Care Homes are a hive of information. Each interaction, every day reveals something valuable. However, care homes are also a hive of activity, and it is difficult to manage so many moving parts. The latest addition to the Nourish Partnership Programme, Found by Lottie, addresses these challenges directly.  

At Nourish Care we are proud to support care home providers at the point of care, and help you to provide comprehensive, person-led and community-centred care. Found by Lottie integrates fully with Nourish and works in tandem. Offering enquiry and occupancy management to support care homes, networking so you can engage, involve and evolve your community and a Finance and Billing module that allows you to meet the needs of every resident and their specific financial situations with ease. All designed to work together with Nourish so you can maximise your revenue, improve your outcomes and never lose sight of what’s important. 

If you are running a care home, you’ll need residents. One of the most important aspects of care home management is the ability to effectively handle enquiries and admissions. The process can often be time-consuming and easy to lose track of. It requires meticulous attention to detail to ensure that potential residents are matched with appropriate care settings. Found by Lottie helps care home providers streamline this process with its comprehensive enquiry management system. 

The enquiry management system empowers care home providers to manage incoming enquiries in a structured and systematic way. Found by Lottie centralises all communication, allowing staff to track and respond to each care seeker efficiently. All care home managers know too well the frustration of searching for scrawled notes in busy desktop drawers. Found ensures that all necessary information is gathered at the initial enquiry stage and stored in a centralised location. Information including medical needs, personal preferences, and family expectations, helping care home providers make informed decisions about prospective residents. Furthermore, once all of this information is gathered, and you are ready to admit the person to your service, our integration makes it a simple process to transfer it across. With the click of a button this key information is sent straight to your Nourish platform. Reducing the admin burden on your staff.’ 

In addition, the system includes automated reminders and follow-up tasks, ensuring that no enquiry ever gets lost. By simplifying and automating much of the enquiry process, Found by Lottie reduces and refines your administrative workload. Where once enquiries were scattered across different notebooks and post-it notes now your team can efficiently make informed decisions, based on easily accessible data and smooth communication. Which is why on average Found users are converting 45% more of their enquiries since implementing the system. Though in order to implement your enquiries, you need to manage your occupancy. 

Managing occupancy is a balancing act that has wrong footed many a care co-ordinator. The enduring responsibility to match demand for beds with available capacity, while ensuring that the right care is provided for everyone. Found by Lottie’s occupation management is a heavyweight feature offering an intuitive, real-time overview of all resident placements and availability so you can tip the scales in your favour.  

Found enables care home providers to track bed occupancy, highlighting which rooms or units are available, occupied, or awaiting move-in. You can also easily see if a resident requires special care, such as memory support or palliative care. So you can wrap your service around the unique needs of your community. Ensuring that you place residents in the most suitable environment for their care needs, in the best position to thrive. 

Crucially, Found’s system gives care home managers full visibility over important information. Like the resident-to-staff ratio. Which is essential for maintaining high standards of care and ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements. With real-time data at your fingertips, you can adjust staffing levels quickly based on occupancy rates, ensuring that residents always receive the appropriate level of attention and support.  

On average Found users experience an occupancy increase of 23%. And as all care home manager owners know, the ability to efficiently manage your occupancy is directly tied to your ability to provide outstanding care and maximise your revenue. Of course, a little networking never hurt anyone either.  

People define care. From our carers and those they support, through all the organisations, institutions and individuals who are connected to your community. Found by Lottie’s networking functionality empowers care home providers to easily communicate with a wide range of stakeholders, including family members, GPs, healthcare specialists, and local authorities. 

The age of the errant post it note is over! Found documents every interaction a care home has with each contact. Enabling your team to build up a detailed timeline that is easy to review and action. This feature provides peace of mind to families, develops trust with brokerage teams and establishes a team wide understanding of important relationships. 

Reinforce your connections by strengthening your available contact information. Over time these naturally build out into records of interactions and engagement that educate your team on your wider care community and the connections that shape your business.  

Fundamentally, Found enables you to utilise the data behind these connections. Which you can fold back into both your financial and care plans. Driving improved outcomes for your community and more opportunities for your business. Opportunities you will be in position to take advantage of thanks to a comprehensive finance and billing system. 

The financial side of running a care home is often complex and time-consuming. From managing invoices to tracking payments and handling care funding, there are numerous financial tasks that need to be completed accurately and on time. Found by Lottie’s billing system simplifies this process by automating key aspects of financial management. 

