Technology in care homes

Available technology in our care homes

We use many digital systems throughout our care home, and we thought that you might be interested in some of the detail.

Needless to say, we take care of the technical side of things behind the scenes and help our residents to use the technology appropriate for them.

Our systems include:

Used by residents and families:

• High bandwidth internet
• Wifi thoughout the home
• Voice over Internet phones, which means residents can make and receive calls anywhere within the home
• Zoom, Teams and virtually any online meeting including residents and relatives meetings and calls with GP/ third parties
• Family portal, which gives minute by minute updates on loved ones (see Nourish)
• Online visit booking application

Used to support our operations:

• Nourish digital care management system
• Omnicell – electronic medications administration
• Nexus nurse call – enables real time monitoring of nurse calls and response times
• Sophisticated monitoring, governance and quality control processes
• Proxy access – online medications ordering / admin
• GP connect – enables us to view resident’s health records
• Trusted Care enquiry management – used to support enquiries for admissions
• Asana – online purchasing and contractor management system
• Microsoft Dynamics Finance system and online payroll
• Judgement Index – ‘values’ based recruitment and staff development product
• Remote video meetings
• Online staff training

High bandwidth internet

We use high bandwidth internet, typically fibre-based, throughout our care homes. This enables us to achieve a greater data transfer rate at speeds of more than 50mbps both upstream and downstream. A faster connection is fundamental in our use of digital systems, connectivity, and entertainment for our residents.

Wifi

Wifi can be accessed throughout our care home, in communal areas and in each room. 

Using Wifi in our care homes enables residents to have immediate access to:

• Amazon Alexa
• TV & movies on demand
• Voice over Internet Telephone (VoIP)
• Video communications with relatives and friends
• Internet browsing using their own devices

Our residents’ relatives have the same access to Wifi in our care homes. 

Our staff benefit from phone access as well as the use of IT, care monitoring and advanced nurse call applications throughout the care home.

VoIP phones

By implementing VoIP enabled phones, we are future-proofing our care home for BT’s ISDN switch off coming in 2025, which will mean that all voice calls are already being made over the internet.

GP/ third party online meetings

When able to, we will conduct healthcare meetings online, so that our residents can be seen promptly by their GP or social worker. Healthcare professionals can work more efficiently where there isn’t a need to travel.

Family Portal

The Family Portal is an extension to Nourish that allows families to monitor the progress of their loved ones’ care in real-time and view their individual care home care plan. 

Relatives can see updates about what their loved one is getting up to during the day and even see photographs of them, which can be a great comfort when you’re unable to visit in person.

Online visit booking application

We provide an online visitor booking system to make it easier for family members to arrange a visit with a resident, without the need to contact the home directly each time.

Nourish Digital Care Management System

The Nourish Digital Care Management System is a market leading cloud-based software application that enables us to manage and coordinate resident care. This is the core application into which many of the other systems and applications interface and provide information. 

This digital system allows our team to provide person-centred care by creating very detailed personal care plans and activity timelines, scored assessments and detailed notes that can be accessed in an instant. 

Nourish enables us to record, in great detail, many different types of information including weights, nutrition, hydration, medications, falls / accidents / incidents, skin condition, vital signs, mood and much more. Every member of staff has a smartphone through which they access and update Nourish as they go about their work.

Managers are able to access live information through a ‘dashboard’. This means that they can both ensure that everything that needs to be done is being done and also to make well-informed proactive decisions to enable even better care.

Both Nourish and the dashboard issue alarms and alerts to a specified hierarchy of users (including the manager and CEO!) to inform if tasks have not been completed or serious incidents have occurred.

Omnicell

Omnicell is an advanced electronic medication administration and recording system. It uses automated processes to support the safe administration of recording of every single item of medication that is prescribed and administered. It also has very detailed stock control functionality to enable us to be sure that meds have been administered and to ensure we always have enough stock. Overall Omnicell greatly improves medications safety whilst improving staff  efficiency.

Nexus nurse call

Nexus nurse call is a communication system that interfaces with the existing nurse call system.   

