Riversway Nursing Home and Birch Green Care Home have both implemented an innovative new digital system to manage resident medication administration practices.
Riversway has revolutionised its medication management procedures, moving away from dated paper based systems, and offering a medicine management system with significant benefits, including increased efficiency and a reduced risk of administrative errors.
The system called Well Careplus was launched by Well Pharmacy last year to digitally disrupt traditional paper based practises. Well Careplus aims to future-proof care homes by giving pharmacists complete access to the medicine records of residents.
Enabled by specially designed tablet technology, called the Well Pad, Well Pharmacists are able to proactively advise care homes, ensuring prescribed drug therapies are safe and effective for residents, and that administration records are correct.
Drug administration errors are often a key element of concern by the Care Quality Commission when they inspect care homes, and managing the ordering and administration of medicines to residents is a complex and time consuming process. Typically, in a 67 bed care home some 4000-plus individual medicines are delivered to residents each week.
Jan Wilkins, General Manager at Riversway, said: “Medication plays such an important role in the day-to-day life of the residents we care for. We are always keen to move with the times and make systems more efficient. The Well Careplus system is reducing errors and is hence much safer than paper systems. It’s already saving us time, and reducing waste.”
Specialist health technology development firm, Invatech Health, which designed the Well Pad, recently commissioned a study, by the School of Pharmacy at Cardiff University, to evaluate the tablet’s reliability and key benefits. Across the care homes in the study, overstocking of medicine was reduced by 22 per cent, returned medicine wastage was reduced by 55 per cent, missing medication administration entries on the residents’ records dropped by 80 per cent, and over 92 per cent of participating care homes said they would not wish to return to paper based systems.
The Well Pad is fitted with a scanner to tell staff in the home what each resident has been prescribed by their GP. It has fail-safe systems in place to prevent medicines being administered incorrectly, ensuring the right person gets the right medication, at the right time.
Steve Newton, Director of Quality & Compliance at Springhill Care Group, said: “The care home sector has been slow to embrace the benefits of new technology, and this technology will revolutionise how this complex and critical aspect of care is managed.”
View the Well Careplus - ITN produced video featuring Steve Newton, Jan Wilkins and the team and residents at Riversway Nursing Home below