Posts

Rhonda Sherriff

Rhonda Sherrif

I am very happy to endorse your system as the information is invaluable for CNMs to analyse the data/information and make informed decisions on best practice and innovation to decrease hazards, improve outcomes, and mitigating factors for resident welfare. I’m pleased you are delving into the data to the level you are, as it’s time saving for sites in many respects, and so easy to dice and slice the information to get the trends.

CNM’s used to spend hours just writing up the collective information before the analysis, so this system is hugely time saving.

Rhonda Sherriff – Owner Chatswood Retirement Village

Clinical Advisor for NZ Aged Care Association

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Bethsaida Retirement Village

Tracy

We are very pleased to have recently been granted 4 year MOH Certification! No corrective actions and three Continuous Improvements.

This follows on from a fully attained Partial Provisional Audit that was required prior to opening our two new wings earlier this year with no corrective actions.

Make no mistake! HCSL policies, software and support have played a major part in these accomplishments. The HCSL software we use means we have easy access to information in real time.

I started working with Gillian of HCSL shortly after I took on the role of Facility Nurse Manager at Bethsaida Retirement Village six years ago. The facility was not using Healthcare Compliance Solutions policies at the time and perhaps this was reflected in the previous audit results.

Gillian is always responsive to emails and phone calls which is critical when timely advice is required.

The HCSL regular newsletters are interesting with relevant and up to date information on issues affecting aged care.

Gillian is a lovely person to deal with. She is thoughtful, professional, pragmatic and I have always found her to be keen to help, with practical advice on any issues that might arise in the management of a retirement facility.

I thoroughly recommend HCSL to all aged care facilities.

Tracy Holdaway (RN BN)

Facility Nurse Manager

Bethsaida Retirement Village

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Moreh Home

Thank you, Gillian, for all your support. The Healthcare Compliance Solutions Ltd (HCSL) aged care program gives a structured clear pathway through the obstacle course of Certification.

The HSCL program was extremely user friendly and appears very nicely laid out and easy to locate care plans and patient’s information. The general feedback from the staff has been positive.

The policies and procedures were easy to follow, and well presented. We appreciated how thorough these policies were, and how much work had gone into developing them.

We all felt well supported throughout, and it was so nice knowing that you were on the end of the phone/email or zoom. Even when we met in person, you were incredibly positive and encouraging, thank you!

We would recommend this system to anyone needing assistance with the challenge that is Certification.

Barbara Adams

Board Chair-person /Acting Manager.

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Avoiding Personal Grievance claims

One thing new and seasoned managers often fear is having a staff member raise a personal grievance against them.  We asked Rainey Collins Law Associate Jaenine Badenhorst for some ideas to support management avoid personal grievances.  The following advice was the response:

We would recommend that you do these key things to help avoid a personal grievance being raised against you/your business. 

  1. The first key thing to do is to hire the right candidate in the first instance. (Yes, we know that isn’t always easy)!  You want to make sure you have a robust interview and reference checking system in place.  You could also consider your existing team meeting the candidate to make sure there is a good personality fit.  There is also the possibility of a work trial or probation period, depending on the circumstances.

2.   Have a written employment agreement which clearly sets out the parties expectations (for instance about work hours, flexibility, responsibilities, reporting lines, raising problems, and so on).  It is helpful for these matters to be discussed beforehand, so that everyone is on the same page.  This helps to avoid confusion and misunderstandings.  Employee manuals can also be very helpful to cover more detailed rules and guidelines (for example internet use, health and safety, bullying and harassment, etc.).

3.   Keep accurate employee records and files.  This should cover hours worked, leave taken, superannuation or other agreed deductions, discussion around various work conditions and so on.  The employee file should also cover any issues with performance or misconduct (detailing fair processes followed, and outcomes reached). 

4.   Act in good faith towards each other (by being honest and approachable; as well as open and communicative).  Being a good employer, and having a relationship with employees where they feel free to raise issues early on is the best way to resolve problems before they turn into formal grievances.  Regular catch-ups (like weekly or monthly meetings) is a good way of checking in with employees, and letting them know if there are any issues with their conduct or performance. 

5.   Knowing your obligations around the law and the contract you have with your employee is also very important.  This way you are less likely to cause issues which will turn into grievances.  If you are unsure of your obligations, you should seek professional advice. 

