HOT OFF THE PRESS - 26TH JULY 2010

We were delighted to receive this letter from one of our customers - Mountvale Private Nursing Home Ltd.

'We proudly wish to inform you and thank all the staff at CareSys following our recent Regulation and Quality Improvement Authority (RQIA) Inspection which took place on the 6th July 2010.

The areas in relation to you were Nursing Care and Completion of Case Records.

The Levels of Maturity that we are defined against are Aware, Responding, Developing, Practising and Leading. The Inspector graded us as "Leading" in Nursing Care, which is very unique to the RQIA. She clearly stated that there was much debate within the RQIA if any establishment could achieve such a level. This level is defined as "Innovative practice, which is shared across and beyond organisations/home to others. The home is further developing their approaches to ensure long term sustainability".

The Inspector within her feedback commended the home on their resident involvement within their case records. She stated that the computerised record management system used within the home is well maintained and is established to provide a high level of management control and quality assurance. She went on to comment the multi-professional involvement throughout the inspection, again documented within the computerised records.

A tremendous thank you from the Nursing Team at Mountvale Private Nursing Home Ltd. is sent to Andy and his team at CareSys for their ongoing advice, support and training that went into allowing us to receive a fully achieved inspection report, leading care home for Nursing Care with the RQIA here in Northern Ireland. Our report will be available on the RQIA Webpage from the 14th August 2010.

Edith King, Nurse Manager"  

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PRECIOUS HOMES LTD PILOT CARESYS TIME & ATTENDANCE SOLUTION 

We would like to thank Minesh Shah, Finance Director at Precious Homes Limited for the time he took to be interviewed on the results of piloting CareSys Time and Attendance at Cassini House.

About the business
Precious Homes operates several projects throughout North and West London, offering high quality housing and specialist support for people with learning difficulty, severe physical disability, challenging behaviours, mental health problems and autism spectrum disorder.

Why were you looking at time and attendance systems?
"We were using manual systems to record and collate information for monthly payroll. This was not only a significant administrative burden  on staff at each project, but also at Head Office. I estimate that we were spending one and a half days per week completing timesheets, entering the data into spreadsheets and checking all the information before processing it through the payroll bureau."

How did you record staff hours before using CareSys?
"Manual timesheets were completed by each member of staff and signed off by the Manager at each Project. All the information was sent to Head Office where the administration team entered the data into spreadsheets on a weekly basis and then summarised for the payroll bureau to process."

What benefits have you seen since installing the CareSys time and attendance?
"We have seen a significant reduction in the adminitrative burden at Head Office and at Cassini House. I have also seen a reduction of between 5% and 10% on the number of staff hours automatically recorded by CareSys, compared to the manual system. This represents a significant saving on wage costs, which we expect to replicate once the system is rolled out to the other twelve projects."

What was the support and implementation service like?
"During the pilot we found the support from ISS to be excellent. First of all we completed a day's training with staff attending from Cassini House and Head Office. We learned how to use the system to set up staff records, roles and rates and shift patterns. During the pilot we ran the existing manual system alongside the automated system and informed all staff of the project. Whenever we had a question or issue that needed to be resolved, we found the CareSys support team to be responsive and helpful."

What are your plans for the other projects?
"We are looking forward to rolling out CareSys across the business over the coming months and have already planned installations at twelve other projects."

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CALLING THE REMAINING CIN PAYROLL CUSTOMERS!!

Support for CIN Payroll is coming to an end following the successful migration of customers from CIN Payroll to CareSys Payroll.

This affects the remaining CIN customers in that support for Payroll will not be available for End of Tax Year next April. We will be writing personally to all customers affected by this change.

Please call John Rowley on 01372 860 680 or email j.rowley@caresys.co.uk if you would like to discuss migration to CareSys Payroll. 

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NCF INTRODUCE NEW 'QUALITY FIRST' INITIATIVE

As proud partners of the NCF, ISS  invited Sharon Blackburn, Policy and Communications Director for NCF to talk about their new initiative 'Quality First'...

Bob Dylan sang 'the times they are a changing'. This is certainly true for the Adult Social Care Sector. Transformation of Social Care has dominated the attention of the Public and Independent Sector alike in recent years. The current system is unsustainable; pressures on costs; people living longer and rising expectatons. The emphasis is on enabling the person using services to have choice and control. The need for health and social care services to work together for the good of the people they serve has never been more important. Central to this is the focus on outcomes from the perspective of the person using the services and providers from all sectors need to demonstrate quality. The new regulator - the Care Quality Commission requires that providers of health; mental health and adult social care evidence how they meet essential quality and safety standards.

The National Care Form (NCF) was established to promote quality through the not-for-profit sector. Its members provide a range of services to Adults who need care and support in a variety of settings. In line with NCF's values and principles an initiative called 'NCF Quality First' was launched in April 2010 to help its members demonstrate their commitment to quality.

