Making the most of digital technology in our care homes | News from Saxonwood

At Sussex Housing & Care we are keen to use technology to improve the lives of our residents, staff and families.  We have installed, and are continuing to install, a number of improvements to our homes to provide a more responsive service, improved record keeping and to free up staff time.

We are aiming for a more holistic approach between health services and the care we provide.

Since 2019 we have implemented :

Digital Social Care Records (DSCR).   We installed ICare now known as Access.  The system has a number of benefits including:

-         more regular reporting on residents progress;

-         sharing information easily with health professionals and families;

-         giving automated reminders when documents need refreshing;

-         giving an audit trail of who has updated documents and when via the date/time stamp; 

-         easily view reports to analyse falls, infections and undertake investigations; 

-         monitoring data over longer periods of time to track trends; 

-         quickly exporting a ‘resident ready information pack’ for a resident needing an ambulance/trip to the hospital, enabling the ambulance crew to understand key data about the resident. This is obviously shared with the resident’s consent; and

-         freeing up staff time to speak/care for residents

Electronic medication management system which is invaluable for alerting staff when medication is due.  The information is readily available for staff to see when medication has changed and the records integrate into the DSCR. 

Digital visitor check in system – we use a system called E-reception book delivered via a tablet. This enables visitors to sign in and their data is confidential on the tablet. Within the system we are able to receive feedback from visitors about their experience and this data is analysed on a quarterly basis and fed back.  If there are any issues with low scores these are investigated.  Additionally, the system enables us in an emergency such as fire, to take the tablet with us to do a roll call of who is in the building.

Staff rota system We use an app called planday.  It provides a rota system so the home can forward plan rotas 4 weeks in advance, which gives staff certainty and enables work life balance.  We can use the app to send out alerts to staff when a shift becomes available, encouraging existing and bank staff to take up the shift before resorting to agency staff.  We have regular agency staff that we use to keep continuity for our residents.

HR records system We have an easy to use software system called BreatheHR which enables all of our staff records to be held securely. We are able to pull off reports from the system to ensure records are up to date.

Online learning platform We like to use a mixed approach to learning and development.  We provide some training face to face as we believe it helps improve team work and communication alongside learning about the topic.  Additionally, we use My Learning Cloud which is an online portal to enable staff to undertake both mandatory and additional training. We extract regular reports to check training is up to date, alongside a formal HR audit.

Falls prevention/nursecall software In our newly expanded Oakwood Court care home in Haywards Heath, we are installing Adaptive Care.  The system has acoustic monitoring and a camera to enable night time monitoring of residents. The benefits are:

-         residents get a better quality of sleep – it has reduced the need for night time checks and will help reduce falls;

-         the system is personalised for each resident, they choose to turn off the acoustic monitoring or camera;

-         it can be tailored to preferred timings - if a resident wished to only be monitored between certain hours, we can do this.

At Oakwood’s sister home, Woodlands care home in Crowborough, we have received a  falls prevention grant from the Sussex Digital In Reach Team and have installed Nobi smart lamps , via Altus, which is similar technology – it monitors residents 24 hours a day with the aim of falls prevention.

·       Vital signs monitoring We are keen to further embed the work we do with health professionals to enable a more holistic view of a resident’s health and wellbeing. We are installing ‘Whzan blue boxes’ to enable electronic vital signs monitoring. This provides us with a more accurate health picture of our residents and allow more detailed discussions with health professionals about the need for health interventions

Sharing information with the health sector.   We are signing up to the Plexus health care records via Sussex Digital In Reach Team which will enable greater sharing of information about a resident’s health status.

Silent nursecall system – Nursecall Messaging System We are working with Spark Care to use the Blaucomm app to switch our existing nursecall system to silent within our Saxonwood care home.  This will enable alerts to be driven directly to care staff’s handsets and will create a more peaceful home and work environment for all.  Oakwood Court care home will also have a silent nursecall system once the Adaptive Care system is installed.

Care home enquiry management system We are working with Lottie who provide an enquiry management system that integrates with several websites such as Autumna and Carehome.co.uk.  This integration means we have a seamless customer service for potential customers and enables us to manage the workflow within the administrative teams.