Thanks Jaenine, we hope that helps managers of services who might be struggling with this issue. Following due process and keeping accurate records will also support why you have made decisions and how.  Even with the best processes in place, sometimes you cannot completing avoid a grievance but follow professional advice and you can certainly minimise risk of a claim against you or your organisation.

There will be further articles published here supplied by Rainey Collins Law in relation to supporting your employment processes.

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Aged care going digital a raging success!

Receiving emails from our clients who have made the transition from paper-based to digital give us a lot of satisfaction. One provider who had been under DHB monitoring after an audit that didn’t achieve as well as they could have said they saved $100,000 after implementing the HCSL programme.  They had been spending a lot of time researching, writing and submitting corrective actions to audit findings for quite some time.  This doesn’t happen anymore. They have no findings!

Comments which reflect how very easy they found the process of transition reinforce our concept of where possible we opt for one click instead of two in our design processes.  Some client had used other digital packages in the past which they described as cumbersome and clumsy.  Those packages didn’t integrate with other packages so to find all the information needed, staff had to use multiple sources of information.  This made some reluctant to try something new.  Arriving on site at a client one day Gillian was taken to meet two care staff.  Both were very excited to tell her how due to them both having dyslexia, neither had been able to write their own notes before.  Now with the simplicity combined with spell-check in the digital progress notes, they were able to write their own notes.

The co-design of solutions with our clients maintains the philosophy of simplicity being as easy to use as a basic mobile phone or Facebook.

Early on we identified inequity between the resources available to corporate owned multi-site providers and independently or small group owned aged care services. This inequity, in conjunction with shortages of staff led us to work alongside aged care, retirement village and community services to design a one-stop-shop programme and in 2015 HCSL aged care software  went LIVE.  It has continued to be developed since then to a fully cloud based solution.

Clients said they’d like everything in one place. Despite there being other options we were continually pressured to create a NZ specific product that supports not only benchmarking, quality and risk but also all aspects of providing care while incorporating compliance throughout each aspect of the programme.

The integration with Medi-map medication administration systems will further streamline access to resident care information for remote assessment and treatment planning.  More integrations are underway currently to support as seamless flow of resident information regardless of where those needing information to provide care are situated. Clinical records are now accessible and able to be updated from anywhere with an internet / wi-fi connection.

Having been appointed as the step-in temporary manager at Rosewood Resthome and Hospital during the COVID-19 outbreak, Gillian Robinson was able to implement HCSL cloud-based software for telehealth support.  This programme was literally set up overnight and being used by staff with no training as there simply wasn’t time.  The great test for the system was to note the staff were able to successfully use the digital online care-planning and progress notes without any training other than to be supplied their login.  The uploading of a photograph of a wound for the doctor to review remotely was able to done easily after watching the 5 minute instructional video on ‘how to’.

Community, Disability services and mental health residential services along with retirement villages throughout NZ are now enjoying efficient cloud based records.  To find out how you can use this ready to use, NZ specific programme contact us.

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Governing Boards and Diversity

Boards of any organisation should be well placed to provide strong and transparent governance. This means the members of the board all need to understand the organisation structure, strategy, finances, client base, market changes and employees for the context in which they are operating.  This includes knowledge of behaviours, culture and ethics. The behaviours of all organisational board members gets reflected in employees to set the culture within the workplace which is experienced by the clients and those advocating for them, their family/whanau and friends.

The skill of judgement is necessary for board members to base decision-making on a set of agreed standards or a clearly defined constitution, organisation vision/mission or philosophy.   To have a progressive Board, there is the need to recruit board members with greater skills than already exist within the board. This ensures progressive diversity of thinking and culture based on more than gender and ethnicity.  A greater diversity is needed to also include creativity, innovation, current commercial practice knowledge, information givers and information seekers to increase depth of conversation and concepts being explored.  The Board member profile could do well to include these attributes, abilities and skills. Collectively they need to advance the organisation purpose, vision/mission or philosophy in a way that meets client current and future needs.

Boards are not the place for the faint-hearted or those at the end of career who simply ‘want to give back’ who may base todays decisions on yesterday outdated models.  Diversity will become a more visible part of boards with the introduction of the new Health and Disability Service Standards later this year.  While they are currently in draft, it seems clear the final version will require more diversity within boards. This will include increased desire for Maori representation and inclusion on Boards.  As American diversity advocate and activist Verna Meyers says, “Diversity is being invited to the party, inclusion is being asked to dance”.

