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Overcoming Barriers to Adopting Digital Care Planning: Challenges and Solutions

Digital care planning is the use of digital technology and software to create, manage, and update personalised care plans for individuals in healthcare or social care settings. They can help you to improve the quality of care you’re providing, whether this is in a residential home or out in the community, and it’s an effective way to manage your clients’ medication requirements. On top of that, it saves time on reporting and audits and allows for better person-centred care. This blog will explore the barriers you may face when looking at implementing a digital care planning system and how you can overcome them to ensure that you get the most out of your system.

Understanding the Barriers and Challenges to Adopting Digital Care Planning in Social Care

Integrating from a paper-based system to a digital system can be pretty challenging. The process of going from paper to digital requires planning and time to ensure smooth integration and that everything is set up right. However, there are a few barriers you will potentially face when adopting a digital care planning system in your care organisation, but none of these are impossible to overcome. Understanding and being aware of these will allow for a smoother and better integration of a digital system into your care organisation.

Firstly, a lack of knowledge and awareness about digital care planning can falter this transition this could be from directors who stop it being implemented or staff who are afraid of using it. Understanding that you will come across this, means you can adapt and change your tactics and reduce the “fear” of digital systems by educating people before and after you pitch the idea. This fear can result in resistance to change in some of your staff as they may not see the benefit of changing what they deem as a good system that is the paper one. Ensuring you have a positive attitude and can show them the ease and benefits of going digital will help you with this.

Another barrier is overcoming initial implementation hurdles and transitioning smoothly from paper-based care planning to digital care planning requires planning, effective management, and time. Make sure you anticipate, plan and prepare for any hurdles you could potentially come across during your implementation phase. Make sure you take your implementation from your provider seriously and that they provide adequate support and implementation for your organisation.

Finally, inadequate training and support for staff members can impact the success of implementing a digital care planning software system into your care organisation. If staff do not have the proper training and support, they can struggle to use the systems, and this can cause even more resistance to them. Putting efficient support and training in place when you set up the system is vital to empowering staff and ensuring it is a success.

Solutions to Overcome the Barriers

Building awareness and providing education about digital care planning benefits is a great way to build staff confidence and reduce any reservations they may have. Engaging with your staff, listening to their concerns, and providing support can help to alleviate a lot of stress and concern about switching to a new system.

Allocating adequate resources and funding for digital care planning implementation is essential. Make sure that you set aside enough time to complete your implementation with your chosen software provider and that the correct staff are taking part in it. If you feel you need to have more training set aside the funds and time to pay for extra training sessions, implementation is vital to making the most of your digital software. On top of this before setting up your software, ensure that your organisation has sufficient WiFi and technical infrastructure to be able to support it.

Finally, investing in training and support for staff members is the best way to help your staff reduce their reservations and ensure that the system is being used and used efficiently. There are multiple ways to go about training and support, for example, this could be through purchasing training sessions from the provider directly or introducing and creating ambassadors within your company to help other staff.

Successful Case Study of Care Control Being Implemented and their top tip

Care Control has witnessed several customers who have effectively transitioned from paper-based systems to digital solutions. Some of these customers have graciously shared their experiences and valuable insights to facilitate smooth transitions for others. Among them is HarmonI, one of our clients from Northern Ireland. HarmonI invested significant time in researching various providers and even took the initiative to visit another facility utilising Care Control before deciding to partner with us. Additionally, they made optimal use of their implementation sessions with us, capitalising on the opportunity to maximise their success. “We asked her lots of awkward questions as our site is quite unique and differs from others and there were things she had never come across but there was always a prompt response from both Kerrie and the development team.” Recognising the unique nature of their site compared to conventional homes, HarmonI prioritised extracting the utmost value from their sessions, contributing significantly to their overall success.

Based on their experience, HarmonI’s top recommendation for individuals seeking to transition from paper-based systems to digital solutions is: “Give yourself plenty of time for the initial population of the digital records system. It is important to get this as accurate as possible before you launch. We spent lots of time ensuring the information was accurate and up-to-date before sharing it with the staff team as we did not want to launch and staff to get a bad impression because we set it up incorrectly or the information was incomplete. With Care Control the more you go into it, the more you can do, which is another reason why it took longer than expected.”

Read HarmonI’s full story here.

Care Control’s care management software is proven to work in all types of care settings and is trusted by more than 37,000 carers in the UK. We provide a great implementation and additional training and support to help you get the best start on your digital journey. If you’d like to join them and give your care service a digital overhaul, contact us to book a demo and find out how we can help your business.

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