Person Centred Software's electronic care planning system helps Ashfields Care Home receive 'outstanding' with CQC

Delivering an exceptional experience to those receiving care

About Ashfields Care Home

Ashfields Care Home, a dual-registered care home based in Heanor, a small market town in the Amber Valley district of Derbyshire, provides residential, nursing, dementia and respite care for adults and older adults.

Ashfields is a highly regarded luxury environment for older adults, with many of its rooms opening out to various courtyards, gardens, and pretty landscaped paths that provide secure and sheltered outdoor spaces for residents to enjoy. It’s a 76-bed facility divided into three separate suites:

• Forget me not - a 24-bed specialist dementia care suite
• Daffodil - a 26-bed suite providing general nursing, residential and end-of-life care for frail residents 
• Poppy suite - 26-bed suite providing general nursing and residential care

Josie Greveson, registered care home manager at Ashfields Care Home, discusses how Person Centred Software's electronic care planning system helped the home receive an overall 'Outstanding' from CQC.

Ashfields Care Home used to rely on a few other systems before switching to Person Centred Software's electronic care planning system. Prior to that, care teams used traditional paper-based methods to record all aspects of our resident's journeys.

In the years before I joined Ashfields and was appointed to turn the home around, the care home had quite a few challenges. The main challenge was not the quality of care being provided but rather the lack of care notes being documented by the carers. 

Carers have challenging jobs requiring hard work and long hours, caring for multiple vulnerable people simultaneously; understandably, they might forget to write a care note down. But record-keeping in a health and care setting isn't just necessary; it's crucial for providing good quality and effective care. So, we decided to switch to Person Centred Software's electronic care planning system to address this challenge.

The software's icon-driven interface considerably reduces the time it takes to type care notes, as it has pre-populated care notes along with a speech-to-text feature, where carers can accurately convert their voice to text without having to type on the handset. These features allow our care teams to record care notes quickly and accurately, helping to record more care notes. The more information recorded about the care provided, the better equipped we are to assist with the resident's care and treatment.

Additionally, our carers can record care as they deliver it in real-time without having to create handwritten updates at the end of shifts when things could be forgotten or inaccurate.

We've had Person Centred Software's electronic care planning system for over six years, and I'm delighted with it; I wouldn't change it for the world.

Implementing Person Centred Software’s Electronic Care Planning System 

The implementation process was very straightforward. Initially, some of our older carers were hesitant, as they did not own or utilise mobile phones, making using an electronic care planning system seem daunting. However, it only took them a short time to learn and very quickly, all our carers became familiar with the system and soon knew it inside out. 

Digital is the way forward

Person Centred Software's Connected Care Platform has all the necessary tools for care providers, eliminating the need to search elsewhere. The platform provides an all-in-one solution with an unrivalled selection of best-in-class partners, enabling us to manage the delivery of care with ease and speed.

Digital is the way forward, especially using Person Centred Software's electronic care planning system! All the data we require is kept in one place and is accessible whenever and wherever we need it.

The system covers all aspects of care management, such as fluid and nutrition monitoring, oral care, post-fall assessments, analysis tools, group reporting, observations and charts, and the list goes on! All the features are integrated and combine all the essential information to create comprehensive and detailed care plans - this ensures our carers have all the information they need to deliver outstanding care. 

The system also helps us to create a person-centred document of each resident with its 'Who I Am' feature, comprising personalised information, such as, what's important to them, a summary of their care plan and wishes for their future care - this helped us to make our residents needs central to everything we did. 

The feature I like most about Person Centred Software's electronic care planning system 

As a manager, the system allows me to easily view activity across our three suites and quickly determine what tasks have been completed and what still needs to be done. This is particularly helpful when working remotely from home, as I can easily stay up-to-date with everything happening; it's been amazing from a management perspective and from that of the carers delivering the care. 
 
I recommend the system to others for its ease of use, clarity and simplicity. Without a doubt, it makes life so much easier and much less complicated. 

I also like our catch-up calls with Person Centred Software; the thing I like most is if there's anything you need, I know they would probably make it for me! They continue to update their software to meet the needs of care providers and residents.

Receiving 'outstanding' from CQC with Person Centred Software’s electronic care planning system 

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) rated Ashfields as 'outstanding'. Receiving an 'outstanding' CQC rating is a remarkable achievement, and the entire team at Ashfields is incredibly proud of the CQC inspection report. Person Centred Software's electronic care planning system was instrumental in helping the home achieve this rating.

Using the system makes audits much easier; it's helped with compliance and gives us all the information we need to show CQC, helping to demonstrate that we are meeting our contractual obligations and delivering the care we have promised.

Furthermore, the system gives our care teams more time to spend with the residents face-to-face doing the things they enjoy, which helps to combat loneliness and social isolation and improve mental well-being; our carers can now build better relationships with the residents to understand their preferences, likes and dislikes, which helps to improve the delivery of person-centred care. Additionally, our carers now have more time to follow and better understand the resident's care plans and ultimately have more time to spend providing the best care environment.

Click here to learn more about Person Centred Software's Electronic Care Planning features.  

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