If Maori representation isn’t part of your board make-up, it may be advantageous to look at forming relationships with local Iwi who fit the attributes needed to fit your board member profile. All Board members will need to be available, ethics driven, commercially aware and able to contribute.  The Board Chair will need to show these same attributes and also provide consistent innovative, clearly communicated strategic leadership.  The Board as a whole will also need to be agile in their response to unplanned events.  2020 and the emergence of COVID-19 reminded us of this.  It appears 2021 and into the foreseeable future will also present the need for agile thinking and innovation. I suggest now is the right time to review how your board is made up and how effectively they perform.  How can this be improved in your organisation?  

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Bench-marking – Aged Residential Care

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his New Zealand designed web based (on-line / in-the-cloud) Bench-marking and quality management system from Healthcare Compliance Solutionhttp://www.hcslqms.co.nz/s Ltd allows you to:

  • Bench-mark in real-time – specific to resident type, event type, date and time of day.
  • Have automated default reports to save you time analysing your data trends and patterns
  • Drill down into your data easily to identify opportunities for continuous improvement
  • Complete your internal audits online and have the corrective actions auto-populate into a corrective action log
  • Log and manage adverse events
  • Bench-marking of adverse events against other aged care providers
  • Support evidencing an active Health & Safety programme is in place
  • Log and manage infections – automatic outbreak registers
  • Bench-marking of infections against other aged care providers
  • Log and manage your complaints with time-frame, investigation and response prompts
  • Dashboard view options for level of care and any chosen 3 monthly time-frame review
  • Dashboard view option of adverse events or infections
  • Logs (event registers) appear with individual events in one colour when open and change to another colour when the event is closed. This allows you to see quickly the status of events. 
  • Use in conjunction with your current policies / procedures or update to the HCSL site specific created policies and procedures. 

Your organisation policies and procedures and related documents (if created by HCSL) are also accessible through the Facility Documents tab on the left of the screen for remote anytime, anywhere access.  The keyword search option on the policies and procedures in addition to precise indexing and coding of documents makes it very quick and easy to locate information for staff to reference.

You can also upload your own documents for confidential safe storage.

This is what Rhonda Sherriff, NZACA Clinical Advisor says about using the HCSL QA system:

“I am very happy to endorse your system as the information is invaluable for CNMs to analyse the data/information and make informed decisions on best practice and innovation to decrease hazards, improve outcomes, and mitigating factors for resident welfare. I’m pleased you are delving into the data to the level you are, as it’s time saving for sites in many respects, and so easy to dice and slice the information to get the trends. CNM’s used to spend hours just writing up the collective information before the analysis, so hugely time saving”

To view a brief video explanation of the system click here. This programme has been operating in NZ Aged Care since mid 2016 so now has many thousands of pieces of data to compare yourself against.  

To find out more contact us here.

 

Making monitoring your service remotely in LIVE time easy!

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Quality Management Systems

The below question and answer were published in the New Zealand Aged Care Association industry ‘In-Touch’ newsletter (19th February 2016).

Question: A member asks “if we purchase a comprehensive quality management system from a provider how assured are we that the system will meet full compliance, come certification and surveillance audit time, as requirements and compliance expectations change frequently?

NZACA Clinical Advisor Answer: “You should be purchasing a complete quality management system that will comply with the Health and Disability Standards specifications, health and safety requirements and meet DHB/ARRC contractual requirements.

The provider of the system would normally initially tailor the full quality management package to reflect accurately the site specifications, H.R. component, and best practice guidelines, after consultation with the owner and management on site. These documents need to be site specific. The provider will normally contract to the site, which sets out obligations between the provider and the site management.

The contract will include the full review and updates of policies and procedures on a bi-annual basis, unless specified more frequently, to keep documents accurate and reflective of best practice. There may be an educational element provided within the contract as well, to benefit staff knowledge and skills. There is normally a good document control system in place and cross referencing of information where required.

Quality management systems are reliant on the skills and knowledge of the site personnel working with them, the way the system is managed and the outcomes/reviews, content and information extricated from the use of the system to improve quality care provision/outputs. The documentation system is reflective of the people using them, and the depth to which documentation and information is created, analysed and utilised for improvements.

