The Best Care Home and Nursing Home Software in the UK 2024

What is care home software

Care home and nursing home software helps manage all aspects of running a care or nursing home. It provides tools to help manage the day-to-day tasks of a home by replacing the use of paper to: 

• save time 
• reduce expenditure  
• improve safety and compliance 
• eliminate any storage difficulties 

It can also help with the general management of a home including managing staff, enquiries, billing & income, rosters, timesheets (and clocking in), regulatory compliance, reminders about specific residents, manage workflow and alerts for safety, and allow families to view care plans and be able to see relatives’ progress (where appropriate).  

Every piece of care software will differ in the precise way it works, its level of features and functionality and how much it can be customised or configured. 

However, for most care home software providers the aim is to offer a more efficient way of running a home to allow more time spent providing quality person-centred care to your residents. 

What makes a care home or nursing home software the best? 

We are aware that every care home will have different needs and will have differing criteria when selecting which software to use.  

However, when comparing software there are some more general features and qualities all care homes will benefit from, and which must be considered when deciding which software is best for you. Here are just some of those general aspects to consider when comparing software: 

• Will the care home software save us time? 
• Can employees pick up how to use the software quickly? 
• Will it help improve the quality and safety of care? 
• Will it improve productivity of carers and managers? 

Who are the different care home software providers? 

There are dozens of providers of software for UK care and nursing homes, but based on our conversations with residential care providers these are some of the UK’s most popular (in no particular order):  

Nourish Electronic Care Planning  

Nourish Care Planning, provide a standalone care planning application. This tool utilises analytics and reporting tools to help improve efficiency and compliance. It also features a point of care application to allow Carers to evidence care provided at the bedside. It does not feature dynamic care planning or configurable assessment/risk forms. 

The Access Group  

Our own offering Access Workspace for Care connects your care suite of software, offering a variety of modules which can integrate with each other to help you deliver outstanding care. Access Care and Clinical (along with a wide range of other applications) is part of the Access Care suite and is a leading cloud-based digital care-planning and electronic health recording tool for residential and nursing care homes.  

CareDocs  

CareDocs is a stand-alone care planning system used by lots of smaller residential providers. The tool is low cost, quick and easy to implement and provides basic care planning functionality. It is not web enabled making remote access and online backup and restore difficult. The tool features a mobile application that allows for point of care recording. 

Person Centred Software  

Person Centred Software (PCS) are a stand-alone care planning provider with a focus on point of care data capture. The tool offers limited client configuration of assessment/risk templates and limited analytics capability. PCS have recently purchased Atlas EMAR providing integrated EMAR functionality, however this is restricted by the number of pharmacies available to integrate with this product.  Its icon driven digital care in its care monitoring helps improve efficiency especially with carers who have English as a second language.  

Are there any additional tools which each care home software provider offers? 

All the care home software providers work hard to improve efficiency of the business as well as improve care delivery. Often additional tools which each provider offers enables both of those aims to be achieved.  

Most of these providers offer additional features that can help care providers that have English as a second language, to ensure no miscommunication or confusion in notes in handovers happen:  

• All offer a speech to text feature to allow carers to record voice notes about any changes in a resident’s care plan.  
• The Access Group offers a best of both worlds with an ability for the system to auto-write notes, but also the option to personalise each one (as necessary) with typed or voice to text functions. 
• All care home software providers except The Access Group offer an instant chatting service amongst colleagues to easily report any changes in residents’ care to colleagues it directly impacts 
• Access Care and Clinical offers flag actions to notify groups with changes to care plans or other key information to reduce the risk of key information being missed. 
• Person Centred Software is icon driven making it easier for care professionals to select the feature the need easier and quickly. 

All also benefit from using cameras in their care home software apps to record body maps to easily track and monitor a resident’s injury or wound and how it is healing, as well as provide visual information on where medicated creams should be applied. An additional area all providers have created features on is allowing families and relatives to access information to see how their relatives are getting on. 

How much does each care home and nursing home software cost? 

Most care home and nursing home software operate their licences on how many clients are in the home.  

In general, for Access Workspace as a whole prices start from £3 and go up to £24 per bed per month. This is subject to the modules and solutions your care or nursing home requires from The Access Care Suite.  

The range may seem large; however we offer a variety of modules you can include in your software that integrate perfectly with each other to best suit your needs including: 

• Medication management and eMAR 
• Electronic care planning 
• Rostering and care home management  
• Auditing and quality management  
• Care training and eLearning  
• Safe visitor booking  
• Accurate policies and procedures  

Nourish’s pricing model offers licences depending on the number of clients. Its lowest model is valued at up to 7 clients and its highest model is valued at 1000+ clients (this pricing model is subjected to enterprise agreement). Its licences range from £100 month for the lowest model and for models varying from 8 clients up to 999 clients it varies from £2 to £3.50 per client per week.  

However, CareDocs and Person Centred Software are limited in advertising their pricing models and instead ask you to contact them for a quote.  

Which care home and nursing home software is best in 2024? 

This article should hopefully answer your questions on what the key differences are between what we feel are the UK’s best care and nursing home software providers, the pros and cons of each, and which one is best for you.  

If correctly used all of the 4 solutions we’ve assessed will help you achieve the 4 key points we started with, they will: 

• Save you and your staff time 
• Be easy for employees to use 
• Help improve care quality and safety  
• Improve productivity for all team members 

However, not all the providers offer the same thing. For example, some providers don’t offer fully customisable care document templates and instead they are created via answers in an assessment forms, limiting the personalisation of each care plan for each resident.  

Nourish creates advanced roles in their internal dashboards to grant specific access to care professionals so they are updated with information that is most important to them. CareDocs uses a cloud-based service to allow important tasks to be checked remotely through management portals and manages tasks to allow people access to what they need.  

Medication management should also be a consideration. It’s a big part of running a care home or a nursing home.  

Care Docs seem to have the most limited offering in this area. Nourish have integrations with a number of large eMAR/medication management systems but the actual strength of the integration - the level of information passed from those systems to and from Nourish - seems to be fairly limited. At least based on what they advertise. 

Access Group has a sophisticated integration between Access Care & Clinical and Access Medication Management that has been in place and developed for years and can interface with most pharmacy systems. However, we don’t integrate with other eMAR systems, we prefer to offer a cast-iron integration in a single system. 

Person Centred Software recently acquired Atlas eMAR offering a number of other medication solutions. There is limited information on how the acquisition of this eMAR system will benefit users and how the level of integration may vary between systems. So, to avoid doubt best to scrutinise the system yourself in a real demonstration. Unfortunately, the information available online is more limited than it should be. Many providers are understandably reluctant to be open about their shortcomings, or their rivals’ strengths.  

As The Access Group we of course think our care home software is the best. However, all the 5 software providers here have customers for a reason. Their solutions work and some may be a better fit for you than our own.  

It’s up to you which provider you think will be best for you. It depends on whether you want a single care planning point solution software or if you want a provider that can plan a full digital transformation of all your processes with integrated solutions. We think Access is probably the best fit for you if you are looking to the long-term. Our solutions are established, robust and properly integrated. What’s more when you become an Access equipped care provider, a whole suite of care solutions (including eLearning, governance and compliance, policies and procedures become available to you).  

To really uncover which is the best solution for you, you will need to get in touch with the providers that appeal most to you, scrutinising and comparing each, with the unique aspects of your own care service in mind.