Technology in care homes

Available technology in our care homes

At Park House Care Home, we use a variety of digital systems, detailed below. 

Needless to say, our team is always available to support our residents and their families with the use of technology in our care homes.

Our systems include:

Used by residents and families:

• High bandwidth internet
• Wifi thoughout the home
• Voice over Internet phones, which means residents can make and receive calls anywhere within the home
• Zoom, Teams and virtually any online meeting including residents and relatives meetings and calls with GP/ third parties
• Family portal, which gives minute by minute updates on loved ones (see Nourish)
• Online visit booking application

Used to support our operations:

• Nourish digital care management system
• Omnicell – electronic medications administration
• Nexus nurse call – enables real time monitoring of nurse calls and response times
• Sophisticated monitoring, governance and quality control processes
• Proxy access – online medications ordering / admin
• GP connect – enables us to view resident’s health records
• Trusted Care enquiry management – used to support enquiries for admissions
• Asana – online purchasing and contractor management system
• Microsoft Dynamics Finance system and online payroll
• Judgement Index – ‘values’ based recruitment and staff development product
• Remote video meetings
• Online staff training

High bandwidth internet

Our care homes are powered by a robust high bandwidth connection, typically fibre-based. With speeds exceeding 50mbps upstream and downstream, we ensure our residents have access to digital systems and entertainment with high data transfer rates.

Wifi

In our care home, we offer Wifi access in all communal areas and rooms to enhance our residents’ digital experience. With this technology, our residents can enjoy instant access to:

• Amazon Alexa
• On-demand TV and movies
• Voice over Internet Telephone (VoIP)
• Video calls with their friends and family
• Internet browsing on their own devices

Likewise, our residents’ families have the same level of access to Wifi in our care homes. Furthermore, our staff benefit from phone access, IT systems, care monitoring, and advanced nurse call applications available throughout the care home.

VoIP phones

VoIP-enabled phones are now available throughout our care home, providing a reliable and efficient way to make voice calls. By implementing this technology, we are preparing for the upcoming BT ISDN switch off in 2025.

GP/ third party online meetings

To provide prompt and efficient healthcare for our residents, we conduct virtual meetings with GPs and social workers whenever possible. By using technology to avoid travel, healthcare professionals can dedicate more time to patient care.

Family Portal

The Family Portal is an essential tool for families to stay connected with their loved ones and their care. It’s a valuable tool alongside our Nourish system. With real-time updates and access to care plans, families can have peace of mind and trust in our care home.

Online visit booking application

Our online visitor booking system offers families an effortless way to schedule visits with their loved ones. This modern solution eliminates the need for direct contact with the home each time, reducing coordination efforts and allowing families to focus on quality time spent with their resident.

Nourish Digital Care Management System

Our Nourish Digital Care Management System is a powerful and reliable tool for managing and coordinating resident care. Through this market-leading cloud-based software application, our team can create personalised care plans and detailed activity timelines, conduct scored assessments, and keep meticulous notes that are accessible in real-time. This innovative system allows us to record a wide range of information, including weights, nutrition, hydration, medications, falls, incidents, skin conditions, vital signs, and mood. 

Our staff members use smartphones to access and update Nourish throughout their shifts, while managers can view live data on a customizable dashboard. This allows them to ensure that all necessary tasks are being completed and make well-informed proactive decisions that support even better care. Nourish and the dashboard also issue alarms and alerts to specific users, including managers and the CEO, to ensure that critical tasks are not overlooked.

Omnicell

At our home, we utilise Omnicell, an advanced electronic medication administration and recording system, to enhance medication safety and improve staff efficiency. This cutting-edge system automates many processes to ensure the safe and accurate administration and recording of every prescribed medication. Omnicell also offers detailed stock control functionality that enables us to track and manage our inventory, ensuring that we always have enough medication on hand. With its advanced features and reliability, Omnicell is an essential tool for our staff in providing the highest standard of care to our residents.

Nexus nurse call

At our care homes, we pride ourselves on providing a peaceful and homely environment for our residents. That’s why we use Nexus nurse call, a communication system that sends silent nurse call alerts to the smartphones of our staff, rather than ringing bells and causing disruption throughout the home. With Nexus, our management can also easily monitor response times and missed calls, even when they’re off-duty.

Sophisticated governance and quality control processes

We are dedicated to ensuring the highest standards of care for our residents, and our digital management systems help us achieve this. Using a sophisticated Microsoft PowerBI system, we extract data from all of our systems to create detailed reports and alerts, providing critical live information on every aspect of each resident’s health and wellbeing. Our managers, deputies, and directors receive daily, weekly, and monthly reports to review and proactively improve the quality of life for our residents.

Proxy access

To improve the safety and efficiency of our medication processes, we have implemented the Proxy access system. This digital system allows for the online raising of prescriptions, as well as online ordering and tracking of medication orders and deliveries. By removing the manual process, we free up our staff’s time and ensure that everything is completed and delivered on time, giving our residents peace of mind.

GP Connect

Our care home staff use GP Connect to access residents’ clinical records on their GP’s system, and GPs can access Nourish data. This helps to improve the efficiency and quality of care provided to residents and supports better collaboration between healthcare professionals in terms of diagnosis and treatment.

Trusted Care enquiry management

To keep track of new enquiries, we use Trusted Care’s enquiry management system, which goes into the Trusted Care CRM. We can also monitor the occupancy levels in our homes.

Asana

Asana is an online purchasing and task management platform that helps to improve safety and efficiency in our care homes. By providing a centralised platform, it enables teams to collaborate more effectively, share ideas and resources, and track progress on key projects. We use Asana technology in our care homes to enable us to immediately place orders for anything electronically as well as being able to track when things have been delivered and contractors’ jobs completed.

Microsoft Dynamics Finance system and online payroll

To handle both our care home’s finances and online payroll, we use the Microsoft Dynamics Finance system. This system is designed to help businesses keep track of their income and expenditure, as well as provide a way of managing budgets.

Judgement Index

At our care home, we use the Judgement Index as a values-based recruitment and appraisal tool for our new staff. This tool measures an individual’s values in relation to those required by the care industry and our organisation. It allows us to identify how well-suited someone is to being a carer and to our company culture. It is a valuable tool for ensuring that everyone who works here shares our core values, and helps to create a positive and cohesive working environment.

Remote video meetings

We use Teams and Zoom meetings across our homes so that our directors and managers can provide support and guidance, share learning experiences and best practices, and conduct governance remotely when appropriate. We use the same technology to facilitate meetings with relatives and many other people.

Online staff training

To enhance our staff’s skills and expertise, we provide online training to all of our employees. Our mandatory training covers over 20 course subjects, and we expect our homes to have at least 90% of all required courses completed at any one time. We also monitor attendance and completion of other courses through an online system.

Moving forward with technology

The advanced use of technology in our care homes is having a huge impact on both the lives of our residents and the way that staff are able to provide care. The benefits are immeasurable, whether it be through increased independence and empowerment, enhanced entertainment, earlier intervention of health concerns, or more effective communication between family members and carers.

Technology coming soon

We are committed to continuously improving the care we provide by introducing more and more technology into our care homes. We are currently looking at implementing systems for falls detection and monitoring, pain detection and monitoring, as well as NHS remote monitoring applications. We are also working at a national and regional level with the NHS and other bodies to support the introduction of other technologies, including shared care records.

We are proud to offer our residents and staff the benefits of advanced technology, and we will continue to explore innovative ways to improve the quality of care we provide.