Auditors on site rely on the provision of robust up-to-date policies and site adherence to them. Partial attainments can sometimes result from staff deviating from, or not following, their sites actual policies or processes as outlined in their quality management system.”

Where can you get such a system? 

Here at Healthcare Compliance Solutions Ltd we provide the services described above and noted as being optimal for achieving excellence in care and audit outcomes.   To see a brief video about the Aged Care software update and now in use by over 3,800 users in NZ, click here. 

Request a no obligation consultation here.  

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HCSL Aged Care Software user feedback

We asked a random group of clients for their responses in relation to using HCSL Aged Care Cloud based software. What do you like best about the HCSL software and your current use of it? Below is their responses:
  • I like the layout of the LTCP and being able to load and access documents in the one programme.
  • At the end of the month the stats are all there done without me having to calculate; the system does that itself, love it, I print off the bar graphs for the staff to see each months results with the related information written up to show the story behind the data
  • The advantage of having HCSL software in our facility means enabling quick access to residents records for more coordinated, efficient care and securely share information with residents and other clinicians. Holly Lea is in the process of having most of the documentations online. Moving to electronic significantly improved our archiving processes and the need for physical storage space for paper records is also significantly reduced. Being able to search for a file or document from the computer rather than manually dig through a filing cabinet saves time for all of us.
  • Know it is kiwi made and covers aged care in NZ requirements
  • Analysis of data and logs for complaints and incidents
  • Ease of access and user friendly
  • Log in pages are bright and cheerful.
  • Everything is in one spot and easy to access.
  • Audit system, ease of use, easy access to forms.
  • Its clear and easy to use.
  • The Long Term Care Plan (LTCP) is much more concise, great feedback from the care staff, easy to read and understand.
  • Able to compare to the average when reviewing falls or infection rates.
  • Ability to analyse present the information e.g falls.
  • I like the ease of use – the easy to generate reports – everything being in a logical order that ties in very well with the paper files
  • Used correctly the system does pass audit, meets all the requirements of the MOH Standards.
  • Receiving the continual updates we know we always have the most updated material available to meet our MOH requirements
  • This is a central point for data gathering. We have the potential to have most information on line.
  • The system is new to our team, it is still getting established here. We are finding it quite easy to use.
  • Its web based which means I can look at it anytime and am fully up-to date always with whats happening
  • The audits are detailed, and clear
  • The bench-marking is great and easy – saving time – great reporting
  • All of it, Everything on the website is easy to find and I like the bench-marking.
  • I don’t think we utilize enough of the paperwork some things I am discovering now after 5 years of using it!
  • I like the simplicity of the software.
  • I like that it is integrated with quality documentation.
  • I like that it is cloud based.
  • I like the flat fee for use, rather than a fee the number of devices (tablets).
  • The ease of uploading resident photo and easy layout
  • Ability to easily track trends in adverse events.
  • The straight forward user friendly interface, the data analysis, the way corrective actions populate straight to the corrective actions log,
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Bethsaida Resthome, Hospital and Retirement Village Testimonial

We are very pleased to have recently been granted 4 year MOH Certification! No corrective actions and three Continuous Improvements.

This follows on from a fully attained Partial Provisional Audit that was required prior to opening our two new wings earlier this year with no corrective actions.

Make no mistake!  HCSL policies, software and support have played a major part in these accomplishments.  The HCSL software we use means we have easy access to information in real time.

I started working with Gillian of HCSL shortly after I took on the role of Facility Nurse Manager at Bethsaida Retirement Village six years ago. The facility was not using Healthcare Compliance Solutions policies at the time and perhaps this was reflected in the previous audit results.

Gillian is always responsive to emails and phone calls which is critical when timely advice is required.

The HCSL regular newsletters are interesting with relevant and up to date information on issues affecting aged care.

Gillian is a lovely person to deal with. She is thoughtful, professional, pragmatic and I have always found her to be keen to help, with practical advice on any issues that might arise in the management of a retirement facility.

I thoroughly recommend HCSL to all aged care facilities.

Tracy Holdaway RN BN

Facility Nurse Manager

Bethsaida Retirement Village

August 2019

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