Lancashire County Council provide care with a vision. They are committed to providing the best quality service, safely. Supporting older people with kindness, dignity, care and compassion to live their life their way. This vision shapes their approach to caring for people with dementia, support needs and their short-term beds. Their focus on promoting independence for the people they support is reflected throughout their services. With 16 Residential homes, Lancashire County Council knew they needed a digital partner that could align with their vision, support their team and inform their managers. We sat down with Ozayr Patel, Intermediate Care Senior Operations Manager and Rachel Houghton, Development Manager both working within Older People Care Services, to discuss why they chose Nourish Care, and the benefits it brings to their community.
Why did you decide to digitise your services?
“I’ve been aware of digital systems in care since 2015-16,” said Ozayr Patel. “I actually went to a conference in 2018 and met several software suppliers, including Nourish! I remember our Head of Service Chris Bagshaw saying to me ‘look out for care planning systems, see which one’s the best one in your opinion, and feedback’. It was since then that we’ve looked for a solution. We wanted to move away from paper and we needed to make sure we were keeping up with the competition with what was going on in other care homes and not fall behind.”
“Once we secured some grants from the NHS we were able to start shopping properly. We found a few solutions as possible choices for a digitisation partner. In the end, we went ahead with Nourish because we felt it was the easiest system for carers to see and to utilise. As well as that, Nourish provides the best oversight of our homes for our management. I definitely felt that Nourish was the best option available for both our carers ease of use and our manager’s oversight.”
How does Nourish align with your vision for care?
“Simply put,” said Ozayr, “Nourish allows us to make sure that we are spending as much time as we can with our residents. So, in the past, there were times when during the last hour of a shift, the carers were stuck doing monitoring charts or diary notes or updating support plans on paper. Nourish changed that for us by empowering our carers to update their notes in real time.”
“What’s worth noting is, with Nourish initially, some carers thought ‘Oh, you know what? This is going to get in the way’, or ‘this is going to take more time’. I’ve visited a lot of the places who initially said these things to me, and they’ve all turned around and said, ‘actually, you know, I’m doing more care than I was able to do when I was using paper’. They came back to me and gave me that feedback. Those same people that were concerned about implementing Nourish came back to me and said ‘it’s absolutely easier, and it’s much faster’.
“The time element is so important. Our carers are able to quickly record the care that they’ve provided and spend more time interacting with our residents. Being able to do more activities with that resident. Being able to look after them in a better manner, and give that give them more time and attention, which the residents deserve, that’s our vision in a nutshell.”
“Nourish is also fantastic when we look at the safety aspect,” added Rachel Houghton. “It gives live information and more visible information to management teams. So that means if there is something not quite right for a person, maybe they’re not feeling so good, all the information you need is there. Information we can share with a GP at the touch of a button. So we don’t need to rush around and get the relevant files. Nourish goes beyond saving time, it promotes information sharing and supports safe care as well.”
How does Nourish support your highly personalised approach to care?
“Nourish allows us to record all the things we do with our residents,” said Ozayr. “All the little interactions that we share. We can record them in a timely manner and factor them into future care planning.”
“We’ve updated our training for our care teams,” continued Rachel. “To try and really push the use of Nourish to personalise those timelines. For management teams to show those differences in people’s routines. Through Nourish, you can build that daily timeline and show the difference between people’s timelines. For example, the questions being turned on and off by relevancy to each resident individually. So, we’re really doing a push on that at the moment to try and further personalise our timelines. Our teams are getting used to it, and we can already see that next level person-centeredness.”
How do you use Nourish to improve your oversight of your care and discover trends?
“We use a few Insights dashboards,” said Ozayr, “and we’re excited to get to grips with Analytics soon. We currently use the support plan dashboard quite a bit. We’re drilling down on specific insights like overdue support plans. And it’s not just us in the head office, our senior managers and quality managers can see what’s going on in our homes easily too.
“Whereas in the past, they had to be there physically and directly see the dates being put on support plans. Now they can review multiple homes from one location. It’s not just the care plans. There’s other things we look at as well, like body maps. Seeing how often body maps are updating, making sure that bruises or marks on bodies are being updated on a regular basis. Nourish has enabled us to do this. I imagine Rachel might want to add a few more things, she loves those dashboards, I can say that definitely!”
“The warning dashboards are really good,” added Rachel. “It means we’re able to help the homes to understand why a warning is appearing. For example; is it that staff are waiting until a lull to be able to take action? Do you need to do some tweaks to your schedules? Is that schedule still right for that person? Has there been a change in need? It improves our ability to respond and develop quality care. Even though on the surface it’s just about warnings.
“It can drive positive outcomes in a number of ways. Things like weight monitoring and the MUST assessments. The fact our homes can keep an eye on them at the touch of a button, rather than having to scroll through everyone’s assessments. Compared to the amount of time that manual data collection and analysis takes for the homes. We can do it so much better with the dashboards, it’s game changing.”
What are the positive outcomes from the oversight the dashboards provide?
“There are so many,” said Rachel. “We’re able to respond so much more effectively. Through dashboards, our managers can proactively see everything they need. Whereas previously any investigations we’ve had to undertake, or recorded incidents, will be in a paper file. One you might pick out when you’re doing an audit on a monthly basis, if you happen to pick that file. Now we are seeing the dashboards empower our managers to deliver positive outcomes because they have more visible oversight of their service and the people utilising it. I love the dashboards.”
How does this increased oversight from the dashboards help improve the support you provide?
“When it comes to supporting people through the dashboards,” said Ozayr, “the alerts specifically are incredible. Say I’m a manager and I was getting alerts for personal care in the morning, quite a bit for a certain person. These alerts highlight we’re late to a specific appointment, 15 minutes late, 20 minutes late, every single day. Why is that? I might need more carers at that time, I might need to adjust travel or shifts. Whatever the cause, I can start solving it because the alerts brought it to my attention. So it gives our teams that level of intelligence. I think Nourish can be utilised in amazing ways. In making sure that we are providing the right support and defining enough staff members.”
“Nourish is brilliant for capitalising on the information our teams collect throughout their day, and it’s because it is in real time. Nourish is powered by real time information, and now so are we! It’s something that that I did not have at my fingertips in the past, but now I do. Nourish gives us the potential to manage our time better, being able to deploy more staff members at appropriate times and being able to get more stuff done in the home. Which means that we can give that time we’ve saved to the residents. Being able to do more activities, being able to do more care with the residents. I wish we had Nourish back when I was directly managing services!”
