How a care management app can improve your auditing
In addition to enhancing the process for maintaining consistent, live care plans and having integrated care scheduling software, one of the most significant impacts following the adoption of digital care planning software that we have seen over time with domiciliary care providers is improved auditing. From the beginning of the Konnektis journey in 2016, we sought to improve how care teams audit care notes and MAR sheets and save them time in the process.
The number of care management app providers in the domiciliary care sector has increased in the last few years, but what should you expect from your auditing system? Read on to find out what we think.
1. Real-time auditing. While the introduction of digital care planning software brings many benefits to providers, the ability to review care notes and electronic MAR sheets as they are recorded is material. It can have a significant impact on any care organisation. With digital care management platforms, you can say goodbye to blocking out an afternoon to review paper documents days or weeks after a care visit was completed and check visits completed on a care management app within hours or minutes.
Look for a simple interface that can be used on desktop or mobiles so that permissioned team members can audit visits and, where required, triage them for follow-up. Using this approach will help demonstrate how you keep care plans up-to-date to deliver effective person centred care and identify where training improvements may be required to support your care workforce.
2. Ease-of-use. Managing a care business is complex, with your team wearing several hats each day, so any digital care planning software should make your team’s life as easy as possible. While a central audit module is necessary, you should expect to audit visits or create follow-ups from multiple points within the system so that you don’t have to move between screens more than necessary. The goal is to embed your audit tools within your organisation to the extent that auditing happens automatically most of the time and that only important exceptions are flagged for follow-up. All of this can occur in a structured way that is easy to review and evidence for regulatory compliance.
A care management app that has been built - and continues to evolve - with the benefit of customer feedback should make auditing a simple process that saves significant amounts of time, freeing your team to provide the best person centred care to your customers.
3. Easily create and assign follow-up workflows where required. When implemented effectively, digital care planning software should provide a backbone of reliable processes that enables you to provide the highest level of person centred care possible. With a remote workforce and lots of critical data being securely collected every day, a straightforward process for what has been fully audited and what needs more attention is essential.
Your care management app should allow you to create workflows for other team members so that they can easily see where their input is required. As other team members feed into an audit process, all actions taken by the team should be attached to the care visit record to have a clear audit trail about how - and why - decisions have been taken.
For example, there may be evidence of support recorded within the care notes that isn’t reflected in the care plans, indicating that your team should do a care plan review to avoid discrepancies against the day-to-day care being delivered. This reliable process for keeping care plans and electronic MAR sheets up-to-date is vital in any setting, but we see it as having a significant impact for providers of end of life care and reablement care, where a customer’s needs may frequently change.
4. Upload additional information to support decision making. Every day, care teams will interact with a range of people supporting the person receiving care, ranging from family members, to doctors, occupational therapists and district nurses. Few decisions are taken in isolation, and demonstrating what information was available to support a decision should be a key benefit of a digital care planning software platform.
You should be able to add comments as you audit a visit and upload other information that may be helpful securely. Since it will be attached to the service user and the specific visit, if you need to review the care notes in the future as part of a regulatory audit, you will have all the data right in front of you with evidence of how decisions were taken, and what follow-up was required.
5. Data visualisation and flexibility of reports. Every care provider has spent time building their care plans, auditing processes and care workforce training in a specific way to help deliver the most person centred care possible. Each organisation tends to have subtly unique approaches, and so the data requirements will vary. Some providers audit every visit and have a target metric for how long this should take, while others review a selection of their visits immediately if they meet specific criteria.
Your digital care planning software provider should not have a one-size-fits-all approach to data. It should work with you to ensure that you get the information you need, when you need it, and in a format that works for your organisation.
We hope that you found this summary helpful and welcome your feedback. If you would like to get in touch about this article or to find out more about how we can support your care organisation, please email us at team@konnektis.com, or give us a call for a chat on 0330 043 0096.
If you would like to arrange a free trial of the Konnektis platform, which includes access to care plan examples, please click this link to fill out some basic details and one of our team will get you set up.
