Compliance in health and social care - what’s it costing you? 

Two challenges are particularly common in these sectors. 

Remote workers and reporting

Health and social care workers are seldom based in a single location. More often they will be out visiting clients in the field, where notes are often still taken on paper. For these to be used as part of an audit trail they must be stored manually or transcribed into a digital system at a later date. This means that incident reporting can be a slow process, making it hard for a management team to take action quickly.

Dispersed data storage

Information that is required for auditors and commissioners is frequently stored across a variety of disparate systems and media, from spreadsheets to paper. This includes training records and the necessary evidence that all staff are correctly qualified for the work they are doing. 

The solution 

Tackling these challenges means pulling together your compliance information into a single digital system. That includes all the separate spreadsheets and paper files, along with any disparate software packages that have been acquired along the way. 

It’s also vital in this sector to have a system that supports remote users. Staff need to be able to log incident reports but also access any documentation they need in their job. One feature we’ve incorporated into MY Compliance Management is the use of QR codes that can be read by a mobile phone, allowing staff to access centrally stored information from anywhere.  

Holding data centrally in this way and providing remote access to it means that your organisation can:

• Log incidents in real time so that management can take rapid action
• Access vital asset information including checks and compliance requirements
• Manage employee certifications and training records

Ategi is a Welsh charitable organisation that supports people with physical and learning disabilities, autism, mental ill health and addiction, as well as individuals transitioning from children’s services. Ategi’s self-employed carers work independently across Wales and England visiting clients.

The challenge 

With such a dispersed workforce, it was very difficult for Ategi to maintain a consistent view of compliance across the entire organisation. Manual, paper-based record-keeping created inefficiencies and the organisation lacked a way to track incidents in real time or monitor the responses to these. In some cases, incident reports were taking several days to reach the central team, by which time it was too late to take effective remedial action. 

At the same time, the company’s head of services, Richard Cox, had to produce fortnightly reports for trustees outlining any compliance issues, including full accounts of all incidents, along with the action taken. He also had to be ready to produce documents for auditors such as the Care Quality Commission and Care Inspectorate Wales on request. Compiling evidence would take hours of Richard’s time as he manually located documents from different systems - which might be in Excel, on an email or sometimes on paper.  

With clients who were among some of the most vulnerable people in society, it was essential to establish a compliance structure that was robust and effective.

The solution

Ategi installed MY Compliance Management to manage incident reporting, action tracking, audit evidence and governance reporting. The solution brought everything into one place, providing real time visibility for managers and a simple, easily accessible interface for carers out in the field.  

Carers can now log incidents via their mobile phones, rather than writing things down on paper and transcribing them at a later date. This not only saves valuable time with clients, but information reaches the central office immediately so that action can be taken at once. Carers can also access training information just by scanning a QR code, no matter where they are located.  

Almost 400 people now use the system and the compliance process has been transformed.  

A clean, evidenced trail of compliance activity is available to be presented directly to regulators and commissioners, while trustee reports take a fraction of the time. 

“MY Compliance Management has enabled us to ensure easy reporting of all events, close monitoring of these, with the ability to set actions and have a complete audit trail from start to closure. Producing reports for our trustees has saved me at least an hour every fortnight in compiling the evidence… It’s been absolutely fantastic.” - Richard Cox, Head of Services