Introducing 'Quality First' - a quality assurance framework for all NCF members

For the last two years the NCF have been exploring the potential for a system which supports our aims for promoting quality through the not-for-profit sector and which helps NCF members demonstrate the quality of services they provide.

The NCF is the English Chapter of the International Association of Homes and Services for the Ageing (IAHSA) and through our association with this global network organisation we have been able to utilise the work initially undertaken by the American Association for Homes and Services for the Ageing (AAHSA) on quality improvement. The NCF Board gave its support to further explore the development of 'Quality First' for NCF members with full permission from IAHSA to develop the approach and the tools so that it is suitable for use in England.

The aim is for new and existing NCF members to sign up to The Quality First Commitment of providing quality services and to continuous quality improvement. The process requires the engagement of the CEO and Chairman of each member organisation and their commitment to quality.

NCF members aspire to be quality organisations

By signing The Quality First Commitment NCF members commit to create an environment that inspires confidence in the quality of the care and services they deliver. NCF Quality First unites NCF members in a strong and compassionate community, shaped by not-for-profit values, supported by shared experiences and expertise, and dedicated to achieving safe, accessible and ethical services. Relevant regulatory bodies will continue to monitor the services our members provide including the NCF Quality First programme.

NCF Quality First allows people using services and their families to have confidence that the services they choose for themselves and those nearest to them will meet or exceed their needs and expectations.

Member pledge to commit to the following principles to achieve excellence:

• We believe that adults and older people are a valuable part of society and remain able to make important and essential contributions to communities, society and families.
• We believe that not-for-profit organisations have a special role in society to provide safe, affordable and ethical services. Our objective is to provide the highest quality and most compassionate care and services to the people we serve.
• We believe that services for adults and older people should adhere to legal, ethical and professional standards based on stated values and policies in each of our organisations.
• We will strive to offer services that demonstrate evidence-based research and knowledge to meet the needs of the people we serve, as well as paid and volunteer carers.
• It is implicit in the membership of the NCF that any member organisation carries out its responsibilities to support the elements in this commitment and to provide leadership and representation of our efforts in the national arena. Therefore, as a member of NCF, we believe we have a special stewardship responsibility to maintain the commitment of the NCF Quality First programme.

• We pledge to commit to the following principles to achieve excellence:

  - Commitment

  - Service user participation and involvement

  - Innovation

  - Community involvement

  - Continuous quality improvement

  - Human resource development

  - Accessible information

  - Evidence-based practice and learning

  - Gaining the confidence and trust of people who use the services and their families

  - Sound governance, accountability and financial integrity

Signing the commitment will be a condition of membership and is intended to be a distinguishing feature of belonging to the NCF.

The Quality First Initiative is designed to help members demonstrate their commitment to quality in a tangible way.

For further information regarding the National Care Forum or 'Quality First' contact

Sharon Blackburn Policy and Comminications Director

Sharon.blackburn@nationalcareforum.org.uk

National Care Forum, 3 The Quadrant, Coventry, CV1 2DY

024 7624 3619 www.nationalcareforum.org.uk 

 

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CARESYS USER GROUPS 

In the past few months we have held two User Groups - one in the South (Dorking) and one in the North (Derby). Both sessions were well attended and the discussions were lively and immensely valuable for both ISS and the customers who were there. Many customers unable to attend asked if we could share the content of the two days...

Customer Satisfaction Feedback

We are always striving to improve upon the quality our customers receive from our products and services and as such, we have been carrying out customer surveys to identify areas that we should focus our efforts on. On the whole, the feedback has been very positive, however, we recognise there is always room to do better!

• 75% of customers are satisfied
• The majority of customers are happy to recommend CareSys
• Customers find it easy to do business with us
• A 'Help' facility would be beneficial in CareSys
• Communicate new features before releasing in upgrades
• Support request process to be built directly into CareSys 

Customer Questions

Before each User Group meeting, we asked customers to send us any questions they may have so they could be collated and given a direct response at each event. This proved to be very popular as we received many diverse questions and each of them was afforded discussion time. This is something we feel will be beneficial to carry forward to the next round of User Group meetings.

Recent Enhancements

New features and enhancements are being continuously built into CareSys as we take on board customer requirements and respond to the changing needs of the industry. In each forum, we looked at the three main areas the development team have been working on:

CareSys Future Direction

We asked customers to review the future development plan for CareSys. This was extremely helpful in enabling us to prioritise our strategic development plans. However, because our competitors may read our website, we have decided not to publish the results! We are nonetheless very grateful for the feedback we received.

One idea that we were asked for was to enable people to have more involvement with planning new features in CareSys and to have a discussion board that avoids the need for us to wait until future User Group meetings to be able to get feedback. What are your thoughts?

Thank you again to everyone who attended. Everyone we spoke to was pleased they had taken the time to come along, and even asked for User Groups to be helf more often. We would encourage all our customers to try and attend these sessions as they are an excellent opportunity to find out how other providers are solving problems in their business, and how to make best use of CareSys.

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