The platform enables care home providers to generate and send invoices directly from the system, ensuring that billing is accurate and up to date. With integrated billing, care homes can track payments from residents and third-party funders, such as local authorities or health insurers. This establishes a seamless process for invoicing and payment tracking, reducing administrative overheads and minimizing the risk of errors or delays. 

Found by Lottie’s billing system also supports the management of care funding and subsidies. The platform can track and apply various types of funding, ensuring that funding sources reimburse your care home correctly for the services you deliver. A perfect solution for people with support who have multiple funding sources for their care. 

And last but certainly not least, the billing system offers transparency for both care providers and residents. Provide clear, itemised bills to your residents and their families, outlining the cost of care services and any additional charges. Including real-time visibility of all the small expenses incurred at your home. This level of transparency not only improves trust but also helps ensure that all parties understand the costs associated with care. 

At its core Found by Lottie is about improving outcomes and revenue for your care home. It equips users with the tools to find new leads, manage occupancy, maximise connections and manage finances. Care managers reported saving half a day’s worth of administration time with Found, as well as an average of 18% improvement on marketing spend. When combined with Nourish, Found gives you everything you need to manage and grow your care home. With a focus on details, an understanding of innovation, and the certainty that nothing important will ever get lost again.  

As a Channel Partner, Found can be purchased directly through Nourish, if you are interested in learning more, contact us.

The benefits of digital rostering go beyond efficiency. Optimisation is about more than driving shorter routes, it’s about driving positive outcomes as well. Staff scheduling is a complicated, and crucial part of delivering outstanding home care. It requires an in-depth understanding of your area, your community and your team. One that goes beyond simply managing spreadsheets. Truly great digital rostering software gives you the tools to bring all of your experience, data and empathy to bear on the challenge of staff scheduling in home care. 

A good start is half the battle, though in home care it can often feel like an uphill battle at the beginning. Nourish Rostering’s overview puts you in the lifeguard’s seat; with a clear view of your service and the insight to notice trouble before it brews too long. Digital rostering centralises your vital information. You can schedule your clients’ needs and your carers availability as desired, ensuring that every appointment is covered, and every individual involved is well informed.  

You can also fill your system with pertinent information about your service and the people who make it special. Clients can detail their needs, as well as their desires and ambitions. While your carers can include their skills, their interests and their passions. Separately these are useful silos of information, but together in one system they become influential drivers of positive care outcomes. These details can then be combined with geographic factors and clinical skills as you plan appointments and build runs to best match the needs and abilities of your care community. 

That is the core power of digital rostering and home care software. The ability to bring together a wealth of information and put it at your fingertips. Unlock the expertise of your organisation by moving all the vital information from the heads and filing cabinets of your coordinators, onto a digital format. Ensuring no hour, need or opportunity gets overlooked when you are planning your care. This can feel like an uphill engagement indeed at the start! But once crested it brings speed, and specification, to your rostering process.  

Of course, nothing in home care provision is ever straightforward. Which is precisely why home care software needs to be. Any care coordinator knows the unpredictability of a home care rota. Clients’ needs change over time, availability varies for all parties, and no one can ever be certain what awaits them just around the corner.  

Any good home care rostering software needs to be reactive. Our drag-and-drop functionality is exactly that. It gives a succinct, yet detailed, overview of your schedule for the day, alongside the ability to quickly adjust appointments as necessary. Each client’s appointments are clearly shown, as well as the availability of your carers. This gives you the tools to quickly adjust when the inevitable changes need to happen. Digital rostering includes the ability to convey these changes as necessary with your team, so no one misses out on an update. 

Crucially, you can make these decisions efficiently, with the weight of experience and the information of your system behind you. Our ‘Recommend’ a carer feature includes all relevant information on your calls so that you can send the right person to the right appointment every time. These factors include travel time and distance, specified to include mode of transport, familiarity with the client, experience and specific skills required and personal preferences of both the client and potential carers. Each data point further colours the picture of your care, and you can adjust the weighting of these points to match the unique needs of your community. Therefore you are not only planning efficiently, but effectively too, so you can continue to drive positive outcomes with your care. 

Taking care of your team is a crucial part of optimising your staff scheduling. With digital rostering you can empower and inform your carers. Our all-in-one-pocket solution gives your carers a tool that has all the information they need to manage their day. An up-to-date schedule which shows not only where they need to be and when, but travel times in between. Allowing them to plan their routes effectively and adapt to changes with ease and efficiency.  