It works by sending a ‘silent’ nurse call /alert through to the smartphone which every member of staff carries. This means that unlike most other homes we don’t have nurse call bells sounding the whole time, we have a quiet, peaceful and homely environment in the home which also minimises disruption to residents.

Nexus also allows management to be immediately alerted to missed calls and they can monitor and analyse response times at any time or place, as the alerts can be sent to their smartphones when they are off duty.

Sophisticated governance and quality control processes

Our digital management systems enable us to employ the most sophisticated governance and quality control processes. We extract data from all of our systems to create regular reports and alerts (for the technically minded, we have built a very sophisticated Microsoft PowerBI system). For example, management and directors can be alerted if an incident occurs, in near real-time, and all managers and directors have access to the real-time ‘dashboard’ which provides critical live information on pretty much every aspect of each resident’s health and wellbeing. 

We produce a wide range of daily, weekly and monthly reports which are disseminated automatically to managers, deputies and Group management and directors. These are reviewed in great detail not just to make sure we are doing everything necessary but as importantly, to see what we can do proactively to improve any aspect of a resident’s quality of life. 

Proxy access

Proxy access is a system to enable the online raising of prescriptions from the GP, along with online ordering and tracking of medication orders and deliveries. 

The implementation of this digital system offers a huge safety improvement, as it ensures that everything is completed and delivered on time. By taking away the manual process, this frees up our staff at the care home as well as saving time for the GP practice.

GP Connect

GP Connect is a service that enables care home staff to view a resident’s clinical records on their GP’s system, and will allow the GP to access Nourish data. 

This helps to improve the efficiency and quality of care provided to residents and supports better collaboration between healthcare professionals in terms of diagnosis and treatment.

Trusted Care enquiry management

We use Trusted Care’s enquiry management system to keep track of new enquiries, which go into the Trusted Care CRM. We can also monitor the occupancy levels in our homes.

Asana

Asana is an online purchasing and task management platform. It helps to improve safety and efficiency in our care homes by providing a centralised platform that enables teams to collaborate more effectively, share ideas and resources, and track progress on key projects. 

We use Asana technology in our care homes to enable us to immediately place orders for anything electronically as well as being able to track when things have been delivered and contractors’ jobs completed.

Microsoft Dynamics Finance system and online payroll

The Microsoft Dynamics Finance system is designed to help businesses keep track of their income and expenditure, as well as provide a way of managing budgets.

We use the Microsoft Dynamics Finance system to handle both our care home’s finances and online payroll.

Judgement Index

The Judgement Index is a values-based recruitment and appraisal tool that we employ in our care home to recruit new members of staff, as well as for annual appraisals and staff development.

The Index measures an individual’s values in relation to those required by the care industry and our organisation and allows us to identify how well-suited someone is to being a carer and to our company culture. 

It is a valuable tool for ensuring that everyone who works here shares our core values, and helps to create a positive and cohesive working environment.

Remote video meetings

We use Teams and Zoom meetings across our homes so that our directors and managers can provide support and guidance, share learning experiences and best practise and conduct governance remotely when appropriate. 

We use the same technology to facilitate meetings with relatives and many other people.

Online staff training

We provide online training to all of our employees so that they can enhance their skills and expertise, and then apply it to their work. Our mandatory training covers over 20 course subjects and we expect for a home to have at least 90% of all required courses completed at any one time. There are also a lot of other courses that we ask our staff to complete and attendance and completion of these too are  monitored through an online system.

Moving forward with technology

It is clear that the advanced use of technology in our care homes is having a huge impact on both the lives of our residents and the way that staff are able to provide care. 

Whether it be through increased independence and empowerment, enhanced entertainment, earlier intervention of health concerns, or more effective communication between family members and carers, the benefits are immeasurable.

Technology coming soon

We are introducing more and more technology into our care homes. We’re currently looking at implementing systems for falls detection and monitoring, pain detection and monitoring as well as NHS remote monitoring applications. We are also working at a national and regional level with the NHS and other bodies to support the introduction of other technologies including shared care records.