NURSE CALL SYSTEMS
Can the acute sector learn from care homes?
With over 50 years’ experience in the health and care sector, healthcare technology provider, Courtney Thorne, has had ample opportunity to gain valuable insights, and believes that the care home sector arguably more quickly adapts to new technologies or trends than the acute hospital sector. Here, the company’s Marketing manager, Greta Lucinskiene, discusses best practice, and offers some lessons on where hospitals can learn from the care home industry in terms of deployment and use of nurse call technology.
The observations noted in this article are based on the use of healthcare technology in both care and hospital settings, and consider initial and ongoing costs, system complexity, and the needs of users including patients, residents, care staff, and management. Additionally, the article draws on analysis of some important micro and macro environmental factors that touch on aspects important to a variety of stakeholders.
Constant financial pressure Despite the growing demand for their services, care homes are under constant financial pressure – just like hospitals. Making cost savings is more crucial than ever to ensure that organisations can survive and thrive. Technology plays an important role when planning cost efficiencies without negatively affecting the quality of service, and can often significantly improve it. Considering this, it is worth looking at one of the biggest expenses – human resources.
Human resources and automation Many care homes struggle with a shortage of skilled staff and, coupled with increases in the minimum wage, their employees’ time is the most precious resource. With enormous workloads, staff are often overworked, which can result in lengthy waiting times for residents in need of help or care. Often the best-
performing care homes have a greater understanding of this, and, by implementing ‘smart solutions’, avoid wasting staff time completing paperwork. Examples of these solutions include automation and ‘cloud’ technology. For example, a remote nurse call reporting system automatically records, monitors, and analyses care home activity, so staff do not waste their time ticking boxes and adding notes to forms. Care home managers and owners can access this information remotely and quickly, and compare performance against previous periods for each care home, or even groups of homes. Reports also improve staff planning, which in turn contributes to more effective management of human resources. Automated performance reports save staff time and provide more accurate data for management personnel. Simon Pedzisi is director of Care Services at Nightingale Hammerson, a leading specialist residential care home and charity with two facilities in London, Nightingale House in Clapham, and Hammerson House in Hampstead
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Garden Suburb, for Jewish men and women and their spouses aged over 60, that has just been awarded an overall ‘Outstanding’ rating by the CQC. He says of his experience of Courtney Thorne equipment: “Delivering the highest standards of care is the number one priority for Nightingale Hammerson. The Courtney Thorne nurse call system is easy to operate for both staff and patients, and affords added value to our management team with up-to-date and easy-to-access data. This data ensures that we have accurate information about response rates, helping us reassure relatives about the standard of care being provided to their loved ones.”
Simple, quick solutions Most care homes do not have spare capacity for relocating their residents when introducing technology developments that need cabling. Installing wiring infrastructure often means service disturbance, extra costs, and a very complicated process for the whole organisation. Care home facilities
A remote nurse call reporting system automatically records, monitors, and analyses care home activity, so staff do not waste their time ticking boxes and adding notes to forms
Automated performance reports save staff time and provide more accurate data for management personnel. October 2018 Health Estate Journal 73
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