Christadelphian Aged Care

Organisation Overview

Christadelphian Aged Care is an experienced aged care provider that has been serving the community for more than 60 years and has 6 aged care facilities with a total of 647 beds and a staff of 630. Christadelphian Aged Care believes in a holistic approach to care that respects each individual and promotes the physical, emotional and spiritual well-being of all residents. As a charitable, not-for-profit organisation, all surplus funds are reinvested back into caring for residents and facilities.

Business Situation

Christadelphian Aged Care implemented iCare’s Clinical and Care Solution in 2009 and have been live with Care Plans since April, 2009. After a very successful uptake of Progress Notes, Assessments Forms and Charts, Christadelphian Aged Care became aware that their staff were not completely comfortable with the Care Plan module as it had been a few months since their original iCare training.

Solution

To rectify the situation and get staff to a level where they could comfortably and confidently use the Care Plan module, Christadelphian Aged Care invested in another iCare Train the Trainer session. This session was to ensure staff had a detailed understanding of the care planning process and were confident with the Care Plan module before going live. The rationale behind this was that if staff did not understand the module properly, or what it involved, then the Care Plan module would not be used to its full potential and the benefits would not be realised.

To further enhance staff knowledge they also held internal staff training consisting of creating/evaluating/reviewing Care Plans and an overview of Form Development to ensure that staff had a clear understanding of the way a Care Plan is developed.

“Investing in training was crucial to the success of the Care Plan module at Christadelphian Aged Care. Taking that extra time to get everybody confident with the process and the module, prior to going live, has meant that our staff feel comfortable using the Care Plan module and were prepared to embrace the change management we put in place with an electronic Care Plan system,” Radhika Kumar, Trainer & Change Manager said.

As part of their internal process review, Christadelphian Aged Care also implemented a policy that prior to commencing a Care Plan staff members had to make sure all Assessment Forms were “Completed” and not “Unfinished” so that the most accurate clinical data was flowing through to the Care Plan. Christadelphian Aged Care also temporarily redirected two staff members to new positions to assist with the editing process prior to the Care Plan being checked and completed by an Registered Nurse, which allowed further time savings.

Ms. Kumar explains, “It is a requirement across Christadelphian Aged Care that all Registered Nursing staff review and complete all assessment forms prior to commencing a Care Plan. If all of your assessment forms are complete then you can be assured that your Care Plan will be accurate and the most suitable care path for that resident. Our staff have embraced this as they see the time savings this has created when reviewing or creating a Care Plan as most of the work has already been completed. We also conducted a detailed review of all forms to ensure that they accurately generate the Care Plan and this process was imperative in generating individualised care plans.

Outcomes

Major time savings

The major benefit of the Care Plan module for Christadelphian Aged Care was the time their Registered Nurses were now saving.

“Care Plans can now be completed in approximately 1 hour once all mandatory Assessment Forms have been finished and reflect the care needs of a resident. When you compare this with the 3 hours it would take using the old paper based system, the iCare Care Plan module has dramatically increased efficiencies. Instead of getting bogged down in the paper work we now have more time to care for residents and, at the end of the day, that is our primary focus.” Ms. Kumar explained.

Positive Accreditation Agency feed regarding concise, individualised care plans

Christadelphian Aged Care have received excellent feedback through an Agency Visit and were informed that at Ashburn House their Care Plans were extremely concise and very individualised.

Christadelphian Aged Care has found that strong internal processes and a commitment to the iCare solution has proven that writing a Care Plan in iCare is simple, efficient and concise.