The pandemic has brought the social care sector into the public’s awareness as never before. Whilst this is to be welcomed for helping people to understand the vital role which care staff perform, it also means that the quality of the services provided are brought under the spotlight.
Quality has become a key focus in recent years and the Department of Health and Social Care has published a document, ‘Quality Matters’, to address the issue. In the opening remarks of this document (written pre-pandemic) it was stated that, given the challenges facing the sector, “it is perhaps not surprising that quality is variable. While there are many good services, there is also some unacceptable and unreliable care, which has a profound impact on people using those services and undermines public confidence in the sector as a whole.”
The Care Quality Commission commissioned a report by the University of Manchester (PDF), published in April 2020, which assessed the relationship between CQC’s regulatory approach and improvement in the quality of health and social care. This report formed part of the evaluation of CQC’s five-year plan which runs until 2021, and one of the recommendations was for CQC to engage more productively with providers and system stakeholders to achieve on-going quality improvement, supported by learning from further research and evaluation.
This focus on quality and continuous improvement means that care providers will need to ensure that their own quality assurance systems are robust, and that they can easily evidence good practice to inspectors. How can this be achieved, not only to satisfy today’s requirements, but those in the future?
As we have noted in previous insights, the systems currently used by care providers vary widely. CQC states that ‘the fundamental standards do not set out what provider records must look like or what format they should be in - it is the provider’s choice if they use paper or digital records systems, or a mixture of the two.’ However this is set to change as CQC’s five-year strategy from 2021 onwards will have a key focus on driving improvement and innovation, which will include requesting records digitally.
Therefore, an obvious step to ensuring a care business is meeting quality assurance standards, now and in the future, is to digitalise existing systems/processes in place. As we have discussed in our ‘10 Reasons to go fully Digital in Social Care’ insight there are numerous advantages to a fully digital system, for example:
All of these benefits will undoubtedly assist providers in improving quality, as staff will have more time with residents and can keep accurate, up-to-date records as evidence for colleagues, managers, and inspectors.
PredicAire is the first holistic care management software (CMS) system powered by Artificial intelligence (Ai), and features the following modules:
The software uses a seamless single sign on cloud based system, which gives everything care providers need in one place without the need to purchase additional products. It is available on multiple devices including desktop, tablet and mobile devices, meaning that care staff can record seamless real-time observations enabling immediate early warning measures assuring residents’ wellbeing.
These features take digital care management to the next level, enabling providers to evidence high quality care to families, health professionals, and inspectors. In the near future the Quality Assurance module will also enable providers to carry out ‘mock inspections’, so that they can be sure that they are fully prepared when CQC inspectors arrive.
PredicAire offers a solution to ongoing quality improvement which is future-proof. CQC has made “encouraging innovation” an explicit priority in its strategy and providers who are able to demonstrate that they are not only embracing technology, but are amongst the early adopters of new ideas, will therefore surely be at an advantage during their forthcoming inspections.
Contact us to book a demo and see how easy PredicAire makes it for providers to evidence care, and continue on their journey of continuous quality improvement.
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