Samarinda Lodge

Organisation Overview

Located in Melbourne’s inner east suburbs, Samarinda Lodge is a fully accredited, not-for-profit low level residential aged care facility providing ageing-in-place care to 40 residents. 80 staff consisting of 12 Registered Nurses Division One, Care Workers and auxiliary staff providing 24 hour 7 days a week care with one care giver assigned to only 6 residents.

Samarinda Lodge have rapidly built a reputation as one of the market leaders in adopting new assistive technology to create efficiencies and improved care for its residents.

The Situation

Samarinda Lodge had been using iCare’s Clinical & Care Solution since May 2007 and recognised a need to streamline their current medication management process by implementing an electronic medication management system.

CEO of Samarinda Lodge, Tanya Gilchrist explains:“Our main objective when assessing our medication management processes was reducing risk where ever we possibly could. Our manual processes had been fairly successful however there was room for improvement to safeguard our administration procedures.

Many of our aged care residents have complex medication profiles and coupled with handwritten and sometimes illegible medication charts,we were opening ourselves up for error. ”

“We also needed to create efficiencies to save time where we could.We are all time poor and we required a system that would introduce time saving efficiencies without comprising the quality of care we were providing to our residents.” Tanya said.

By using a paper based system Samarinda Lodge were experiencing signature omissions which took time to follow up. Valuable care time was also being spent ordering medications and liaising with pharmacy.

The Solution

Samarinda Lodge chose to implement iCare’s Medication Management System. The system utilises a mobile device which a care worker signs on during the medication round. The mobile device produces a photographic image to identify the resident and alist of medications to be administered in that medication round as well as any additional information. The care worker is also prompted and must provide a reason for any medications not administered.

This information from the mobile device is downloaded automatically onto the network and stored for easy access, thus complying with regulatory conventions whilst at the same time maintaining accurate, up to date resident medication profiles.

“iCare’s Medication Management System addressed the areas of concern in our current medication processes. By providing checkpoints at the point of medication administration, errors were minimized and iCare’s reporting functionality has decreased the amount of time spent on administrative tasks, important for accreditation, and it also provides a more efficient way for us to communicate with our pharmacy.” Tanya explained.

Samarinda also had access to a more complete view of a resident’s health record as iCare’s Clinical and Care Solution was integrated with iCare’s Medication Management System.

“This was a key factor in our decision as it meant we could provide improved care to our resident’s as we had all information available electronically and in one place creating a more complete picture of a resident’s health information, enabling better care decisions to be made.” Tanya said.

Benefits

Residents, staff, pharmacy and management have all been beneficiaries of the implementation of iCare’s Medication Management System.

Reduced risk of medication error improving resident safety

“By receiving immediate notification of missed medications and having clear and legible medication charts and signing sheets we reduced medication errors by 95% improving our resident’s safety.” Tanya said.

Time saving and more efficient medication management

“The time taken to complete a medication round was reduced by an average of 20 minutes as only medications for that round were displayed on the mobile device.

There was also significant time savings in ordering process and dealings with pharmacy which was reduced from 15 minutes per day to less than 5 minutes. Signature omissions were also reduced to 0 compared to an average of 18 per week. GP’s also saved time in medication reviews as there was no rewriting of the drug chart required.” Tanya explained.

Improved medication auditing and compliance

“Reports are available immediately for auditing and at the same time display information in an easy to view format that would not be possible under a paper based method.” CEO Tanya Gilchrist stated.