What data do you hold and how is it useful? Business metrics for care providers.

You should be using data to improve your performance

Using care home software like ours allows your care teams to record all manner of data at the point-of-care, which means exceptional occurrences like incidents can be logged and dealt with promptly, ensuring the best care outcomes for residents. This data can also be examined further and used to identify incident patterns. For example, there might be a certain area within the care service that happens to have frequent incidents. It could be something as simple as a stairway that has an un-equal tread depth causing falls. A quick check of the records of falls incidents would flag this issue up immediately and allow Care Managers, Seniors and Owners to act to resolve the issue.

Evidence your true care delivery to demonstrate needs for funding increases

Digital care recording also gives better oversight into care delivery within the service and a detailed audit trail when you need further insight. Simple information like “are carers where they need to be?” and “when they need to be there?” can be answered in moments. Also because Carers signing off what they do on an electronic system can provide proof of presence if there is a compliance issue. This data is invaluable because your operations team is notified of exactly how much care is being delivered, the data can be used as evidence for local authority funding business cases.

Benchmark staff performance to improve care delivery

The lack of data you record can also be used to help improve care delivery too. A residential provider using our system recently examined the differences between records made by their top performing carers vs. their lowest. From here they were able to incentivise better care note taking, engage their staff with appropriate training and subsequently increase their care quality.

Show off your Outstanding behaviours during an inspection

Care data can also be used as evidence for regulatory inspections. Many homes keep a record of all of their outstanding activities to help provide evidence to their inspector. Data on everything from how your care-service actively promotes participation from service-users, to how person-centred your care delivery is can be easily demonstrated when the right types of data are reported on from a clever care management system.

Concluding thoughts… “If you don’t measure it, you can’t manage it”

These are just a few practical reasons why the data you hold as a care provider can provide you with a wealth of different opportunities to spot problems and improve performance. But what it boils down to is recording information. If your care service is struggling in a certain area, you can easily provide timely interventions and practical solutions to improve when you have the right data to hand. Too many providers still rely on legacy paper recording systems and this leaves them vulnerable to behaviours that hide poor performance. All forward thinking care provider needs to be moving onto a digital care management system to help improve their business.