Our new ‘Time Off’ feature helps you establish and manage your teams holiday accrual. Your carers can review and request time off through their app, promoting optimisation through centralisation of your processes.  Decisions that once took half an hour can now be resolved instantaneously. This frees up your time to focus on people and outcomes, rather than balancing spreadsheets and calculators.  

People are what drives care, and outcomes are how we measure our impact. Understanding that impact comes from understanding the way our care shapes lives. Staff scheduling plays a huge role in this, and call monitoring is key to ensuring your information is up to date and accurate when reviewing your home care rostering. Information like actual appointment times highlight the variety of key care indicators. Such as: consistent patterns in appointment length, travel times, travel mileage and more. You can record, review and report to best shape your appointments to the needs of your community.  

This information can then be combined with other data points to optimise your digital rostering. Do you need to reduce the length of one appointment? Increase the length of another? Adjust runs to balance travel time? Or maybe change carers to account for public transport variances? When you digitise your processes, you position yourself to benefit from all the data you naturally accrue. With the right software, you can take full advantage of this opportunity to improve care quality, care efficiency, and care outcomes.  

Digital rostering offers a range of benefits for your service. It lets you optimise the information you are already gathering and refine it to improve your outcomes as well as your efficiency. Time saving is a fantastic benefit on its own, and one that many care providers who are digitising their staff scheduling have experienced. However, there are far more benefits to unlock beyond efficiency. Benefits that involve everyone in your community collaborating effectively to change the lives of everyone in your community. 

At Nourish Care we’re committed to continuously improving the accessibility and inclusivity of our technology, working towards our goal of developing a solution which truly works for everyone. We spoke to our Head of Product Design, Kate Horn, to learn more about our approach to embedding accessibility and inclusivity at the heart of our product design process.

“Accessibility and inclusivity have accidentally become a bit buzzwordy in the design world recently,” explains Kate, “and most definitely in health tech design. Why? Finally, we are all talking about ensuring that anyone can access the products we are creating. At Nourish these are not just words, they form the basis of design values that go right to our core, we are person-centred. We believe in a better life for everyone. To achieve this, we need to make sure anyone and everyone can use Nourish.”

“Honestly? They mean quite a lot of different things! 

“It is a common misconception that when we talk about accessibility, we are only talking about how we apply colours to designs and how we can make it high contrast. This is a factor, but it barely scratches the surface of the work to be done to make a platform, or an app genuinely accessible to anyone who wishes to use it.  

“Hold on a moment though, we are talking here about using something that is in your hand already. We need to take a step back and think about the technology and very basic level of access first and how, as designers, we can get the app into your hand or onto your desktop in the first instance. Given that you are reading this digitally, this is clearly not a problem for you but consider this; in 2022, 13-19 million people in the UK over 16 lived in a state of digital poverty. That means they did not have the tech, skill, or resources to fund internet access on one or more occasions a week.  

We cannot just build for the latest and most shiny versions of everything. Accessibility means we need to think about making sure what we create is available to everyone. In a way which does not exclude people, starting at the point of access and empowering them to enjoy the full experience of the platform.

“Inclusive” needs to go even further and it is worthy of a blog post on its own. For now, I want to touch on the importance of ensuring that inclusivity extends to individuals feeling genuinely included, seen and represented within our platforms.

First of all, we aim for the highest possible standard. There is a framework for accessibility in digital design for us to follow called WCAG. Within this there are levels, the highest of which is standard 2.2. This is what we strive to achieve. Standard 2.2 covers everything from the use of text, audio, layout, contrast, colour, platform adaptations, use of imagery, operational considerations, inputs, consistency of design and ensuring the platform is robust. And that’s just to start!

It is a solid start, however, a framework does not go far enough for accessibility and it doesn’t answer the requirement for inclusivity. To achieve this, there are several other elements to consider, starting with words.

Words are a powerful way for us to be both engaging and human, when used correctly. They are also one of the quickest ways for us to disconnect people from Nourish. If we describe areas of the platform or tasks using inhuman or technical language you first have to understand what we really mean and then have to choose if you really want to do it. We’re to make things simpler for you, not more complicated! So, step one for us is to speak in common English and start to create a comfortable experience.

Next on that list is understanding who we are designing for. This requires us to become so embedded in the health and care sector that we are a part of the furniture. Great insight means we understand the everyday challenges the people who are using our platform experience. This ensures we craft experiences for our platforms that work to solve these problems in a way that is comfortable for everyone.  

