Care Home Compliance: Are you over-complicating it?
Looking specifically at the Care Home business, there are unique challenges that can make it difficult to implement a robust quality and compliance framework.
The management and operational layer of a Care Home business is forever changing. Groups grow through acquisition adopting alternative ways of recording the same information and care audit data. Managers change, bringing with them their own interpretation on compliance.
Head office staff change too and will often bring newer ways of collecting and reporting data. The result is a series of different spreadsheets, a mixed bag of audit templates (word and spreadsheet documents) and a great deal of data manipulation required to get a view across all services. And it is not just the spreadsheet that shoulders the load but the innocent word document too.
It is typical in many businesses, not just Care Homes, that spreadsheets are used in ways they were never intended to be used. Using the wrong tool for a job will undoubtedly make things difficult, after all you wouldn’t use a screwdriver to dig a hole. Is your Care Home business making things unnecessarily difficult by using the wrong tools?
Here we list the most common issues raised that lead providers to switch to Access Care Compliance:
Our ‘database’ contains a lot of bad data
One of the biggest misuses of Excel we see all the time is that people refer to their spreadsheet as a ‘database’. With critical evidence, incident and report information held in spreadsheets users run the risk of data loss and an inability to easily share information across multiple users. Perhaps the biggest reason here to adopt a specialist tool like our Care Compliance solution is the security and integrity of data. With reliable data, it is easy to build reports and share data.
We have a wide mix of audit templates
With audit templates created in Excel (or Word), there is little or no standardisation across the care audits carried out. Over time homes will adopt their own version, forms are amended, updated and adapted but with little enforcement to ensure all audits are standard across the organisation. If all sites are audited differently then it is impossible to measure quality reliably. Perhaps the biggest issue is when multiple users save the document locally so they can make changes. With so many versions floating around, it is difficult to know which one is accurate.
If care audits are held and maintained online then users can be assigned the correct audits, audit completion can be tracked and monitored and the results can be reported on instantly across the whole organisation.
Forms are not always filled in correctly
Another issue when using Excel for a form, whether a complaint form, an audit or an action plan, is that fields (text boxes really) are open to abuse and misinterpretation. This results in forms being incorrectly completed and can make it nearly impossible to accurately report across multiple services. Software tools like Access Care Compliance help users to fill in forms correctly and when a form is changed all users automatically get the updated version. Reports are also updated too.
Our training data is not up to date
Most service providers maintain important training matrix information in large spreadsheets. Getting an accurate view on training across one home, let alone multiple homes, can be challenging particularly when everyone updates their spreadsheet differently. A good software tool makes it easy to stay on top of your training data and ensures data is collected correctly and safely stored.
Actions are not always followed up
With action plans being updated in word documents and excel spreadsheet reports used for managing tasks it is little surprise that actions are difficult to track and follow. Spreadsheets lack the automation features found in workflow software like Access Care Compliance. For instance, when an action plan is overdue in any area, Care Compliance notifies the appropriate manager. Without these workflow features, the action plans will frequently stall. And as in other examples above there will be multiple versions being saved and it becomes very difficult to track the right version and prove compliance.
With simple and easy to use solutions available it is not surprising that care home providers across the country are shifting away from spreadsheets and paper-based processes. Care Home Compliance contains all of the care audits and reports you need to manage compliance and quality. We have a mix of large and small providers as well as ex CQC inspectors all using Care Compliance to carry out audits, provide reports and more.
