Save time and enhance quality of care with clinical information systems 

A clinical information system ensures that residents in aged care settings are receiving the best quality of life through enhanced delivery of care and access to information.  

One of the ways in which clinical information systems are improving the quality of life for both residents and staff in residential aged care settings is the amount of time that the solutions save. This is time that, with paper-based systems, would have been spent performing mundane and unnecessary administrative tasks.  

Below, we’ll discuss how clinical information systems save time in residential aged care. 

Often, those working in residential aged care can lose hours at a time sifting through paper records trying to find the information they need for a resident or for evidencing purposes. And even when they find this information, it’s always somewhat out of date due to the fast-changing nature of a residential aged care setting. But thanks to clinical information systems, staff can access the information they need, all recorded at the point of care and updated in real-time, almost instantly. All it takes is a few clicks and they have saved themselves potentially hours of searching! 

Harnessing the technology made available by using a clinical information system, residential care settings can augment the human element of care provision by minimising the time needed to spend on administrative tasks and therefore have more time to spend with residents. This doesn’t just mean spending time with residents doing the things they enjoy but having more time to get to know residents and form a bond with them.  

Not only do clinical information systems save time by making it easier and quicker to gain access to pertinent resident information and complete administrative tasks, but it also improves the overall process of reporting. Whether it’s documenting care in real-time or gathering information for accreditation from regulatory bodies, clinical information systems can vastly improve the way in which residential care settings can analyse information and monitor trends to ensure best practice when it comes to care management and governance of operations. 

Outside of the residential aged care home, clinical information systems also present opportunities to save huge amounts of time and maximise the resources available to provide the best service possible to residents. For example, a clinical information system can provide quick and seamless information sharing between different healthcare professionals and anyone else involved in the care of those living in aged care. This makes for a much safer and more efficient process of delivering holistic care whatever the setting.  

A clinical information system like Person Centred Software’s Clinical Care System (mCare) does this by enabling care providers to instantly share information with external healthcare bodies like hospitals via the Hospital Pack feature, which gathers all the relevant information for the transition between residential care setting and hospital and presents it in an easy-to-understand way. This means that whatever the stage of the residents’ health and care journey, everyone and anyone involved has easy and quick access to all the information they need, saving hours at a time by avoiding the process of gathering physical documentation and making the process safer by ensuring it is as up to date as possible.  

Overall, a clinical information system like mCare can save aged care providers, on average, an hour per day. This is an hour that they get back to spend quality time with residents doing the things that they enjoy, which goes a long way to improving quality of life and quality of care. And, best of all, it does all this while providing a higher standard of care and safety for residents and better quality of life for staff.