The Good Care Group is an award-winning national provider of 24 hour live-in care supporting older people in their own homes. Over 60% of the clients we support are living with dementia, although we also support clients with a diagnosis of Parkinson’s, MS, and those considered generally frail. We offer a fully managed service and directly employ our professional carers, we have no use for agency staff.
In 2019 we were proud to receive an overall rating of ‘outstanding’ from the Care Quality Commission (CQC) achieving outstanding in each of the 5 KLOE categories. Our CQC report highlighted our proactive and innovative approaches to risk mitigation and a focus on achieving improved outcomes for clients. As an entirely digital company we have used innovative digital solutions to support our service to keep our clients safe and to improve health and wellbeing outcomes.
Having been unable to find a provider who could offer a care management system which was both user-friendly and that suited the unique requirements of a live-in care service, we created our own in-house. ‘Good Care Together’ is an online platform combining both a system for both professional carers and clients. Carers can complete their care records, submit requests to head office, and connect with one another. The system provides true transparency as clients are also able to see the daily activity of their loved ones as well as anything the carer documents. The system offers insight into the care delivery and provides a wealth of data to inform our quality improvement plan therefore improving client outcomes. Managers are able to see in real time what’s going on in the placement; how well the client slept, if a carer has taken their break, and medication administration, all without having to travel to the clients’ homes. Strategically we have been able to analyse data at a client population level observing, for example, the correlation between chest infections and hospital admissions, causes of falls and triggers for incidents of behaviours that challenge and can therefore design and implement preventative measures to reduce risk and to minimise incidents and accidents. Electronic MAR charts (eMAR) generate flags centrally when a client has not been given their medication which is then followed up immediately. eMAR is proven to have improved client safety, Since its introduction we have not experienced any medication errors requiring a notification to the regulator. Good Care Together can be easily integrated with other innovations and with online incident reports we are able to evidence the impact of initiatives. Through the introduction of urinalysis testing kits, for example, we were able to evidence a 68% reduction in emergency intervention for urinary tract infections.
Our digital solutions enhance a service supported by strong expertise. With both our Consultant Admiral Nurse and Occupational Therapist we are able to achieve continuous improvements, and offer our clients specialists input. Having a dedicated in-house
Occupational Therapist ensures that clients are less likely to fall – 50% of people
age 80 and over fall at least once a year, for TGCG clients it’s 6%. Whilst our Consultant Admiral Nurse is able to ensure best practice in the field of dementia care; every client taking an antipsychotic medication gets a 6 monthly meds review which ensures rates remain low (4 x lower on average than in care homes).
Overall client satisfaction scores from a recent survey reflect that the service is delivering on its commitment to improve client outcomes; in the most recent client survey 94% of respondents said that The Good Care Group has made a positive difference to the client’s life.
