If I ask you what improvements you have made in your care home last year, how are you going to impress me? Health care is never static; each person we are caring for is somehow contributing to improving the system and process of how we are delivering care. As someone said, “Being stagnant is the first step to failure”. Therefore this calls for continuous improvement in care homes. All care homes should be striving for excellence, at least using the 20% of their resources.
Reasons for making improvements
Even if your care home is rated as Outstanding, you should still be focusing on areas you could do better. But the majority of the care homes are either rated Good or below, meaning they still have to work hard to meet the minimum legal requirements. If you are aiming to be an exceptional care home, you should always be striving to do things above the minimum legal requirement.
Good news is that it is never too late to get it started. If you are a Requires Improvement or Inadequate rated care home, you better hurry up. In such cases, it is highly likely that you will have to put extra resources to support your improvement journey.
The common reasons why care homes should accelerate their strategies to improve are:
- Poor CQC rating.
- Poor staff morale.
- Lack of proper systems and process.
- Not generating enough revenue.
- Repeated safety incidents.
- A pattern of complaints.
- Lack of leadership
Recognising the need to make care home improvements
Recognising the areas to improve is the first step of your improvement journey. Sometimes it is helpful if you get a third person to analyse your existing business to identify what is the best way forward. Collecting appropriate data monthly from your Manager is the best way to identify trends and patterns. You can use our monthly service to get an independent view of your service and identify the possible reasons your care home should improve on. CQC expects the care providers to monitor the governance of the service through regulation 17. The provider is accountable for identifying areas to do better and put an action in place to improve. The quality of governance indicates the quality of your service. Providers should outsource this part if it is not their expertise.
How to make care home improvements?
Systemising, the process of making improvements, is the best way to achieve your targets. Continuous improvement should be ingrained in the brains of all your staff to move forward as a team. Once your team realise that making improvements or changes in the status quo is a ‘habit’ for your care home, you will face less resistance.
To make improvements, some of the following tips will help:
- Follow any well-known process improvement tools such PDSA cycle. (Plan, Do, Study and Act)
- Consistency is the key. Making improvements should become a habit than a one-off initiative.
- Transparent communication with the team. It is crucial to explain the ‘why’ behind the improvements to get the team on board.
- Make your improvements as visual as possible. Having a continuous improvement board will enable your staff to be a part of the progress.
- Prioritising your improvements is the key as we are dealing with vulnerable adults. Anything to do with the safety of the residents and staff always comes as a top priority.
- Choose your improvements carefully – You and your team definitely should not be wasting time on any project that is not giving any tangible benefits for the staff, residents or the business.
- Always remember, anyone in your business spending extra time on something is spending money, hence chose your projects wisely. But please do not be very mean either.
- Making improvement is not only about just meeting CQC requirements or making profits, remember all care home business should also be creating social value to the wider community.
- Always focus on the principle of simplicity, especially when you are growing your care business. Make your systems and process simple and effective.
- Have regular management meetings. The frequency of the management meetings can be decided based on where you are on the CQC rating scale.
- Use technology to track your progress, such as shared cloud documents or software such as Asana, Monday.com, Trello.
- Make it readily available for CQC to check on during the inspection. A strong culture of continuous improvement will meet the Outstanding criteria for your next CQC inspection.
- Celebrate your achievements and reward your team for making the extra effort.
Care home leadership mindset
Nothing will work if your Management is not on board with the idea. It is easy for people to bring in new ideas, but it is crucial to analyse those ideas and focus to improve things that matter. There is a difference between owning a project and being tasked to complete a project. You should task a person who would love to own the project. There will be less resistance if you can share the bigger picture with your staff why you should be doing something new. As I said before continuous improvement process should be a ‘habit’ in your care home. The successful care home will never remain stagnant; they always find something to do better. Don’t be satisfied with a Good care home; be a GREAT care home.
Why should you work with us?
- Contact us for an independent analysis of your care home business.
- Train your managers or directors on KLOEs and CQC Regulations.
- Develop a system of continuous improvement for your care home.
- Identifying operational risk analysis on a regular basis.
- Buy Issac’s best selling book for your management team.
- Ultimately, we believe everyone deserves Outstanding care, we will work with you to make it happen.