Throughout this blog I have used the words “anyone” and “everyone”. These are crucial terms for defining our approach. Typically, designers aim to design for the bell curve, that is, the biggest group of users.  

We simply cannot do this in health and social care. We have to step back and design solutions that truly work for anyone. This “flattening” of the curve is really important. It goes to the core of what we work to achieve as a company and the heart of our values as a design team. We want to create technology to truly wrap around the user in a great experience.

As users of Nourish will know, we’re continuously improving the accessibility and inclusivity of the platform, these really aren’t just buzzwords to us. We are working towards our goal of creating a system which can be easily used by anyone. There’s always more that can be done but by keeping these principles and our users at the heart of our design processes we are able to keep our person centred goals firmly in sight. 

Book a demo to find out more about Nourish and how we can work with anyone, and everyone in your community. 

Social care is in a state of change. Care providers tasked with being the steady hand through this change have consistently risen to the challenge. Despite having little control over the changes as they happen. At Nourish Care we are embracing this change by working with our users to develop a social care future we are all proud of.  With increasing standards, new regulations and extended funding availability it is clear now why so many care providers are embracing change themselves and switching to Nourish.  

Care providers have a wealth of options when choosing a digital partner. Under the original standards for the NHS Assured Solutions List (ASL) there are 24 Digital Social Care Records (DSCRs) to choose from. That’s without mentioning the systems who don’t reach these standards. The ASL is enjoying notable success so far, as it continues to work towards its target of 80% of care providers on DSCRs. Digitisation is widespread through social care now. To the point that many care providers are shopping around for a better system to match their service. 

The ASL was always intended as a starting point for the digitisation of social care. The Department of Health and Social Care has announced the second step of this journey, with the recent release of the 14 new standards for DSCRs on the ASL. We are one of the few providers to have achieved all 14 of these standards. You can read about the specifics of the standards here. 

We are the largest software supplier to have achieved the new standards. As well as being one of the first to get listed on the ASL following its initial launch. Our legacy of forward thinking and innovation consistently aligns us with the future direction of the social care sector. We are proud to be working closely with key decision makers in health and social care.  

We support care in a huge variety of settings. Including older person’s care, nursing, home care, learning disabilities, dementia, supported living, assisted living, substance abuse, mental health, children and young people and more. Each care setting is unique, and each care setting requires specific understanding to support effectively. 

Our experienced and understanding customer success and support teams will work with you to make sure our system fits your service. Whatever your needs are, and whatever they may become in the future.  

Once you switch to Nourish, we are with you every step of your journey. Should your journey lead you to new business opportunities we are the best equipped software supplier in social care to support your expansion. Whether you are focussed on a single type of care or support a range of different needs. 

You can also scale your functionality as desired, thanks to our comprehensive partnership programme. The programme unites key best-in-class innovators like Camascope for eMAR, Radar for incident management and PainChek for pain management. All while keeping a finger on the pulse for emerging technologies that will substantially impact the social care sector. 

Additionally, we offer more in-depth data packages called ‘Insights’ and ‘Analytics’. These features provide a much richer insight into the data gathered across your service. Perfect for larger care providers who collect vast swathes of information every day, but have no clear way to transform this potential into insightful, actionable information. 

The Care Quality Commission’s (CQC) rollout of their new Single Assessment Framework (SAF) is enduring some understandable teething challenges. Initialisms aside the ambition of the project remains clear. The regulator wants to streamline processes and better respond to the needs of the people who draw upon care.  

We facilitate these new developments as effectively as possible. We work with organisations like the Care Software Providers Association (CASPA) to share our voice and insights on the development of digital social care with key decision makers in local and national government. Our work on alignment with #socialcarefuture helps to guide the future of our system as much as they guide the future of the wider care communities. Socialcarefuture are the co-authors of the ‘I/We Statements’ that define the SAF scoring.  

There is always something new to be considered, a fresh function to be explored or a new piece of legislation to be adhered to.  

We cannot know the future; all we can do is prepare for it. We have read the tea leaves, built our houses from stone and made hay while the sun shone. All so we can continue to lead the way in digital social care, through innovation, understanding and collaboration. 

Social Care is in a state of change, and with that ever-present uncertainty comes a great opportunity. Switch to Nourish today and take control of your change, with your team, your service and your community.  

