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The Villain – What is it that is Killing the Aged Care Sector?

12 April 2022
By Graham Russell 

 

Spot check is what’s killing the aged care sector. Let’s dig deep into this villain through a case study or scenario.

 

In relation to what’s happening with Compliance, we’ve got a client, who previous to having our system, this was his scenario.

He was a General Manager of an aged care facility and in that aged care facility, he had a complaint from a family member. And that family member, says that “My mother has been left on a recliner for two days”.

The manager said, “Oh, well, we’ll investigate that.” Unfortunately, this got them pushed through to the tribunal and then escalated to the CEO of the organization.

And then an investigation started. In the investigation, the General Manager has now gone to the Director of Nursing and asked the Director of Nursing, “What’s happened?”

The Director of Nursing has now gone to a Registered Nurse that was on shift on that ward on that day and asked, “What’s happened?” Unfortunately, the only data that they’ve actually been able to collect were some notes that were actually placed in the care management system.

The problem with that is, is that they also had a temp staff member on that day and some of the notes aren’t very available. The outcome of what’s happened is that this organization has spent over 100 hours investigating this process, hasn’t got any information has got obviously the reputational damage of going to the tribunal, and still has nothing to protect themselves to understand.

Do they do what they were supposed to do or was there an issue? And this is a common part of what the issue is that we actually believe spot-checking is what’s literally killing the aged care sector what the aged care sector has been doing is basically doing to-do lists. And there’s nothing wrong with to-do lists. But what we continually keep hearing from carers and providers is that we have a situation where we’re gathering information in a manual way, in to-do lists that don’t allow us to obviously collect the data. And so it becomes very repetitive and inefficient.

It’s very slow and there are no meaningful interactions. It doesn’t actually stop anything. And residents tend to find this quite undignified; it’s embarrassing.

And the whole part of this is familiarity breeds complacency. For us to really improve compliance, is that we don’t want to put more to-do lists. Carers today are already saying that they’re spending anywhere from 20 to 30% of every shift actually just collecting information.

Did you know that HSC Technology Group’s Talius™ Smart Care Platform can help solve this problem? 

Call us today to let us show you how Talius can help solve your current challenges.

Move from spot-check care to sense-respond care. Contact us at 1300 889 838 or sales@hsctg.com.au.

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