Evolving Care Home Auditing: Streamlining Standards for Exceptional Home Care

July 17 , 2023

In our fast-moving world, technology is changing many industries quickly, and the healthcare field is one of them. Care homes help the old and other vulnerable people in our society get the care and support they need. Our auditing app improves and speeds up the auditing process for home care. It makes sure to meet high standards.

Let’s go into the world of care home surveys and talk about the benefits of UrAudits. Our tools are the best inspection app for home care for getting high standards.

Get To Know The Home Care Protocols that Exist In the UK

In the UK, care centres have to follow several rules and standards. They need to keep the people who live there safe and healthy. Among many others, the UK care home business has two essential rules and norms:

Standards Of Care Quality Commission (CQC)

The CQC is an independent group that oversees health and social care in England. Care centres are judged based on the CQC’s basic principles. It includes care for a person, safety, effectiveness, responsiveness, and leadership. Compliance with these rules is needed for care centres to run legally and maintain high levels of care.

Make Yourself Prepared CQC Audits Via Daily Self-Inspections

Every month, the Care Quality Commission does dozens of unannounced checks. CQC sees safe, effective, kind, responsive, and well-led health care services. Every month, many healthcare groups get the “Inadequate” rating for how well they treat their patients.

How can you ensure that staff follows the policies and standards everywhere, every day? How to get ready for an external audit like CQC?

Regular self-audits are an effective method for establishing and maintaining consistent standards within an organization. They make workers more aware and find problems early to fix them. It’s essential to make the self-audit process as easy as possible. You can avoid giving your already stressed staff more paperwork to do.

You will receive several benefits when allowing inspection via mobile device:

• Strong adoption: Every person has a mobile device and is aware of using accessible apps, so no training is needed.
• Regular inspections: Since there isn’t much paperwork, it’s easy to do self-inspections more often.
• Instant results: Get real-time alerts when there are problems, track to know how to fix them on screens, and see everything.
• Standardised processes and better results: You can make everyone use the same checklists regularly. You can find trends, compare results across locations or departments, and monitor compliance. By doing this, you can better the standards over time.

National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) Guidelines

NICE makes recommendations based on data for people who work in health care in places like nursing homes and hospitals. It covers care for people with dementia and care at the end of life. It also covers mental health, diet, preventing infections, and managing drugs.

How can older people in their homes get help with personal care and daily tasks?

This guideline discusses a plan to give older people living in their houses person-centred home care. It tries to help older people stay independent and provide safe, dependable, high-quality home care services.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) uses NICE standards as supporting evidence during inspections.

The guideline takes in blessings on:

• People receive information about their care and support options
• Care ensures to be person-centred
• Planning and evaluating care and support at home
• Giving care, including making ideas about how long visits should last,
• Working with the social and healthcare sectors
• Making sure that people who get care at home are safe and protected
• Hiring, training, and helping people who care for people at home

Who belongs to it??

• Health and social care professionals
• Companies that offer home care services
• Managers and staff in the home care industry,
• Older people who already use or plan to use home care services and their carers

Home care service commissioners should ensure this guideline’s ideas exist in any service specifications.

Get Ready For NICE Audits With Regular Self-Inspections

Our app lets you keep up with and deal with the ideas in the NICE guidelines for home care. Here’s how it can come in handy:

Assuring Person-Centered Care: There are checklists to measure how well you give them Person-Centered Care. Auditors can check how well care plans are per each client’s needs, tastes, and goals. The app comes with a feedback tool that lets people use services. It says what they think about the care they get and what they prefer.

Give options for care and resources: Learn more about the care and help options available to seniors. These are medical resources, community programs, financial assistance etc. Inspectors can use the app to ensure service users have the correct information. They can know their options and can make intelligent choices about their care.

Planning and reviewing home care services: UrAudits can help plan and review home care services. You can look at how well care plans meet the changing needs of service users. You can also see how well they work. You can keep track of any changes made to care plans because of what the NICE rules say to do.

Making Home Care Visits: You can track how many and how good the visits are. The software lets inspectors record the lengths of visits and check to see if they meet the standards. You can find out what clients think and see if there are any problems with the quality of trips.

Working together between health care and social care: You can make it easier for the other health care and social care experts who help provide home care services. You can talk to each other and work as a team. It can provide a place to share information, exchange care plans, and coordinate services. It helps make care delivery more seamless and integrated.

Get safety checklists and guidelines: You can determine the safety precautions and protection procedures are in place. Auditors can use the software to ensure that staff strictly follows the safety rules. You can keep track of any risks or accidents that you explore. You can ensure what proper steps are vital to lowering them.

Choosing, educating, and managing home care workers: UrAudits can help with managing home care workers. It can keep track of the credentials, education, and ongoing professional growth of each staff member. Using the app, inspectors can make sure that home care providers follow the rules. The rule includes hiring, training, and taking care of their employees.

Checking for compliance and making reports: You can gather audit data quickly and make detailed reports. Management can use it to point out areas that meet or don’t meet NICE standards. They can track progress, spot trends, and make the necessary changes to improve. Our app can save data from the past so that you can use it as a reference for upcoming audits.

Enhance home care quality with the NICE-based best inspection app. Act on ideas, track recommendations, collect data, and improve care for seniors. Get started today and download our audit app for iOS or inspection app for Android now!

UrAudits: An App To Check On Care Homes

UrAudits is a comprehensive app designed to assist care homes in conducting various assessments and inspections across different areas of operation. This powerful tool enables facilities to ensure compliance with industry standards and regulations. With UrAudits, care homes can easily create checklists tailored to specific needs and follow established protocols, rules, and quality metrics. The app covers several critical areas, including:

• List for Health and Safety Audits: You can see how well a care home meets health and safety standards. It talks about risk assessments, handling equipment safely, and what to do in an emergency. It also discusses how to handle medications, train employees, and safety in the surroundings in general.
• Fire Safety Checklist: This list is mostly about how to keep nursing homes safe from fires. You can train employees on fire safety rules, fire extinguisher maintenance, fire alarm systems, evacuation methods, and fire escape routes.
• Checklist for preventing and controlling infections: You can have a list to evaluate how nursing homes prevent and control infections. You can learn to properly clean your hands and use personal safety equipment (PSE). You can also learn to clean, disinfect, and handle waste and an outbreak.
• Checklist for assessing Legionella risk: Water systems with bacteria in them could be dangerous. This list helps evaluate the risk of legionella in care home water systems. You can consider water temperature checks, storage, outlet upkeep, and control measures.
• Sanitation Checklist: This list concerns how clean and healthy nursing homes are. It talks about general hygiene standards and how to get rid of trash. You can also learn how to wash and clean toilets and bathrooms. You can also be aware of how to keep the kitchen clean and handle food with just a few clicks.
• Checklist for analysing falls: Falls are a common problem in care facilities. This checklist helps find possible risk factors and ways to reduce them. It discusses things like putting safety measures into place, lighting, and evaluating residents’ mobility. It also talks about teaching staff how to prevent falls and environmental risks.
• House Safety Assessment Checklist: This list evaluates the physical surroundings of each resident’s home. It discusses trip risks, accessibility, home safety, electrical safety, fire safety, and equipment safety.

These checklists show how home care service providers can use our UrAudits app for different inspections. Care facilities can use our app to make their checklists. They can use templates that are already there to make sure they follow different standards, rules, and quality metrics.

Take your inspections to a better position with our best inspection app! Download our inspection app for home care now and revolutionise your auditing process!