CareDocs celebrates milestone birthday

BACK in 2008 when the CareDocs digital care management system was released, the term ‘digital transformation’ wasn’t especially wellknown in the care community.

Even care software was a relatively new concept, with CareDocs being among the first of its kind in the UK.

The software was developed in Bristol by two residential care home owners with the aim of helping other care providers deliver care more efficiently without the use of paper.

Although Bristol remains the main base of operations, our dedicated team are spread out across the country to ensure we can easily travel to everybody.

Just recently our head of sales had the pleasure of visiting the stunning Shetland Islands to install the system in a home and welcome the fantastic staff to the CareDocs family – proving no care service is out of reach.

Over the last 15 years, we’ve helped thousands of care businesses digitally transform and start benefitting from digital solutions.

We’re immensely proud to be in a position to support care providers and are grateful to have pioneered care home technology in earlier years.

Today, roughly 50 per cent of social care settings in England use a digital means of recording care.

The combination of time-saving, person-centred features and firstclass customer service has been paramount to our lasting presence as a trusted software provider.

Another key benefit is our everevolving point of care recording capability which is available at no extra charge. In 2014 we were one of the only UK care software providers to have released a mobile care recording platform. In 2018 we launched a more comprehensive mobile product, and very soon we’re rolling out a new smartphone application.

CareDocs general manager Alan Pocock said: “This achievement is a testament to the hard work and dedication displayed by an exceptional team.

“We’ve seen so much change but our core values have remained the same.

We continue to work closely with customers, making transformation easier and providing ongoing support so carers feel confident using our software.

“The future looks bright and exciting. There are plans in place that will further improve the customer experience and software capabilities, including becoming an accredited NHS supplier to support integration between the NHS and different social care services.”

For more information about digitally transforming your care business, phone 0330 056 3333 or email sales@caredocs.co.uk

THE heavy hand of bureaucracy has a lot to answer for as we trudge along these early weeks of 2023.

When the Government announced its very late Christmas gift to social care – £250m to help hospital discharges this winter – I was less than effusive in my reaction.

Whilst welcome, that cash was a small sticking plaster on a gaping wound of a healthcare crisis that is creating such horror and heartache.

On the face of it, £250m looked like a lot of money. But once it was broken down and distributed to local authorities across the country to spend on buying care, it wouldn’t go very far at all.

Not only that, but I had the dreadful fear that this money would get bogged down in bureaucracy and take an age to reach the frontline of social care delivery, where it is so urgently needed.

After all, the previous £500m announced last September to help hospital discharges, was proving to be glacier slow in getting to care providers.

Delays in the process are one of the key things that need to be removed whenever the long-overdue reform of the social care system begins.

We couldn’t make it any more bureaucratic if we tried. At the moment, anyone needing care –whether that be care in their own home or in a care or nursing home – has to be assessed, usually by their local authority who then acts as a broker to find a care package.

I have argued that during this time of crisis and to speed up getting discharge funding to the frontline, health trusts or integrated care boards should be freed to buy care packages themselves.

Not only does the current process delay the procedure it is also the point at which care providers so often lose out.

Local authorities have been squeezing down on the price they pay for care for a decade or more, contributing to the perilous position social care providers are now in.

For a long time now, care providers have not been paid a fair price for the care they deliver, a price that truly reflects the cost of providing that care.

That is the main reason why so many care providers can’t pay their staff what they want to pay them and why many are struggling and some have gone out of business.

It is bizarre when you think about it. What other service can you think of where the price is bartered? If you go to the checkout at your local supermarket with £80 worth of shopping, what would the assistant say if you said, ‘I’ll give you £65 for it’? And yet we allow commissioners to force down prices with providers who have little choice but to accept.

We shouldn’t be bartering the price of care for our oldest and most vulnerable citizens. The price is the price, surely?

Instead, and as an example of the type of reform we need, there should be a nationally agreed tariff for social care beds and for homecare visits.

That would take a lot of the negotiation and argument out of the system and speed up the process.

It would also help care providers to budget, to pay their staff better and to invest and grow, rather than struggle from day to day, not knowing what income they will have.

In my view a merger of health and social care delivery is long overdue and at that point we will need to decide who delivers a new ‘national care service’.

In the meantime, what can we do?

Well, at the very least we have to campaign to get social care’s voice heard and get the sector a seat at the table.

Despite the pivotal role social care plays, we remain second fiddle to NHS healthcare.

At a top-level meeting to discuss the Government’s response to the healthcare crisis in January, it is reported that social care wasn’t even represented. And our representation on the integrated care boards is pitiful.

We’ll need a united voice if the sector is to be listened to, including an appreciation that the social care market needs everyone – small, medium and large-sized providers, profit-making and not-for-profit.

None of us can meet current and future care demand alone. There has to be a mixed market and all must make a profit - or a surplus - however you term it, to invest and grow their organisations.

The hard work to get a fair deal for social care shows no sign of letting up in 2023, in fact it looks like another long, hard slog.

But it has to be a tough journey we take together.