Country Court are a large care group with over 30 care homes specialising in nursing, residential, dementia and respite care. They have rolled out Nourish to over 20 of their homes so far.
We caught up with Andy Colman, project manager for Country Court since 2019. He has been helping with implementation across their 30+ homes. So far they’ve rolled out across over 20 homes, and Andy let us know how they’re getting on with Nourish…
Did you have any concerns about going digital?
There were some fears about making mistakes, and it taking longer than recording on paper because they would have to learn the system, particularly for older residents Some carers are intimidated by how many interactions there are within the app, but once they realise that it’s tailored to the individual and you don’t have to necessarily use all of them for everyone, they began to see the benefits of it.
How do you think Nourish has helped you to enhance quality care?
Because all of the interactions and risk assessments feed into the care plans, you’ve got all that information available to you so that you can tailor the care to that individual. For example, if a resident has a knee problem, the Nourish app will allow you to tailor the care plan, flagging the mobility issue as an amber warning, so even if everything else is fine, carers will be aware of that issue until they’ve got their mobility back.
You don’t have to trawl through pages and pages of care plans to know everything about a resident, you can filter the care plans to find the information you need. This is ensuring carers always provide the right type of care for each individual.
“It’s great because each of our homes works slightly differently, and so the managers can really tailor Nourish to fit in with how they work.”
Would you say that Nourish has been easily scalable across all of your homes?
Recently we’ve put a number of our forms into Nourish and rolled them out across all of the homes, for example our PEEPs forms have been rolled out by our risk department. It’s really easy, all we have to do is add the interaction, run it by all the managers and if they wish to use it it can be switched on for that particular home.
We also have many homes who run activities such as pottery, arts and crafts etc and we have them all in Nourish as interactions so that any home can switch those on and use them if they want to. We can also use these interactions on an adhoc basis and tailor it to the individual resident.
If we ever want to add a more complex interaction, the support team at Nourish have been great with helping us apply it.
How have you personalised Nourish to meet the needs of your care service?
It’s great because each of our homes works slightly differently, and so the managers can really tailor Nourish to fit in with how they work. At one of our homes, for example, the manager has added bedroom checks as an interaction as that is a part of their daily routine at that home.
Have you had any feedback from CQC as a result of going digital with Nourish?
Yes, very much so regarding the personalised interactions. Inspectors have been able to ask for specific information from Nourish and we are able to provide it at the touch of a button and we are able to evidence how we are supporting people in real time.
How has Nourish helped you throughout the Covid-19 pandemic?
The advantage of Nourish is that seniors or managers don’t need to be in the home, they can access Nourish from home. So should someone need to self-isolate, they can still keep up to date with the day-to-day running of the home and see what information is being captured.
In some homes we were also able to separate out floors and put people into “bubbles” and the managers can very easily see through Nourish that people are adhering to these infection control measures. They can also clearly see who may have been in hospital, who has the virus and who doesn’t etc.
