4 Branches
across Surry
and Hampshire
Award-winning
domiciliary care provider
How CHD Care at Home improved their CQC rating with easy-to-use technology
About CHD Care at Home
CHD Care at Home is part of the CHD Living group, a family-owned, award-winning social care provider. The CHD Care at Home team works from four home care agencies in Surrey and Hampshire, providing tailored domiciliary care packages for people with learning disabilities, physical disabilities and other special needs.
The challenge
To achieve a Good or Outstanding CQC rating, CHD Care at Home needed to demonstrate compliance with regulations and standards. However, with four agency locations and clients spread across two counties, the existing paper-based system was clunky and inefficient.
When it came time for monthly auditing, a member of the CHD Care at Home team was driving out to more than 80 clients to gather all the necessary paperwork to bring back to the office. This process was time-consuming, and issues sometimes got picked up too late or missed altogether. In some cases, managers were unaware of missed calls or missed medications until several weeks later.
As a result, CHD Care at Home received a Requires Improvement rating in the Well-Led and Safe KLOEs!
The solution
CHD Care at Home needed a more efficient way to keep track of what was happening with carers and clients in real-time. Specifically, they had to tighten up medication management and make sure that calls went ahead as planned.
The team wanted to access client records quickly and easily, without the delays involved with a paper-based system. They needed a secure system that enabled relevant team members to track calls and pick up on missed medications and other issues in time to act upon them.
The solution needed to be quick and easy to implement to be up and running in time for their upcoming CQC Focused Inspection.
Birdie helped so much with the alerts for medications. With medication reporting, you can see instantly what’s happened. You can see the reasons why the medication wasn’t taken, and there's this whole feedback loop. And we’re doing that daily - we’re auditing in the moment. We can evidence everything that’s happened and - importantly - how it’s improved since the last inspection.
How they did it
CHD Care at Home onboarded Birdie’s digital software solution and moved away from a paper-based system entirely. Carers use Birdie Call Monitoring to check in and out of calls, so managers know instantly if a call is missed and can check on the carer and reallocate the visit if necessary.
Birdie’s eMAR system enables carers to record medicines administration during the call, and the office team gets updates in real-time. Managers are alerted about late or missed medications so they can act quickly to address any issues.
When it comes to auditing, Birde pulls together the data to create reports at the click of a mouse. CHD Care at Home had all the information to hand at their next CQC inspection, and the changes earned them a Good rating for every CQC KLOE.
At this inspection, we found evidence of improvement. The electronic care planning system implemented by the provider recorded people's needs in relation to the medicines they took, which meant staff had access to the information they needed.
Improving a CQC rating
CHD Care at Home consists of four home care agencies providing domiciliary care to clients in Surrey and Hampshire. After a CQC inspection that left them with a Requires Improvement rating for two KLOEs, the team knew they had to make changes. Working with a paper-based system meant that missed visits or medication issues were picked up days or weeks after the event, putting clients at risk and falling below CQC standards.
To solve this problem, CHD Care at Home adopted the Birdie software system to eliminate paper records and digitise record-keeping. The team now monitors client calls and medication administration in real-time and can solve problems as they arise. As a result, CHD Care at Home was able to demonstrate compliance, and the CQC awarded them a Good rating for all KLOEs.
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