Which features of digital care planning help to develop advance care plans?

Developing and actioning advance care plans with the help of Person Centred Software

Advance care plans can play a vital role in the process of long-term care provision because they allow someone to have the opportunity to clearly define their wishes and preferences for care ahead of an anticipated decline in cognitive abilities which means they are no longer able to make these decisions. 

With advance care plans, a resident can take control of their future care and give family, friends, caregivers and care staff all the tools necessary to provide truly person-centred care. This is especially important if someone has been diagnosed with dementia, for example, and they may not be able to make their preferences known in the future. 

Find out more here about advance care planning and how advance care planning benefits people with dementia

Using the digital care planning system to develop advance care plans 

Because advance care plans give someone the opportunity to clearly define and set out preferences and wishes for their future care ahead of a time that they are no longer able to either make these decisions or make their preferences known, an advance care plan is a significant benefit to care staff when developing more broad and general care plans. (Find out more here about advance care plans and general care plans, their differences and how they fit together) 

By harnessing the features of Person Centred Software’s digital care planning system (mCare) which is part of the Connected Care Platform, care staff have the tools they need to ensure that advance care plans aren’t just properly undertaken and developed but are recorded and assimilated into a person’s wider care plan. 

Here are just some of the features of mCare that help with advance care plans

Who I Am 

The goal of truly person-centred care is utilising all the data and information at hand to build a rounded picture of someone’s wishes, needs, values and life story, and the Who I Am feature within mCare helps to build just that.  

With Who I Am, care providers can create person-centred documents for each resident, uniquely tailored to them and comprising personal information that can help to specify care to a person’s individual needs and personality, and a part of Who I Am can include wishes for future care. Who I Am pulls through information from every area in the system and considers all preferences from various assessments.  

Not only that, but one of the great benefits of Who I Am and how it can be used to build an advance care plan is that the information is automatically drawn from a multitude of assessments; is not a manual process that relies on a person asking the right questions and remembering all the answers and tracking them correctly.  

Assessment area 

If a care provider is looking to help a resident build an advance care plan, it can be difficult to know where to begin in order to capture not just the right information but all the relevant information that covers all possible eventualities ahead of a time when a person is no longer able to make their preferences and wishes known. But with Person Centred Software, you can find an advance care plan in the format of a form. 

Using specific forms in the system, which are found in the assessment area, care providers can help residents capture future wishes and preferences for care. Care staff can record whether a resident has a living will, a DNA CPR if relevant, as well as building a fully rounded picture of a person’s wishes for future care which include details like any additional requests around treatment, preferences around where they would like to be cared for and also religious or cultural preferences, among others. 

Action Plans 

Action Plans allows you to track actions within the digital care system, which provides a single, trackable solution for all of your action plans, coupled with a dashboard view that provides complete oversight of all actions needed to be taken. If there are specific actions that need to be taken within an advance care plan, such as anything to do with the transition to end of life care, then care staff can use Action Plans to create a specific action to ensure that this is done, evidenced and recorded. 

Visual representation of end of life stages 

mCare provides a complete and succinct overview of all residents that are receiving care, and one aspect of this that care providers can use to identify when actions might need to be taken with regards to advance care plans is the visual representation for the different stages of end of life care.  

On a resident’s file, there is an option to select different stages of end of life care, which are delineated by a butterfly that appears on their profile photo. Each stage has a different colour that defines which stage a resident is at, which allows carers to quickly and efficiently be aware not only that a resident is receiving end of life care, but what actions might need to be taken from the advance care plan now that this stage has been arrived at. 

mCare gives you the tools to provide better care 

Person Centred Software’s digital care planning system, mCare, ensures through the features listed above and more that a person can not only ensure that their wishes and preferences stated in an advance care plan are understood and recorded, but that they are carried out.  

Read here to find out more information about mCare 

Read here to find out more about Person Centred Software’s other services and products