St Basil’s Homes

Organisation Overview

St Basil’s Homes is an aged care service provider under the auspice of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Australia. Situated in NSW with 372 beds across four facilities, St Basil’s Home’s philosophy is to provide a standard of care and service to their residents so that they may enjoy the maximum quality of life within a safe, secure and caring environment.

Situation

St Basil’s Homes has always been IT savvy and a leader in adapting innovative technology to improve business processes and care outcomes for their residents. Despite the significant change management they went through in 2008, when they implemented iCare’s Clinical and Care Solution along with three other IT solutions, St Basil’s Homes still had a manual process for medication management.

General Manager of Information Services, Evi Giameos explains, “As we were using technology in so many aspects of our business, staff were frustrated that we still had manual, time consuming process for medication management.

Legibility of handwritten medication charts which were often faxed or photocopied was an issue as they would be difficult to read and often confusing, leaving a lot of room for error. Auditing was extremely time-consuming. For example, at one facility we had 111 residents with up to six medication charts or more that needed to be audited manually every month by a DON or RN which could take up to a day. A large proportion of staff time was taken up with paper work, following up errors and signature omissions.”

Another high priority for St Basil’s Homes was improving the way they communicated with their pharmacy so that medication changes or orders could be actioned as soon as possible and there was a way for staff to easily track what was happening with a resident’s medication without constantly phoning the pharmacy.

The Solution

When iCare integrated a medication management module into their Clinical and Care software St Basil’s Homes had a robust, complete solution that gave them a single view of their residents’ health information.

“We didn’t want to operate disparate systems as we wanted to create efficiencies and streamline our work practices. With iCare we can now capture medication information at the point of care, reducing the need to duplicate information and then easily generate reports creating a level of transparency across the business we just couldn’t achieve before.

The system’s circular approach also incorporates the key people involved in medication management by linking the GP’s prescriptions to the pharmacy for dispensing then back to the facility to be administered reducing risk of error and improving how a resident’s healthcare needs are established.” Evi said.

Implementation at St Basil’s Homes was successfully completed at all facilities within three months and was on time and under budget.

Evi explains, “We had a dedicated Project Manager who was responsible for the entire implementation and worked with iCare to get the system operational. Based on our previous experience, a Project Manager is a necessity if you want a successful implementation. If you don’t have someone driving the project failure is eminent and, in long the run, you save money as the return on investment you receive when the system is being used to its full potential outweighs the cost of that resource.”

Also contributing to the implementation success was St Basil’s Homes understanding of their staff and where extra help may be needed for them to use the system confidently.

“We knew English was a second language for the majority of our staff so we did an analysis upfront of each individual staff member to identify, for the training sessions, who needed to be buddied with a train the trainer staff member who could speak Greek and help them with things such as identifying what different icons meant etc. The support our staff received in the training phase lead to them taking initiative which has been reflected in the improvement of the documentation now provided. Some staff members have also used this as an opportunity to greatly improve their English language skills.” Evi explained.

Benefits

Staff at St Basil’s Homes are successfully utilising all aspects of the system and now have a consolidated view of each resident’s clinical, care and medication information as well as a range of other benefits.

90% reduction in medication errors

St Basil’s Homes were experiencing approximately 60 medication errors each month with almost three quarters due to signature omissions. Now St Basil’s Homes has zero signature omissions.

“You are only required to sign once at the start of a medication round. You no longer have to sign for each medication, removing the chance of a signature omission. Staff have gained an extra 2 hours a month that would have otherwise been used to follow up signature omissions. The system has entirely removed this painstaking process.” Evi said.

Other, non-signing, medication errors have also been reduced, combined with zero signature omission, St Basil’s Homes have experienced a 90% reduction in medication errors across all facilities.

Evi explains, “Our medication charts are now created electronically, removing any illegibility issues and frustrations we previously had. Staff have reported that administering from the mobile device is much easier as there is a clear picture of the resident and only the medications they require for that round are displayed rather than for a 24 hour period. Often an image of the medication is displayed making it easier to match what was prescribed to what has been packed.”

Faster and improved funding applications

Evi finds the system improves the quality of ACFI Appraisals submitted and makes the whole process much faster.

“All information to be linked to an ACFI Appraisal is available electronically making it much easier to provide the supporting evidence required, reducing the chance of your appraisal being rejected. As the supporting evidence is all available in one spot, ACFI Appraisals can be completed in less than 30 minutes.” Evi said.

Faster medication rounds

Medication rounds take approximately 25 minutes less to complete as staff don’t have to sign for every medication. Time savings have also occurred as staff no longer need to duplicate information.

Evi explains, “Documentation now occurs at the point of care and information that needs to be available in multiple documents is often created from a single point of entry. Now, when a medication is not administered, staff select a reason why and this triggers a progress note to be created. The same process occurs for administered PRNs.”

Improved compliance and easy auditing

Auditing, which was once an extremely time consuming task for St Basil’s Homes, is now simple thanks to iCare.

“Auditing is now done with the click of a button and we can be much more specific in what we want to report on as we can customise our reports. The transparency the system creates for management means we can easily track the progress of our business objectives and goals to ensure they are being meet.

Having the ability to generate clinical audits has also been a huge advantage during the accreditation process as we can easily provide information required to demonstrate our compliance.” Evi said.

Pharmacy communication improved

Now St Basil’s Homes is able to track the progress of medication changes or orders sent to their pharmacies via electronic messaging.

“On average, each communication we have with our pharmacies has been reduced by at least 5 minutes due the electronic messaging functionality within iCare. It allows us to send and receive messages and colour code them so we know when a message has been read and actioned. This has significantly reduced the need to continually phone, fax and follow up our pharmacies.” Evi explained.