Celebrating its 1000th customer, Person Centred Software has combined its knowledge of social care with cloud-based technology to invent a new way of working for front-line carers in care homes.
It has transformed how carers evidence care for the better with a mobile application that its customers can understand and use effectively to help them provide better care.
According to Jonathan Papworth, CEO of Person Centred Software, “Initially some people thought our icon driven approach was too simplistic, but over the five years since we started, time has shown it to be the most effective way to evidence care due to its speed of data entry, ease of use, and the ability for it to be used by non-native speakers of English, those with dyslexia and non-IT literate people.”
Alongside the application’s ease of use, the company has also developed an implementation process that works for its customers, helping them to adapt to change and move from paper-based processes to using the mobile application.
As an industry, care home providers continued to work on paper many years after other industries moved to working on desktop computers. And even then, whether on paper or other computer-based systems, care staff used to write everything up using words at the end of their shift; words which were often subject to interpretation, were inconsistent and could not be measured. Those who did move to recording care on a desktop computer made little time savings since it required staff to walk back and forth to a device throughout the day to record care.
The opportunity for care providers to transform their work in an effective ‘digital’ way only started when mobile devices became more commonplace. With its Mobile Care Monitoring application, Person Centred Software has changed the way that care staff work and record information.
As Jonathan explains, “Now, every member of staff uses the icon-based application on a handheld device throughout their shift. They evidence care in real-time, ensuring the quality of information is accurate and detailed. It enables every carer to save at least one hour a day on administration, compared to paper documentation. And managers also save time on care plan reviews and safeguarding with dashboards that deliver all the information to their fingertips. Time is even saved on admissions to hospital since up-to-date information can be automatically collated into a hospital pack.”
Whilst these time savings mean that staff have more time to care and spend with residents which leads to providing a better quality of care, the benefits are also vital for those managing the care home as a business.
Rishi Sodha, Care Director at Handsale Care Homes concludes, “As we grew our care home business, a major requirement was to have an overview of how each of our eight homes was performing. We also needed a risk register at board level to identify any potential events that could impact the organisation. Initially we saw Mobile Care Monitoring as a way to save time, but it has given us insight into things we just didn’t know.”