Teamwork makes the dream work, though a good partnership is hard to find. At Nourish Care we are committed to working with our users throughout their digitisation journey. A journey that continues beyond tomorrow’s horizon and into the future of care. The results of our partnerships are present for the over 400,000 people who are cared for with Nourish software solutions. People define partnerships, and by putting partnerships at the centre of our approach we ensure that people are always our focus.  

From the moment you first speak to Nourish there will be someone on our side working with you. Every step of your journey. This applies to care providers of all shapes, sizes and disciplines. 

Digitisation can take time, whether you are looking to reshape systems or just starting off your journey. We make sure all our users have the right guidance alongside them to make this process as smooth as possible for your team and as specific as necessary for your community.  

Project managers are available to help care home groups and large franchises transition to Nourish. They work with your team to ensure an effective digital rollout. We have dedicated customer success managers to work with medium and smaller care providers, as well as being another helping hand for large groups. These managers are adept at supporting the unique needs that emerge when providing care for your community. They know how to guide our users during their set-up process to ensure you receive the maximum benefits from Nourish. 

Our partnership doesn’t end at the onboarding. We continually work with our users. Offering you an open line and a dedicated point of contact for your service, so you can continue to grow the way you want to and flourish with Nourish. You can read more about how Nourish has supported the teams and growth of home care providers Nexus Care and Priory Group’s care homes.

Visit our Case Studies page for more examples.

Expertise is essential to success, and our partnerships with services excel at combining our knowledge with yours. We have researched and developed robust libraries alongside care and clinical professionals with a deep understanding of the sector and needs of the population. Each library contains interactions, assessments, care plan templates and more for managing specific pathways, conditions, needs and day-to-day operational requirements. 

We combine this wealth of best practise and experience with your understanding of your community’s needs. Nourish boasts a depth of customisability. This promotes the individuality of your service in line with the established requirements of commissioners and regulators. The only assets that are not customisable are locked to ensure compliance with a particular protocol or standard. This empowers your coordinators to wrap your system around your service and provide for the specific needs of your community. 

There is a reason we are the largest software supplier for social care in the UK. We do not settle for general. Nourish is filled with functionality that supports the unique requirements of different care types. Including residential, domiciliary, nursing, assisted living, learning disabilities and many more. 

Strong rostering is the backbone of efficient home care management. We built our rostering with over a decade of experience working with home care providers. It can be set up on repeating schedules of up to a month. Our drag and drop rostering and customisable carer rating system gives you the tools to quickly adapt to changing circumstances with your workforce and the people they support. Your rostering can then be simply invoiced and time-sheeted with our comprehensive finance functionality. Ensuring you pay everyone the right amount at the right time.  

Nourish’s mobile app for home care is another product of our strong partnerships with care services. We work with providers to keep our app up to date and empowering their care teams and communities. Carers know where they’re going and what they’re doing, while keeping you up to date on how it went through their appointment notes and audit tracker.  Travel times, upcoming schedule, care types, medications and notes are all designed alongside carers and available offline. So your team have everything they need, anywhere they go.

Nourish is designed by care professionals for busy care environments, combining icons, imagery and text to create a smooth, easy experience. Keeping carers informed is crucial in residential settings as well. The care plan summary on our care home mobile app provides a detailed and concise snapshot on mobile for a particular need to ensure nothing gets missed and you have all the information available. Carers have access to all the information on the mobile app which empowers care teams. They can see the handover, review recent and historic appointment notes. A level of autonomy unrivalled by any other DSCR platform. The app also features ‘back’ and ‘save’ buttons wherever you go so no records can be lost when completing a record/interaction. 

Data is a hot topic, but one that has burnt the finger of many a service. With Nourish managing data can become a simple part of your daily process. We provide several prebuilt dashboards within our system to provide data oversight to your team. These dashboards can become a cornerstone or a starting off point for your team’s application of data. We have experienced people on our team to help you get what you need from your data in your reporting. So you can focus on providing, responsive, effective care.

All of our success at Nourish has come through collaboration. Collaboration between our teams, between our integration partners and between our users. We believe the best solutions are produced through teamwork. A process without an end, but an enduring, enjoyable journey. We’re in this for the long haul, with true partnerships, the lasting kind.  

Care to join us? 

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!

Moving away from what we know and stepping into the unknown can be a daunting experience. For both businesses and individuals, change isn’t easy and is often something we fear given it isn’t something that comes naturally; but should it be or should we actually fear just standing still? . In the words of Susan Jeffers sometimes we just need to ‘Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway’. This is particularly true when it comes to using digital in social care.

