The Future of Care: How Digital Care Plans Transform Outcomes
The Shift to Digital Care:
The care industry has seen a major transformation over the past decade, resulting in a gradual shift away from traditional paper-based care planning, with electronic care planning becoming the new norm. In recent years, the increased requirements for personalised care and the rise of smart phones, has emphasised the benefits of using digital care plans over traditional paper-based care plans.
Digital care plans streamline the creation of comprehensive and personalised care plans, ensuring efficient and tailored care provisions for individuals, whilst reducing the time carers spend creating care plans, allowing them to do what they do best, provide excellent care. Moreover, the rise of smart phones in recent years has underscored the benefits of electronic care planning by enabling carers to access digital content on-the-go, keeping them fully informed and connected with essential resources.
The advent of the NHS’s Digital Shared Care Record programme, which provides funding for care organisations to move away from paper-based care records has also helped to accelerate and smooth the transition. OneTouch are, of course, DSCR assured suppliers and we have assisted hundreds of carer organisations make the shift to digital care plans.
Understanding Digital Care Plans:
Carers ultimately spend a large amount of their time away from their home or nurse stations providing care, so they don’t have the bandwidth to be writing up timely paper-based care plans, this is where electronic care planning comes in!
Digital care plans are the electronic version of traditional paper care plans, that are used to determine the type and level of care required for each client. These plans can be templated and are highly configurable, allowing for efficient care provision planning tailored on a person-to-person basis, significantly reducing the time staff spend developing care plans.
“I think most staff would say the time spent with service users has improved since we introduced OneTouch. I think this is because when you’re not looking for paperwork and finding different records and forms and writing and signing, carers have more time to spend caring!” – Julie, Registered Manager, County Durham Care & Support.
Apart from being an efficient method for creating care plans, electronic care planning enables carers to be immediately notified of any changes whilst providing a detailed log of any changes, track their compliance with policies, and provide a matrix report that assists both staff and clients monitor the completion dates across multiple plans. Moreover, implementing digital care plans into care provision empowers your staff to carry out their job more effectively, reducing the pressure they face daily, and ultimately reducing the likelihood of errors occurring.
Key Benefits of Digital Care Plans:
Traditionally, carers have had to rely on multiple, interconnected solutions to achieve their goals and provide a high level of care for their clients, however OneTouch Health is unique in the care management software ecosystem, as we are the only true all-in-one care management software on the market, allowing care providers to build a meaningful relationship with a single solution provider. With OneTouch’s digital care planning functionality, carers can see their schedules in advance and update their actions on the go with just a few taps in our carer app.
All client records are stored centrally, meaning that all key stakeholders can access the data at any time and are informed of any changes to the clients records and scheduling in real-time. By centralising this knowledge, and making it easily accessible for the key stakeholders, carers no longer have to retain significant amounts of information, resulting in less mistakes occurring as carers are able to focus on providing the best possible standard of care as they have instant access to the service users current and legacy medical information.
Additionally, centralising client data enables carers to create and modify their schedules in advance, empowering them to spend more time engaging with a client on a more personal level resulting in better care outcomes. One of our customers, David Wallace, Director of Strategy and Operations at Hibernia commented:
“We really like that the system provides a comprehensive view of both carers and clients. With the systems capability for immediate updates and managerial oversight, operations have become more efficient and accurate. This transition has minimised delays and enhanced the overall quality of care delivered to clients.”
The digitisation of care management combined with a centralised data storage system enhances visibility into care provision and significantly reduces the gaps in service delivery. This is accomplished through the use of a wall chart, which is an overview of all the care being provided during that period.
As the wall chart is stored centrally, all stakeholders will be notified in real-time when a change occurs. Furthermore, as the client’s medical history and personal data is also stored centrally, their care plans can be accessed remotely to retrieve any necessary data, enabling the rapid deployment of personalised reactive care.
Impact on Client Engagement and Self-Management:
The digitisation of care management has also impacted how clients engage with their care plans and the extent to which they’re managing their own health-related decisions. As we’ve already established, digital care plans are a terrific way of providing personalised care to clients, and to increase critical care efficiencies.
However, to achieve the highest possible standard of care provision, the client needs to be empowered to engage with their care, take on a more active role and become involved in their health-related decision-making processes.
Digital care plans empower service users to take a more active role in their care by providing them with access to their care plan, where they can manage their care, track their progress and communicate with their care providers. One of the ways in which service users interact with their care is by keeping a digital diary.
Digital diary entries facilitate the structured and thoughtful approach to recording a service user’s daily activities, allowing them to reflect on their experiences throughout the day. These entries can be shared with key stakeholders and can be used to plan out future care plans.
Moreover, as care plans have to be reviewed periodically, daily diary entries allow for a greater level of involvement from the client when it comes to creating future care plans, whilst also allowing care staff to spot any trends that may be occurring, adjusting the care provided accordingly.
Looking to the Future and Embracing Digital Transformation in Healthcare:
The care industry has seen major transformations over the past decade, with a gradual shift away from traditional paper-based care planning, with electronic care planning becoming the new norm. The digitisation of care management, fuelled by unprecedented technological advancements and the ever-growing requirement for personalised care, had led to the emergence of many digital care management systems, such as OneTouch Health.
However, unlike other providers in the care management software ecosystem, OneTouch is the only true all-in-one care management software on the market. We have positioned ourselves as an industry leader in the healthcare market which is integral in delivering the best service of care provision to end-users.
As a result, we are continuously working on cutting edge technological enhancements and tools such as AI to improve on areas such as:
- Summarising Client data over a period of time to identify trends and patterns in behaviours or care delivery to help make informed assessments,
- Route optimisation for service delivery to provide the efficient scheduling format while continuing to consider Client preferences, and
- Auto assigning leave cover using all the coordination data and service delivery history to find the most suitable worker for the Client.
Ready for the future of care planning? Book a demo with OneTouch Health today to see how you can streamline your care planning.