea of using data analysis is supposed to instill confidence in carers, it is understandable that many people still have their reservations about this, mainly surrounding the accuracy of said data, and where data protection comes into the equation. But when it comes to the digital vs paper debate, it is clear that paper recording poses a far greater risk for inaccuracy and inconsistencies in patient information. 

We are already starting to see technology being implemented within the health and social care sectors. The NHS is slowly starting to work on digitalisation of patient records, and electronic care planning is now becoming the norm across many care homes in the UK. Now that the care sector is rapidly adopting a digital way of working, data analytics is the next step in evolving and enhancing the way we care. But how exactly can data and analytics improve your care management? 

Spotting trends in those you support 

One of the main benefits of analysing data is to be able to spot trends. This could be anything from eating habits to sleeping patterns, and these trends may vary between care providers. 

What this allows carers to do is look at the bigger picture. Did someone refuse their dinner or their medication one night? If so, why did they? Who was on shift that evening? When looking at the bigger picture you can start to see what’s missing or what’s changed and ask the necessary questions to get to the bottom of it. 

With paper recording, it can be a little trickier to keep up to date with the bigger picture and see things clearly, meaning things can get missed. While it may sound extreme, spotting someone’s decline in appetite could be the difference between life or death, as this could be the first sign of an underlying condition that could otherwise go unnoticed. 

Creating continuity of care  

Having data recorded electronically makes it far easier to run reports, and gain insight into individual’s needs. This type of data recording and reporting is proactive and allows you to share insight and information with your care team and other healthcare providers in a safe and efficient way. 

With data reports readily available to view, this is a far more accurate way of sending and receiving up to date information, ensuring that everyone is getting the right level of care they require. 

Creates a transparent care environment

When there is clear communication among care teams, you are better equipped to support those in your care. Going digital has its benefits in ensuring everyone is on the same page, but the analysis of data takes this one step further. 

By providing everyone with the facts and figures in a clear and concise way, these insights will empower carers to be the best they can be. With reports and data readily available, this means everyone can have clarity around the type of care an individual needs and what is being done to support them, and family members can be kept in the loop so they have peace of mind their loved ones are in good hands. 

Transparency is key when it comes to evidencing care for CQC purposes. Data analysis better equips you to provide the best quality care as well as have all the necessary information readily available for inspectors when you have an audit. 

The future of data and analytics in a post Covid-19 world

This year, the care sector has faced many challenges. The Covid-19 pandemic swept across the globe and sadly became one of the leading causes of deaths within care. Understanding something like this virus can become a lot easier when we’re able to analyse the facts and the figures. Care homes who were successful in preventing an outbreak within their organisation were monitoring things extremely closely. Symptoms, incubation periods, and patient-staff interactions were all recorded and able to be analysed to track and prevent outbreaks from sweeping through their care service. 

Data and analytics is quickly going to become a must within the care sector in a post-pandemic world. The Goverment have already invested £600 billion into an Infection Control Fund for care homes, and using that funding for digital transformation could help so many care services become better prepared in the future. Not only does technology make it far easier to breakdown and understand data, but using a digital device to share information with staff, families and other healthcare services is far safer as it reduces contact between one another. Staff will be able to work more efficiently when they can all access a centralised system remotely, and it’ll be easier to log and track who has been where and when which will ultimately help prevent the spread of the virus.

How electronic care planning can help

Moving towards a digital way of working has a number of advantages, and now is the time for care services who are still using paper records to make the switch. Collating and using big data allows care teams to become more aware and vigilant of the risks to those they support, understand those risks, and implement solutions. At Nourish, we want to encourage data analysis to help care organisations provide better care, which is why our electronic care planning system can also be upgraded with an analytics tool that can help spot trends and patterns to better equip you in supporting those in your care. 

We now also have a Covid-19 Tracker built into our platform, so you can track the virus more closely and understand how it is affecting your care service. To find out more about how Nourish can help you provide better care, book a demo with us today. 

As the Coronavirus pandemic swept the globe and hit the UK earlier in March this year, care homes were put under more strain than they ever have before. Working to ease the pressure on the NHS, many care organisations have and continue to act as an overspill for hospitals when they get too busy. This has meant taking on patients who potentially were still infectious with coronavirus, as demand for beds soared across the UK. We take a look at Coronavirus in care homes, and how care has been managed in cases of Covid-19. 