This notion of change and not being fearful of it is something that our founder and CEO, Nuno Almeida, touched upon at this year’s Care Show. Representing the ‘Care Software Providers Association’ (CASPA), Nuno addressed the issue of change in relation to the use of digital technology within the care sector.

Although more and more care services are adopting the use of digital technology, there is still an enigma that surrounds the evolution of it within the care sector. It’s hard to believe that in the UK, over 75% of care providers still use a pen and paper for planning and record keeping, rather than using electronic care planning systems. Whilst the care sector has evolved over the years, changes have been slow. There are still a lot of fears associated with digitalisation and its perceived risks. Key concerns revolve around:

All valid and understandable reasons as to why care providers are cautious of changing to a digital way of working. However, as Nuno raised the point, could paper present a bigger risk?

Records can be lost; information can be hard to find, and it can be hard to provide carers with context in terms of what is needed for those they are supporting. In the main paper records are seen more as a statutory obligation. A log of evidence to show standards of care to the likes of CQC and local authorities. The data isn’t being used in a way that can help us to improve and enhance care, something that digital technology can help overcome.

When records are input into a digital system, they become so much more than just evidence for inspection. They open up a whole new world of possibilities that simply wouldn’t be possible with stacks of paper. For example using an electronic care planning system to record digital records enables:

Clearly digital technology such as electronic care planning can provide care providers with a range of benefits, but how can the fear of change be overcome?  Like with most things, when you are armed with the right information and the right guidance, change becomes less like something that should be feared and more like something that is manageable and exciting.

In Nuno’s words ‘with the right co-ordination, the right strategy and the right partners, we can get the right digital use in social care’ and this is one of the key aims of CASPA. To help promote and continue to grow the use of digital technologies in the social care sector to improve the quality of care delivered.

To ensure a smooth transition, there are a number of actions care providers can put into place to help when moving to electronic care planning. CASPA suggest the following guidance on how to source and implement digital transformation software.

So you’ve chosen the provider you want to use, but what next? Well you will need to consider how you will implement the new digital system. CASPA suggest following a three-step process for implementation:

Ensure you communicate with families and care teams in a way that is reassuring and clear about the reasons for adopting digital. Try to build excitement and show that this change is positive and something that they don’t need to be nervous about.

Agree whether your chosen supplier will train all your staff or just your internal training team who will then deliver the training to the remaining members of your staff. Once this has been agreed deliver your training accordingly. Give your team reassurance that they can tackle and deal with the change and help them to feel in control by showing them that there are clear plans in place for training and roll-out.

Agree how devices are prepared and deployed. Tell staff where they need to be and when. Ensure you know how user accounts are created and how records are created for the people you support.

Good providers will be able to provide you with all the information you and your team need to ensure you are comfortable and ready for the transition to digital. From giving you clear guidance about GDPR responsibilities to how to manage devices and lock them down should they go missing. When looking for a provider CASPA recommends asking the following questions to help you find out whether they would be a good fit for you:

About the Care Software Providers Association (CASPA)…          

CASPA has been established in the UK as an independent, not for profit, member-driven association. The association is currently led by a volunteer group of founding board members, each of whom manages a well-established software company that provides solutions for social care providers

CASPA Mission…

Find out more about whether using an electronic care planning could help you and those you support here.

As a previous care home manager, our Head of Customer Experience, Dan, knows first-hand what impact electronic care planning has on care and the teams who provide it. We asked Dan to give us his thoughts on something we get asked a lot – is electronic really that much quicker than paper?

We all know care is a very busy world to work in.

Visitors, GP’s, hairdressers, chiropodists, maintenance operatives, CQC can be around at any time of the day. Then we think about all of the support we provide throughout the day, how things rarely go according to plan and the notes that we need to record to show what care we’ve been providing.

Often teams are so busy that all of their notes are ‘remembered’ until the end of the shift – a full days notes for a range of different people with varying degrees of support. We see at Nourish that the average provider completes 600 records per day – 600. That is an awful lot of information to be remembered and it’s no wonder that people can quickly forget to write something down.

How many times have you had the following situations in your service:

Electronic platforms help us to tackle all of that.

With platforms like Nourish that can be used on mobile devices, care records can be recorded at the point of care. Recording as something happens means that what we record is more accurate, live and always available to the rest of the team. This not only helps to make sure everyone is informed throughout the day, but it ensures that important tasks or targets are not missed.

