How ATLAS eMAR reduces risk and ensures medication accuracy
For us, a fundamental requirement of an eMAR system was barcode scanning for safety. It also had to have full stock control and to be able to tackle the issues of communication around changes to therapy and prescriptions with the pharmacy and GP surgeries. ATLAS eMAR was the only system that had all of these, with features such as Barcode Technology, which is totally unique to ATLAS eMAR, Stock Control, Group Reporting, Pharmacy Integration and others.
Evidence-based research with Cardiff University showed that ATLAS eMAR was safe and gave time savings to providers.
We also worked with Cardiff University on a project that delegated medicines administration from nurses to carers, using the ATLAS eMAR and Scorecard for safety, monitoring and auditing. Before the project, nurses spent two hours giving medicines out, leaving no time to manage the shift.
Now, we have ‘med carers’, trained and competency assessed, to do the medications. The shifts are now nurse led and they delegate medicines tasks to the med carers. By delegating medication administration, it has given staff a significant amount of time back in their shift – time that can be spent with residents ensuring that the best person-centred care possible is being provided.
The ATLAS Scorecard uses the data from important medicines management tasks and aggregates the results to give each of my homes a score. This allows me and compliance managers to have an overview of medicines management in all homes at any given time. This means we can manage by exception and tackle under-performance and mitigate risk. Now we want this type of scorecard in all aspects of our care so that we can bring the running of the homes to the standards of the built environment.
In a care home environment, there is a mass of data, and the challenge is to combine the data together to make sense of and predict where errors and risks are. ATLAS eMAR brings this data together in a centralised system that not only makes it far easier to manage and administer medication, but resident safety is assured because we have the ability to achieve much higher medication accuracy levels, whether it’s from administration, stock control or identification of areas of underperformance.
The type of errors that compromise medication safety are now all-but eliminated thanks to ATLAS eMAR.
Recording care notes on the go with mCare
One of the main reasons we chose mCare was because of the technical and open architecture. Our system operated on desktop computers and ran locally from a server, but we switched to Person Centred Software which uses more modern mobile handheld devices so staff can evidence care on the go.
This means that because staff have the robust but very portable hand-held devices with them as they work, they can input much more detail and more often because they don’t have to make mental notes of whatever happens and then go back to a desk to input the information there. Not only does this save time and effort, but it means that the recording and evidencing of care is far more streamlined whilst also being more detailed.
mCare uses mobile devices to prompt care and record its events. It is very visual due to the Icon-Driven Interface feature and easy to record notes thanks to features such as Speech to Text, and it saves a lot of time and is relatively low cost. Person Centred Software’s system is widely used, and the inspectors were very happy and familiar with it. In fact, 94% of their care homes have a good or outstanding rating with CQC.
True transparency with Relatives Gateway
When we used our own in-house care planning system, we gave relatives online access to all care records. Relatives really valued this openness and transparency. We were one of the first care providers to do this. Contrary to the fear of some care providers, that showing all the care notes would create additional legal cases, we found that being more open with our relatives actually defuses things.
The Relatives Gateway included in Person Centred Software’s digital care planning system gives a summary of care notes to family members, along with a social network for sending photos and messages to keep in touch. We are really pleased that Person Centred Software has configured the Relatives Gateway further for Graham Care Homes so that relatives have permissions to be able to see all the notes and not just the summary.
We want to share the data we have with relatives and other stakeholders in the care of residents. This will help to create closer relationships and even more openness with relatives and improve the quality of care that our residents receive in their health and social care journeys.
Providing better care with the help of data
There is a case for integration and inter-operability to give the ability to share data, for example with care planning, medication management and call bell events. Using in-depth specialist systems that integrate seamlessly like mCare and ATLAS eMAR, we have analytics and insights on care that we did not have before.
I think in future there will be a need for a data analyst in every care provider.
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