Sally Whittle at Guardian Professional reports on how electronic
homecare monitoring is helping managers record the work of domestic
care teams more efficiently:
According to recent estimates, about 4m hours of domestic care
are provided in the UK every week, many through local authorities
and community healthcare agencies. Managing this workforce
presents a significant challenge and the priority for the council
is to know that services are being delivered appropriately and
service levels are being maintained.
Traditionally, this kind of service would have been carried out
by a community-based team, who would report in to the office at the
end of each day to complete a time sheet. The time sheets would
have been collated, and an invoice generated for the commissioning
organisation. The local authority would then retrospectively check
the invoices and time sheets, before making a payment.
The first problem is that this kind of approach is massively
inefficient, and prone to error. Secondly, it does little to help
drive improvement in the quality of service delivered to users.
Electronic homecare monitoring (EHM) can help to address these
challenges. At their most basic, EHM systems may simply
involve Carers 'clocking in' by phoning a freephone telephone
number when they arrive at each appointment. They do rely on
clients having a telephone they are happy for the Carer to use. For
some systems, the clients may be also be charged for calls if they
have a mobile phone rather than a landline, as 0800 numbers are
generally not free from mobiles.
CM2000's homecare monitoring software gets around the latter
problem by giving each Carer a unique 0800 telephone number, which
is not answered. When the Carer arrives with a client, they dial
the number, and the system recognises that they are on-site.
It sounds simple, but this information is hugely powerful, says
Hannah Montgomery, marketing executive with CM2000. "Traditional
paper-based systems are of course open to abuse, but completing
paperwork and asking a service user to confirm a visit can be quite
intimidating, so this is a more user-friendly alternative," says
Montgomery. "It also drives service improvement because if, for
example, someone requires a medical appointment and it's missed,
then the system will flag that automatically."
More sophisticated systems include rostering and messaging
platforms and may be integrated with modules that provide recording
and access to payroll and invoicing data.
In some cases, EHM software can dramatically reduce
administration costs. Devon county council reports that it saved
£1m in 12 months, after deploying homecare monitoring technology
from CM2000.
A pilot project conducted by the Department of Health (DH) in
2008 found that EHM services could save organisations considerable
amounts, particularly in efficiency and administration costs. The
DH reported that by making electronic monitoring a contractual
requirement for third party providers, Hertfordshire county council
received immediate efficiency returns, which were reinvested in to
service improvements.
Click here to read the full article:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/social-care-network/2011/nov/08/ealing-council-bringing-home-care-monitoring-21st-century?newsfeed=true