It also means that records take less time. With dropdown options, checkboxes, pre-determined fields and free text, carers can record a lot more detail in a lot less time.

Also, for staff members where written records can be difficult to complete, they can take advantage of the speech-to-text option. This allows you to speak into the device and have your notes typed out in text for you.

Interestingly, recent research from Standford University found that speech-to-text is three times as fast as texting, and even more so than writing. The study found the following average words per minute:

What previously might have been recorded as “All ok” or “joined in with…”, soon becomes a more natural in-depth report of conversations, enjoyment and participation; all in a lot less time than they could achieve on paper.

Another way electronic care planning can save you time is in assessments. Scored assessments in particular are a great tool, but there is a lot of room for error when they become complicated, you have to complete calculations and you’re trying to do all of that at speed.

Electronically, these scored assessments can be created to automatically calculate for you. You simply have to put in the answers and the score will self-generate. Not only is that quicker for you, but it also reduces the chances of errors in your records.

One assessment that we find can be significantly faster to complete is the MUST (weight records). The self-calculating MUST assessment can work out the BMI, percentage weight loss and create a score using historical records, whilst pulling that information straight into a graph for you to see. Alone, that’s a saving of at least five minutes per assessment. Combine that with other assessments and those saved minutes soon start to add up.

The ability to personalise forms can also really cut down the time taken to complete. With paper, all options need to be present for the team to be able to fill in, whether they are relevant to the person or not. With the ability to remove non-applicable questions, we can speed up form completion by around 30%.

Without a doubt, the area where electronic recording really results in time being saved is during audits, reviews and inspections.

All of your information is recorded in one place and can be pulled at the touch of a button. Regardless of whether that’s information for what happened yesterday or three years ago, that information is easily recorded and quickly retrieved should you need it.

Ffion Roberts from Jewish Care noted herself in a recent webinar: “It’s only when you get your first complaint or investigation and you need to find historical information that you realise what would’ve taken me all day now takes me only ten minutes to locate. And it’s only taken as long as that because it was my first time”

Having all of your information accessible at all times, recorded accurately and stored in the correct location saves you invaluable time. We know from experience that care providers look back on their days of paper and can’t quite believe how much time they spent looking for information and preparing for inspections.

Another time-saving aspect of electronic records is if you manage more than one care location, and need the visibility of information across services. Without even accounting for the time-saved not having to travel to each service, being able to group together key records across services (i.e. accident records for group analysis) means that you quickly and simply see the information you need to submit provider information returns and complete audits.

Head office and management can have instant access to the type of information they need to see, without any extra time or effort from other members of the team. Quicker access, but also more efficient and sustainable.

So, answering the question of whether electronic is really quicker than paper? It absolutely is.

However, as you’ve no doubt picked up by now, it’s also about a lot more than just speed of recording. It’s having all of your information in one place, ensuring your whole team has the information they need to provide the care they’re giving and allowing you to be prepared and ready for any audits or inspections.

Care providers far and wide are already making the transition to digital care management; benefiting from higher quality care plans and notes, compliant and accurate audit trails and a greater degree of control across the management process.

These benefits are being felt at every level, from care managers and carers to the people they care for and their families. Here, we talk to three experienced care providers about the individual impact Nourish Care is having across the entire care service.

For carers, Nourish is empowerment at the point of care. By using well designed and easy to use applications on handheld devices, carers can record notes as they go.

Carers are thereby able to focus a lot more on the person they are working with, and encouraged to record the person-centred care notes that inspectors say distinguishes a care service. Recording notes alongside care also promotes greater clarity, adds useful context and ensures all information is recorded as soon as possible – not forgotten over the course of the day. Recording as they go, carers have the opportunity to really demonstrate the great quality of care they are giving.

Simon Francis, IT Project Manager at Silverline Care, commented: “The main thing for our carers is that the recording of notes is a lot easier. What they were doing beforehand was having to provide care and then try and hold all that information until the end of the shift. Care for residents is now much more to the point and accessible. There is better communication between staff and everyone involved in the client’s care can see what care has already been provided by others. This has made handover a lot easier. It also means input from the carers feeds directly into the care plan, meaning it’s updated within minutes of it taking place. Recording in real time means we don’t lose any important information.”