Care teams have felt they’ve been let down by the government, being told they shouldn’t need to work any differently, even once Covid-19 had hit the UK. There has been an overall shortage of PPE (personal protective equipment), but care teams were being told by suppliers that the NHS took priority. 

Care homes usually implement what is known as “barrier nursing” when someone contracts a virus. This is where the person is isolated and new gloves, mask, paper towels etc will be used for each and every patient. However, with the realisation that Covid-19 could often be asymptomatic, and without antibody tests readily available, this posed a problem for managing Coronavirus in care homes. Combine that with the sudden influx of patients from the NHS, the lack of PPE stock and such close quarters within care homes, for many it felt like they were set up to fail. 

Many care workers have reported full floors of homes being wiped out by this silent killer, leaving staff devastated and terrified for their own safety, too. 

The facts and figures of Coronavirus in care homes

On the 15th May 2020 the statistics on Covid-19 related deaths in the UK care sector was released. Between the period of 2nd March and 1st May 2020, there have been 12,526 deaths involving Covid-19, which is said to be 27.3% of all deaths of care home residents. 

Coronavirus in care homes was the leading cause of death in male residents and second leading cause of death in women, after Dementia and Alzheimer’s, which was also the main pre-existing condition found amongst Coronavirus deaths.

Figures have been taken from the Office for National Statistics, published on 15th May 2020.

Are outbreaks of Covid-19 inevitable in care homes?

Covid-19 is highly risky for people living with multiple pre-existing conditions, is highly infectious, and many care teams  lack the means to closely monitor and track potential symptoms of the virus amongst everyone in their care. By the time the government had addressed the nation on the severity of the coronavirus pandemic, many lives had already been lost as the virus found its way into care settings. It is generally accepted that hospital discharges of untested patients who moved into care homes increased the risk of contracting the virus by other residents.

And in addition to this, self-isolation measures led to sudden staffing shortages, with many homes  having no chance but to bring in agency staff, meaning care workers are moving from home to home, once again increasing the risk of transmission. 

For the homes that have been successful in managing an outbreak, this is largely due to a proactive approach to closely monitoring and managing symptoms and suspected cases of Covid-19 and essentially doing everything possible to stop it in its tracks. 

Contact tracing

It is advised that carers should only work in one home while this pandemic is still ongoing and daily temperature checks should be carried out. All contact should be treated as close contact during the pandemic, and staff should be supported if they need to isolate after contact with a confirmed Covid case. Care facilities need to emphasise that staff will not be penalised and should not come to work when they are not feeling 100% even if there is a staff shortage. All care workers should be encouraged to report if they are feeling unwell and remain at home if they are showing symptoms. Testing should be arranged for these members of staff – there is now a government service dedicated to conduct testing in care homes (https://www.gov.uk/apply-coronavirus-test-care-home) which in time is expected to allow everyone in a care home to be tested.

Strict isolation policies

Carers should be segregated and only work with either suspected/confirmed residents with Covid-19, or those who are not infected and have clear signage as to who is in isolation and who is not. 

There needs to be a strict isolation policy for anyone showing symptoms or suspected to have symptoms, including 14 day isolation for anyone being transferred from another home or facility, plus testing for these residents where possible. Residents who are isolating should do so even for meal times and all non-essential travel outside the home should be cancelled. Care teams must ensure all immunizations are up to date.

Be aware of potential asymptomatic residents 

If transmission in a care home is suspected, then testing those who have potentially come into contact with the virus could highlight asymptomatic patients who would have otherwise gone undetected, thus causing a larger outbreak and more potential fatalities. 

How Nourish is helping care homes to closely monitor and manage the spread of Covid-19

At Nourish, we have created digital protocols for managing Covid-19 across care teams and people receiving care and support: our Covid-19 Trackerallows care homes to record, track and monitor symptoms and cases of Coronavirus within each care team. 

The protocol includes:

Nourish has also launched a free version of a Covid-19 tracker. This tracker can be accessed from any web browser, it’s free of charge, and you do not need to be a Nourish customer to use it. The tracker will allow you to track cases of infections across people in your care as well as your staff by closely monitoring symptoms and other factors. You can record:

Nourish has also been working with the NHS to enable anonymised data to be shared helping towards getting a better understanding of this pandemic across care providers. If you would like to find out more and sign up for the tracker, click here.

In addition to this, during the Covid-19 outbreak, Nourish has also enabled: 

For further reading: