PBL Care - Case Study

Right from the beginning, PBL Care wanted to go beyond just providing a care service.
 
“I always think to myself that if I had to place my parents in care, what kind of service would I require?” said Qasim Bata, one of the Directors at PBL Care. 

Mohammed Lalji, Registered Manager added: “We have to reflect this attitude in how we serve all our clients.” 

When PBL Care started they were doing all their administration through Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, and subsequently they were concerned about human error, data entries going missing, and a lack of access to their records given the on-the-go nature of their care workers.

“When we first opened, we used to keep written care logs. Every month, someone would have to sit down and go through each page to make sure they were filled out properly so that we would pass the CQC audits”

This is risky, given the time lapse between notes being taken and the potential time of an error discovery. Similarly, this jeopardises client wellbeing as inaccurate records (through recording error or a failure to document information) can give other healthcare professionals a misleading overview of a person’s condition – leading to different assessments and diagnoses and potentially inappropriate treatments or care plans

PBL Care revamped their business with a suite of Access products, including Access PeoplePlanner (APP), Access Care Planning (ACP), and Access Evo (formerly Access Workspace), and according to Mr Bata and Mr Lalji this has been a fantastic overhaul of their operating practices. 

Task management

The structure provided by the Access solutions has made it much clearer for care professionals to better see and manage their day-to-day tasks or longer term objectives.
Care coordinators can manage multiple tasks at once and can handle both calls and note-taking at the same time. They also have the capability now to prioritise tasks based on client needs.

Oversight

Access Care Planning has given PBL Care greater insight into their processes and oversight of them. With Access Care Planning, the carers now have log notes for clients before staff even make a visit. They can check things such as previous call durations – indicative of problems or challenges, they can see medication requirements, and they can see general duty notes regards whether a person has eaten, or if they’ve had a fall.

The big benefit has been that PBL Care now no longer has to manually review care logs – they can be inspected at a glance or in depth in a quick and efficient manner.

Proactive Care

PBL Care is using Access products to be more proactive. With a large 65-inch screen set up in their Head Office, the team displays the live Access system. This can show carer check-ins, movements, and importantly delays.

Now, rather than waiting for those requiring support to query their appointment, PBL Care will proactively contact them – or their family/guardian – to inform them of the delay or change to schedule, to avoid worry and to ensure the individual feels valued as a customer.

Customer Support

The Access Group’s customer support has also been found helpful and responsive during the initial onboarding process at PBL Care.

“We have a contact at Access who’s quite hands on and proactive. We can call them whenever there’s something we don’t understand. If they can’t help, they’ll put us through to the Access Support Line who are good too”

said Qasim. 

With the help of Access and our system of products, PBL Care have achieved much.

Clients are more open

Access’ systems have enabled PBL Care’s clients to become more communicative, in turn allowing PBL Care to better understand their needs and meet them, helping them lead more independent lives.

“Access Care Planning helps our clients to become more open with us, to the extent that they start to see us more as a family and they become more confident in expressing themselves. This means we can better recognise and provide for their needs,” said Mr Lalji.

Mr Bata added: “A lot of these journeys have been amazing. We’ve had people that initially needed six hours’ worth of calls from the council because they needed that much support. We pushed them to become as independent as possible and reduce their reliance on support.”

Understanding an individual’s needs

PBL Care are able to utilise Access Care Planning’s data to better understand their clients’ needs.

According to Qasim, “With the help of Birmingham City University, we implemented a system called Power BI, which allows us to extract our logs from Access Care Planning onto a dashboard that shows us how long the care staff are staying in calls, what medications are not being taken by clients and why, and how often they’re going to the bathroom. It gives us an in-depth analysis that allows us to understand our clients’ needs even more”.

More knowledge leads to greater understanding, and solutions like Access Care Planning and PeoplePlanner are giving dashboard data that is easily communicated to management and carers alike, so that the whole team can see the good and the bad within the care service and areas that can be improved or optimised.

Business growth

Improved service and better data insights are the foundations for growth, and PBL Care has used the Access system to grow both their staff numbers and site locations over the past eight years.

