Digitisation


to effectively manage risk. While a number of the risks you manage will be similar to that of other care providers or sectors, they can look different depending on the size and scale of your service.


As a single site care home, you may


have more limited resources compared to larger providers. So, you may need to think about things like your responsiveness to emergencies, maintaining your staffing levels or scaling up your recruitment to keep up with surges in demand. Being able to predict what your service


will need and budget for it as a smaller provider may be another key risk you monitor. And it can be especially tough for single site providers to manage spend when faced with high inflation, unforeseen costs, or regulatory changes.


On the other hand, as a multi-site care


provider, you need to be able to maintain consistent service quality across all your locations. Your staff may need to renew outdated training at different times. Being able to keep on top of this helps to ensure consistent care quality and user satisfaction across your sites.


Communication challenges can be another problem for multi-site care providers. Perhaps each of your sites have a different way of reporting data. Maybe decision-making is hindered, or circulating important updates is difficult when you have a large number of residences to oversee. Getting a handle on this can help to streamline any risk management processes you put in place.


Managing risks manually: more hassle than it’s worth? In our Care Trends Report 2024, 34 per


cent of care providers told us they have difficulty collating information of key events such as accidents, incidents, and safeguarding. Another 32 per cent have even had occurrences of missing records. How can care providers confidently evidence compliance – and how risks are being managed – in these circumstances? Care home providers cannot be expected


to weather the storm with their current insufficient processes.


It is simply inefficient to rely on


spreadsheets or paper to manually manage your risks. Just think – each risk owner painstakingly notes down in their own spreadsheet every risk that could pose a threat to your service. Because not everyone follows the same process, your risk manager then sifts through every line to get what they need, just to put that information into a different system to run a report for


your board members. Slowly but surely, your organisation’s ability to identify and manage risks grinds to a halt. Adding insult to injury, these slow, manual processes are also more prone to mistakes being made, because inconsistent or misunderstood processes across your care teams can mean messages get misinterpreted, critical risks get overlooked, or the wrong action is taken to manage them. If you are struggling with high turnover rates, you may notice errors being particularly apparent, as each new team member may not have the time or even adequate training to get up to speed with the ins and outs of a complex process. All of this then takes even more precious time to find and correct. If each of your teams or sites have different methods of manually managing risk, you cannot be sure that you have an accurate view of how effective these processes are across your service because you cannot be sure how reliable the information they have provided is. And if you are looking to scale up your service at some point in the future, are you going to rely on these inadequate processes to manage your risks? Probably not. All of which means that you are constantly trying to play catchup to maintain your data integrity. Siloed processes with multiple versions of the truth across countless spreadsheet can put you in a position where you just cannot effectively control your risk management. And when you’re unable to see exactly what steps are being taken to keep your residents and your service from avoidable harm, you may not be able to sufficiently prove your


July 2024 www.thecarehomeenvironment.com 15


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