Paul Dennis-Andrews, Operations Manager at Encompass, has been working with the Nourish Care since spring 2016. He added: “The digital care management system has had a highly positive impact on the overall culture of our service – more than we ever would have thought. Staff who might have had difficulties with the written word are enthused by the ability to speak verbally into the devices to record information. It has been a refreshing and efficient change to a longstanding process of handwritten documentation.

“The large collection of paper files has been replaced with discrete modern handsets and tablets that staff can keep on their person, promoting highly person-centred support exactly how the individual would like to receive it. Documentation is recorded live and visible immediately to anyone with permission, and every aspect of the system is customisable and can be evolved to needs.”

Probably one of the biggest benefits for senior carers and care managers is that all information is in one place and accessible at any time. Care notes and assessments feed directly into the care plans and can be accessed by all who need to see them. This develops a culture of knowledge-sharing and allows for more effective care monitoring and visibility of critical information in real-time.

Digital care management also allows for instant reporting, which gives managers back their time to ‘walk the floor’ and interact with their staff and clients.

Megan Read, Care Home Manager of Grassington House emphasises how the digital system has improved her ability to manage: “Because I have a digital overview of real-time information I can easily monitor what is happening within the home. I can set up anything I want to be recorded, schedule things for the carers to be aware of and make sure that nothing is getting missed.

“For when I’m conducting care plan reviews, I can look at the logs that carers input to directly review and evidence any changes made. Beforehand, you would have had to look through endless files and pages, and you simply wouldn’t be able to go through it all. Now, I have no files in the office, everything is on the system; my office can literally move around with me anywhere.”

Simon agreed: “In leadership, the digital system is allowing managers to spot issues more quickly; alerts raised by carers come straight through to the manager, who can then respond quickly and with all the necessary information”.

Paul added: “Monitoring the quality of the support provided is much more efficient and less intrusive; utilising the Cloud to view live records. It is easier to ensure care is being given and support is provided how the individual would like to receive it. Teams are now positively communicating and sharing ideas, and where changes are required, managers can make these instantly, either across the organisation or simply for individual.”

Managers can also easily establish what information they want recorded, and monitor whether this is being followed. Megan states: “As a manager I can literally prompt what information I want recorded from carers and when. The amount of detail I can now see in recorded notes is amazing compared to what it used to be on paper.”

Simon has also experienced improved quality of care information: “During the transfer to digital care management, we’ve been able to see the quality of our care plans. It is an impossible feat to trail through reams of paper plans for every single resident, but with digital we can check care plans easily and demand the quality we want. It’s meant we can really see the overall process and make sure the right care is being delivered in line with the residents wishes.”

As Simon and Paul state, by recording care as you go, you create a more person-centred and accessible quality of care and you have more time available. Carers have the tools and information they need to provide personal and responsive care, and with extra time, can involve the resident directly and sociably in inputting the care notes.

Megan encourages her carers to be sociable and engage the residents when writing notes; this can mean sitting down with the resident, having a cup of tea and a real conversation about how the resident is doing. She has found that residents prefer the digital care management system once they understand it because carers are able to spend more time with them. Megan commented: “Carers can be sociable and engage with residents so they can contribute to their own notes, keeping them much more involved with their care. Beforehand, carers would have to spend time away from the residents at the end of the shift completing paperwork. The digital system is also really useful for bi-annual reviews; I can hold a meeting in the lounge and connect my laptop to the main screen so we can all see the information and have a really good chat about the care plan with the resident – it’s a lot more involved, but also efficient, and residents like to be able to see their care plans so easily.”

Care information recorded electronically is also much easier to share; not only with other medical professionals, but also with close friends and family. Innovative care providers can utilise existing resources and involve these other parties from the very beginning; you can enable a service user to design their own care plan, involve family members in the on-boarding process or allow informal carers to contribute directly to the care notes. Having a digital system opens up vast opportunities to get better connected with the whole circle of care.

By enabling better communication and ensuring information is shared with those who need to know, your care team will be more aware of the individual service user’s needs; and ultimately, informed care leads to better care.

Get in touch today to see how digital care management can work for you.

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We spoke to Anne Weston from RHW and asked her what she would say the, “Top 10 essential care planning tips care providers need to consider when considering care plans and their management” would be. This article covers the areas she feels care providers can really make positive gains and improve the care they are able to provide.

The care planning process needs to follow an organised, systematic and deliberate format, which supports and guides care delivery. This means there should be a logical and systematic flow of the information, right through from the initial assessment to the final evaluation.