In 2016, PBL Care began with just five members of staff. Now the Birmingham company is at over 100 staff members. This growth has also seen expansion from a Birmingham branch to additional sites in Sandwell (west Birmingham), as well as neighbouring Wolverhampton and Coventry.

Matching people with carers

PBL Care is utilising Access PeoplePlanner to match people with carers. The staff management solution highlights the education and training of each individual staff member, so that those in charge can assign appropriate carers to a client – without overloading the care professional in the process.

“Each individual has their own journey. As providers we have to make sure that we understand that journey, not only from the client’s point of view, but also from the care staff’s point of view”

Client interviews and risk assessments also support this process, finding out hobbies and interests, as well as language barriers or preferences. This then helps with the staff/client matching – putting like with like (where possible) to help build a bond of friendliness and trust going forward.

Better quality assurance

Access PeoplePlanner enables PBL Care to ensure their quality is consistent and that human errors are minimised. The software has its own training matrix for staff, and supervision spot checks are also performed.

The combination of better staff management through Access PeoplePlanner and better client management through Access Care Planning is allowing for immediate corrections to any data input errors, as well as more opportunities for colleagues to see one central hub of information and automatically act as additional eyes to proof for errors.

These improvements are also supporting CQC inspections, allowing inspectors to see visit logs, rostering, client plan structures, and the permission-based access rules that are in place for users to engage with client data only where necessary.

Family access

Access PeoplePlanner also helps keeps the family members of PBL Care’s clients updated and informed – a vital detail for many people who may not be local to the service and their family member themselves.

“Another fantastic point about Access PeoplePlanner is that we can grant access to the client’s family to view the individual’s logs, because we have a lot of service users that live locally but their family members do not live in the same country,” said Mohammed.

“They can access PeoplePlanner and say: ‘My mum’s had a good morning, she’s gone shopping with her carers.’ And this gives people that sense of connection: ‘Even though I’m thousands of miles away, I can read mum’s notes every day. I can see the pictures of her uploaded on the system.’”

Positive feedback

All of the above is important, but what do the staff at PBL Care feel about this? According to Mr Bata, they are receiving consistently positive feedback about Access’ software from staff.

The care team appreciates the simple scheduling setup to show where they need to be at anytime, and how easy it is to review and record data per client when visiting – especially when considering colleague notes on a person’s condition, medication requirements, and dietary restrictions.

“It allows them to get to know the client, before they’ve even gone to visit”

Similarly, clients and their families are generally happy with the service too, with Healthwatch Birmingham and Homecare both displaying strong, positive feedback about the services provided by PBL Care.

Such is the approval of their work that PBL Care has received local recognition for the quality of their work in the care sector, having been awarded the Top 20 Home Care Provider award in the West Midlands for the past four years.

Press coverage

This success has led to inevitable media coverage in the press, with interviews and reports by BBC Midlands Today, the Birmingham Mail, and the Express and Star. Mohammed recounts one specific instance where one of PBL Care’s clients - a former neurosurgeon - was featured.

“One of our clients is a neurosurgeon from Queen Elizabeth Hospital who had a tree fall on him when he was out cycling. He was disabled from the waist down. We assigned him care staff that were trained in physiotherapy. It was a very tough journey for him but now he’s back working.”

Buoyed by the success of their business in recent years, PBL Care has plans for future expansion beyond their four sites at present – seeking to enter other local councils in the West Midlands and bid for more contracts – and they view the Access system as an integral part of their ongoing journey.

“We have Access PeoplePlanner and Access Care Planning, and we use them for literally everything,” said Qasim.

“From our log notes, to our medication, to our scheduling, we rely on Access’ system. This system has been there for us throughout our journey to help us grow.

“Access has continued to consistently improve their software, which has allowed us to be more proactive and use more of our data in a better way. For an organisation like ourselves and many others that use Access, that been amazing.

“Whenever I’ve gone to networking sessions with other providers, I’ve always recommended Access because it’s a simple system, yet a very effective one.”