Care Homes: Improving standards and efficiency
Erskine Care Homes are the largest care givers to Veterans and their spouses in Scotland, providing care for over 100 years, currently accommodating 339 residents across 4 facilities. Over the past couple of years, Erskine has been on a mission to digitise their processes in order to improve compliance, increase time with residents and maximise the safety across their organisation.
Erskine's use of Access' integrated electronic care planning and medication management software has meant staff can spend more quality time with residents, with all the information they need at the point of care and complete management oversight over quality and safety.
Aims
- Fully integrated care and medication management system, updated in real time
- Enabling staff to spend quality time with residents while creating detailed, person-focused care plans
- Management team gained a comprehensive view of care across multiple sites, enabling proactive risk assessment and care management
Access Care Home Software has helped Erskine to manage medication and keep care records electronically giving them the freedom to deliver efficient and high-quality care to their residents. The improved consistency and detail of their records is helping them to tailor their care to residents’ needs, whilst ensuring regulation and compliance across their care homes and allowing them to demonstrate to visitors and governing bodies the high-quality care they provide.
Hear more from the Erskine team
Real-time record keeping for a truly person-focused care approach
One of the key challenges for the care industry is balancing robust and effective record keeping with spending quality time with residents.
Since introducing mobile point of care software, staff at Erskine have found that they are able to spend more quality time with residents, whilst staying on top of their record keeping.
'We use the software every day, from the minute we start. It’s a helpful tool for us because it means we can take the laptops or iPads with us. I can sit beside a resident, I can update things as we’re doing it, but also I can be with the resident having some quality time.' Pamela Nugent, Registered Nurse
Registered Nurse Heather Fyfe adds, ‘We have handheld devices, which are less intrusive, so you’re not sitting with a laptop or an iPad, you’re sitting with a small handheld device which is really nice. You can be sitting in the lounge watching a movie, and taking notes, and the residents are unaware. It still feels like their home, not like they’re in a hospital. It’s really nice.’
This is lifting a lot of the pressure previously placed on carers and nurses to choose whether to come away from their residents to spend time completing paper records through the day or spending time at the end of their shift filling out a day’s worth of records and risking forgetting or mis-recording information.
