5 reasons why you should be using a digital care planning platform

The government set digital deadline requires at least 80% of care services to be using a digital care planning system by March 2024. But what benefits can using a digital care planning platform truly bring to your care service?

With a digital care planning platform, your paper-based care plans will be transformed. Care notes can be completed on the go allowing for more detailed and accurate records. On the go recording means information doesn’t get missed or forgotten and care teams don’t have to spend hours writing down their notes when they get a chance. The notes recorded digitally or via the speech to text function will be easier to read for all the care team, saving time on figuring out a member of staff’s handwriting.

With more accurate notes, comes more accurate care. Where care teams are able to record notes immediately after providing care, the care they delivered and any changes no matter how small in a person are fresh in their mind. This information will be recorded, and senior carers are able to pick it up and act upon it, ensuring the people you support are receiving the most appropriate care suitable for them. Gaps in records can be quickly identified and highlighted and notes are accessed quickly and easily within the online platform. Trends with regards to MUST, Weight loss, Food and Fluid management are more easily identifiable and acted upon.

As care notes can be logged on the go, your care teams will have more time to dedicate to delivering person-centred care. With all the necessary information about the people you support on the devices from care plans, care notes, handover notes, daily tasks, alerts and more, your care teams will have all the information they need, literally in the palms of their hands. Time will no longer be wasted looking for a file and reading through all the handwritten notes.

By adopting Nourish’s digital care planning platform, carers in Leicestershire County Care Ltd (LCCL) home Harvey House, save an average of an hour a week while care team leaders save at least two hours per week. In another LCCL home Whittingham House the team saves approximately 20 minutes per carer per week. With 10 carers on the floor, this works out at 200 minutes per week – just over 3 hours of time saved that can be reallocated back to the people they support.

This saving means that carers have more time to deliver quality person-centred care and time for activities and outings that are essential to the wellbeing of residents, all resulting in improving the health of the people they support.

Becoming ecologically friendly is a goal many care services and businesses across all sectors have set for themselves. The UK government has pledged to be net zero by 2050 while the NHS is working towards being net zero by 2040 with 80% of the reductions happening by 2028.

Using a digital care planning platform will help to reduce the amount of paper you use in your care service. 65% of care services using Nourish reported that they saved up 100 sheets of paper every single week just by using Nourish. Similarly, 95% of our care service managers reported that they save up £2,000 on stationery alone every year by using Nourish. We encourage more remote demonstrations and training of our platform to reduce our carbon footprint and either allow you to purchase your own devices or can provide sustainable devices so your care service can take the steps towards being greener.

Using Nourish gives you, your home managers and senior management team a bird’s eye view of every home in your remit. From head office, directors can observe trends across the whole group, while home managers are able to identify trends within residents in their home as well as trends with staff interactions, building team morale and delivering praise or training where required.

When LCCL were using paper before they went digital, if the senior management team wanted to see the care delivered and the health of the residents supported by LCCL, they would have to go each location and read the handwritten notes. An extremely time-consuming task where it is also hard to spot trends.

The ability to see an overview of every service within your care group gives a more consistent approach to care. You are able to see all the alerts and warnings that have been raised in each care service allowing you to analyse how long warnings have been open and the types of warnings being raised. This will help you identify any problems and put improvement measures in place. This ensures that all your services are working to the standards set by you and you are able to see where one service may need extra support and which home would be best to take direction from.

“At Harvey House, I can oversee all residents and staff on a daily basis to ensure all needed interactions have been met. Reports make gathering information such as incidents/accidents, ABC charts easier to manage and audit in a weekly basis, paperwork cannot get lost as everything is all in one place. I can complete these audits at home or at work.” – Lisa Pegg, Harvey House Manager, LCCL

Fully utilising the features and tools that come with a digital care planning platform can have a positive effect on your CQC ratings. Nourish is streamlined in a way that allows care teams to deliver person-centred care to all residents. Because the system is intuitive and easy to use, teams are able to spend more meaningful time with the people they support due to the time saved.

The ability to give evidence to various stakeholders quickly and efficiently is also one great benefit of using Nourish. With reports pulled instantly at the click of a button, the key information is available in an easy to read dashboard. Care services are able to give temporary secure access to the Nourish system to CQC inspectors and Local Authority Compliance inspectors if they wish to view specific care plans. In the current climate of where remote inspections are taking place more frequently, this will save an immense amount of time.

“Using Nourish has definitely had a positive impact on our CQC ratings, particularly due to the record keeping features meaning detailed care notes are recorded in the moment.” – Stuart Vive-Kananda, Leicestershire County Care LTD, Owner