Following a CQC inspection, Wirral chose to implement a stronger governance framework, ‘Standards Assurance Framework Excellence’, known as SAFE, to provide an excellent standard of patient care. As part of their ‘Healthy Wirral’ programme, there was a big push to move away from paper-based services and become digitised. It was necessary for Wirral to have one, single repository for their data across the organisation, to ensure all staff were working to the same standard of care across the organisation.
“So, in terms of the background of the project, it's a good collaboration between Wirral Health and Care Commissioning [CCG] and Wirral Community Health and Care Trust, and also of course our care homes. SAFE, as a system provides us with an assurance and governance framework that is standardised across the care home sector, so that all care homes will be providing the same information in the same format at the same time.”
With one place, one system and one version of the truth, staff at Wirral can be confident that they’re all working towards the same goal. Users are greeted with quality dashboards after logging in that display up-to-date, real-time data for better insight and oversight of past, current and projected future performance.
“We can get Commissioner oversight of those dashboards, as well as the IPC having oversight from an infection prevention control that we've moved on to this digitised and improved system. It gives us a clear framework across both areas and makes sure that we're all doing the same thing at the same time, and it makes sure that we have, with our quality improvement officers, where we have services that we currently work with who are either requires improvement or inadequate, we've got a clear framework for helping and for infection prevention controls and move those back up to the standards that we need to have.”
“So we've talked quite a lot about some of the benefits and again, you know, this is kind of synonymous across the InPhase tool for other organisations - it's about that transparency, that provision of assurance and accountability, providing a repository of evidence for the care home’s memory, for all of the evidence relating to regulatory standards, and it supports inspections to improve specifically for IPC, hopefully as well to support that improvement around care home reputation.”
“But really putting that emphasis on providing safe and effective care for some of our more vulnerable people, and providing that assurance not only to ourselves but also their families.”
Complete oversight of the organisation through a single, integrated system supports Wirral in providing safe and effective care for vulnerable people by providing robust, reliable and evidenced assurance.
“It also works on the tablets, the iPads or even the smartphones, particularly for the mobile staff and for care homes, that might be important. So, I think the multi-device elements of that is important too.”
Through the support of the Cloud, a single login and a responsive user interface that runs at high speed across any device, Wirral’s staff became empowered to take quality into their own hands. A digital system that is accessible from anywhere at any time allows for quick and easy reminders of what needs to be completed and when.
In addition, an integrated system eliminated the need to manually pull data from multiple sources when accessing the information needed. Quality dashboards display the data clearly and visually, triangulating audit results against CQC, NICE Guidance, policy and governance framework, so users know that they are on track. Aligned actions can be created quickly and easily so time is spent in the most impactful areas.
“So, although it's still really early days in terms of this [care homes] project, the feedback's been really, really positive from care and managers. The engagement's been really good, which is a credit to the care homes, given the really challenging circumstances that they're operating in right now. And as you can see from the feedback, you know this is exactly how I feel about the system and how, you know, we felt with the use of rural communities - the fact that it's very useful, it's easy.”
“It's a reminder of what those standards are, and it helps you to remember what should be in place. And again, the fact that it's all together, you don't have to go into lots of different places. You don't have to go and look in the folder in the office, on, on the shared drive, it's all there in one place.”
Wirral Council Care Homes will continue to meet and maintain high standards of patient care against their SAFE framework using InPhase Oversight as one place, one system and one truth. They can provide the robust, reliable assurance needed for quality of care as well as continue to empower their staff with the support of a responsive, user-friendly interface that presents data clearly and visually in real-time.
To find out how InPhase can do the same for your Trust, schedule your time with one of our experts today.
