East Sussex Joint Community Rehabilitation Service - Case Study

Prior to using our CM Care Management Software in 2019 they had previously used a simple rostering solution. This solution was limited and impacted the efficiency of the day-to-day running of their service.

Support Workers did not have access to real-time information about visit schedules, meaning they had to call the office to find out their schedule for the next day even when it was their day off or when they were on annual leave. Support Workers found this extremely frustrating as it massively disrupted their work-life balance and it would be regularly mentioned as a reason for leaving in their exit interviews.

The lack of digitised rotas also meant when support workers did call in to find out their visits for the next day there would be long waiting times as most would phone in at similar times each day. This also meant on call teams spent more time late in the afternoon informing support workers about the visits for the next day instead of responding to emergencies.

Relying on paper schedules also meant punctuality could never be recorded and that East Sussex Council had to rely on trusting their support workers to arrive and depart their visits at the right time. This also made it difficult to identify if and when they had met demand capacity.

Medication management was entirely paper based and they faced several challenges including: tracking missed or omitted medication, medication records being stored at client’s home resulting in no easy oversight for the office team, as well as both transcribing and recording errors.

Through relying on paper processes therefore, their administrative tasks slowly became more and more inefficient due to relying on using multiple different processes and spreadsheets at any given time.

These challenges motivated East Sussex to find solutions that empowered staff with all the relevant information they needed, and helped to promote better wellbeing for their clients to further assist with self-medicating and improving client’s independence, as well as their safety.

In 2019 East Sussex Joint Community Rehabilitation Service started using a range of technol ogy from HAS Technology including CM Scheduling with MaxCare visit optimisation, Mileage Wizard, CM Mobile for real-time visit monitoring and CMBI for business intelligence reporting.

Now all these modules are a part of our Access CM solution.  They also now use our eMAR solution too. Our eMAR solution, Access Medication Management, aims to help deliver the right medication at the right time, whilst recording administration of medication accurately and alert users to any missed medications.

Johanna Hart, Practice Manager explains why they initially decided to use our eMAR solution as a pilot:

We took the opportunity to get involved in piloting the eMAR solution as we see medication management as our biggest area of risk. Because of the nature of our reablement service, medication management isn’t a day-to-day occurrence so it’s especially important to have a robust audit trail and systems in place to identify any errors quickly. CM’s eMAR gives us visibility we simply didn’t have before.

1. Support Workers have been empowered with real-time information

Having the availability of the notes recorded against the client record means that Support Workers are better informed and it allows them to be well-prepared to deliver the best care.

Through using our CM Software, scheduling visits became more optimised as it ensured locality and time to travel between visits were all considered to ensure punctuality. This helped to increase their planning efficiency and through all this information being presented on the CM app, support workers no longer had to ring the on call team at the end of every day to find out what they were doing the next day.

By having the medical information of their clients and their rotas in the palm of their hands the number of calls from support workers to the on call team about rotas reduced by 80%. This meant that the on call team had more time to respond to emergencies and make sure their clients were consistently their top priority.

Johanna Hart, Practice Manager, explains:

Since we implemented CM Mobile, Support Workers’ have reported their work-life balance has improved. They have all the information on the app on their phone and they no longer have to be thinking about their schedules the day before or spending their time trying to get through to the office by telephone.

Through using our eMAR solution East Sussex Joint Community Rehabilitation Service has seen less time being spent on transcribing both initial and monthly medication updates to allow more time to be spent supporting clients. The reduced volume of paperwork within the clients home also supports the council’s objective of making better use of their resources.

Overall staff anxiety in supporting clients has been reduced as support workers are more confident they have all the up-to-date and relevant information whilst on the move to deliver the best quality care.

2. Gaining visibility of care delivery

Using the app has allowed a reduction in missed medication because Support Workers can access all the latest details and information in real-time. So,  if a Support Worker is running late relocating and reallocating clients to Support Workers couldn’t be any easier.

Medication administration errors have reduced by 70% improving client wellbeing and allowing further time to be spent supporting them as support workers are no longer spending significant amounts of time on paperwork post an incident.

This overall has massively reduced the number of administrative tasks and helped streamline their service further. Through our CM app offering offline functionality, support workers can also access the information and input the information they need whenever and wherever they are with full confidence it will automatically update again once their internet connections have been restored.

Prior to using us they had no visibility on client’s journeys due to all files being located in client’s homes. Now they can see in real-time arrival and departure times of each visit as well as the support and medication administered to gain fuller visibility of their care delivery to help make improvements and divert resources when needed.

Through having all information needed centralised in one place end-users and their families are a lot happier as they were beginning to get annoyed having to continuously retell their stories every time a new support worker visited. Now support workers can find out everything they need to know before they enter a client’s home to get a better sense of who they are before they go in.

Now the real-time information allows added security and reassurance for all parties. If medication is missed it is easy to identify a Support Worker nearby who could go and rectify the situation.

Our solution provides body maps including information on where to apply cream or patches and supplies. Support Workers have all the relevant information on the medications a client takes, so even if they have not supported a particular client before they have all the correct and up-to-date information to do so.

Having all the information they need in one place means that medication administration errors have reduced dramatically, support workers and service users alike have more confidence in the service and emergencies can be responded to quicker to ensure better person-centred care is delivered.

Johanna Hart, Practice Manager, explains:

The CMBI business intelligence data is providing the high-level view needed to manage the service whilst allowing us to drill down into individual detail if required. In addition to the standard reports we have found the ability to develop bespoke reports very useful.

3. Improving back office efficiency

Overall one of the biggest efficiencies for the back offices at East Sussex Joint Rehabilitation Service has been the saving of time, the biggest being the time spent on calls between the office and Support Workers. This has  allowed the service to use people’s time for different things and introduce more flexible working which wasn’t practical before.

Mileage Wizard removed the need for Support Workers to make mileage claims manually as the information goes straight to payroll which has automated and digitalised what was a time-consuming process. Administration time has been reduced as a result of this.

East Sussex are now also in a better position to demonstrate their compliance compared to their previous paper-based system. Through extending how they previously captured some information electronically, further datasets can be used for reporting in the future.

In general through digitalising and streamlining their processes to all be located in one centralised place they now have access to more data than they have ever had before to improve client’s journeys to deliver better care and receive better outcomes.

Johanna Hart, Practice Manager, explains:

We now have more data than ever and the reports we would have never have dreamed of.

Since using our CM Care Management Software and using our EMAR solution, Access Medication Management, East Sussex Joint Community Rehabilitation Service have experienced improvements in a variety of areas to improve their client safety and delivery of care.

Support Workers have found our CM software very beneficial. The app is easy and clear to use. The use of body maps is a useful way to ensure Support Workers have all the relevant information on client’s medication in a visual way and its offline functionality means the information can be accessed whenever and wherever a support worker is.

Learn more about our Access CM software today by downloading our guide and learning how we can help streamline your care services to deliver better person-centred care targeting every care need of your community.

Discover more about our Access Medication Management solution to see how our eMAR software can help improve your community’s auditing and compliance to give more reassurance to all parties involved to improve client safety, reduce medical incidents, and deliver better person-centred care.

Contact us today and let’s get started in streamlining your care services more efficiently to reduce admin tasks, save time, allow a better work-life balance, and ultimately deliver the best continuity of care.