Top tips to make changing your rostering and care management system easy and stress free
Whilst digital rostering has been commonplace in the care sector for a while, the last couple of years has seen a significant increase in the number of providers moving away from pen-and-paper visit notes and medication records to digital care management systems. There are various approaches to replacing pen-and-paper, such as carer apps and connected hubs that sit in the customer’s home. This digital transition will only increase, given the continuing pressures of Covid-19.
Many providers currently have several separate systems: one for rostering, one for care plan management and auditing, and potentially a separate HR system. While this can work well if the integrations between them work seamlessly, we see greater customer demand for more integrated approaches that give the care teams simple ways of coordinating every aspect of their care accessible in one place.
With time and effort invested in the set-up and day-to-day management of a technology system, moving to a new provider can seem daunting. It doesn’t need to be, with some simple planning to ensure you have access to the right information and a straightforward migration of data.
If you are considering moving away from your existing provider of rostering and care plan management software, this 5-step process can help:
1. Get the basics right by mapping Service Users and Care Workers. The key pillar of any successful transition is making sure that you have your Service User details imported into your new system, together with the Care Workers that will be providing support to your customers. Ideally, you will want to import key data such as Service User contact information, address, date of birth and next-of-kin for Service Users and contact details for Care Workers. The easiest way to do this is typically by exporting a type of file called a CSV, which you can usually download from your existing supplier’s system. Most integrated care management software will then import this data so that your key information is set up with no manual intervention.
Tip: To meet your CQC requirements have a plan to access data collected before any transition to your new system, including for Service Users that may have been archived. Many systems will enable you to import old data, which is worth doing so that all your information is in one place should you get a CQC inspection.
2. Map your Service User daily tasks and medications. Once you have your user details in place, you and your new software supplier will be in a great position to import all of the tasks and medications that a Care Worker will need to have available to them during their visit. It is important to get this right, and you shouldn’t need to re-create your appointment templates in a new system since the data should be available to download from your old system. Like the mapping of users, this information is usually available as a CSV export and can be accessed directly from your existing supplier’s software.
3. Re-create your most recent care runs so that they can be imported into your new rostering system. Care is about people, and one of the key skills of running any homecare business is knowing your staff and getting the consistency of care and the match right between your customers and care teams. This knowledge can take years to build up and certainly shouldn’t get lost during any software move, nor should you need to re-create it manually. Different systems present this information in varying ways. Still, you will be able to either extract the recent care runs from your rostering system or if a current provider limits the time periods that can be downloaded, your new provider can work with you to get care run data over time so that it can be imported into your new system.
Tip: Many rostering systems will have the ability to create rules, including staff availability. Make sure that you extract this data so that your first weeks on a new system work seamlessly.
4. Use the opportunity to move away from Word care plans, or migrate your existing documentation structures. For many providers, care plans, risk assessments, and other documentation is a big issue, absorbing many hours per week to update information in the office if still using word-processed documents. While they capture the key information, using traditional tools such as MS Word doesn’t capture the data within a structure, has little/no version control or auditing and doesn’t allow any meaningful analytics that gives you insights into your business processes. Modern software can do better, particularly in a regulated environment such as care where consistency of approach is key.
A move to a new system gives an excellent opportunity to bring your processes up-to-date by moving to a forms-based structure for your documents so that they are consistent with information captured as data at every point. It will also save you time and money from the very start.
If you are currently using MS Word, your new software provider will normally build an import structure for you so that you don’t have to spend weeks manually transcribing data. Once this is in place, any new provider with dedicated in-house technical development will then be able to import your MS Word documents against your new form structure and, bingo, you’ll have care documentation fit for the 21st century!
If your existing provider already uses form structures for your care plans, the transition will be even easier. You will need to download your form structure from your current system (typically, this may be a CSV or a file type called JSON) and then your new provider can import your data against it.
5. Give your team confidence and minimise training risk by working with your new provider to identify common practices. Moving to a new digital care planning software provider can seem like a big change, but it doesn’t need to cause friction within your team. Most systems out there now will have features in common, even if the layout is different. By identifying what is similar between your existing system and your new, more integrated one, you can work with a new supplier to deliver a training programme for your staff that builds on what they already know.
Tip: We have experimented with various training techniques over time, and we find that a ‘train-the-trainer’ typically works best, which is even more relevant given Covid constraints.
Approached in the right way, moving to a new system should be simple, relatively straightforward and stress-free, and it shouldn’t need much manual input from a care provider.
Konnektis provides an integrated care plan management, rostering and documentation system that has been built from the ground up with the input of care teams, Service Users and families.
While we would welcome an opportunity to speak with you about our system, we are keen to ensure that care providers get the best input to make decisions with confidence. We know that moving providers can seem like a lot of work with lots of new technical jargon so if you would like a chat, have any questions or would like to see some care plan examples that may be helpful to your organisation, please get in touch at team@konnektis.com, or call us on 0330 0430096.
