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Implementing the ELDAC Digital Dashboard across multiple residential care sites

Implementing the ELDAC Digital Dashboard across multiple residential care sites 531

A guest blog post by Tunde Bulman, Quality, Compliance and Complaints Manager and Larissa Gear, Regional Residential Manager, Carinity

As an aged care service that has recently embedded the ELDAC Digital Dashboard into our IT system throughout our sites, we wanted to share the experience we’ve had and how our staff are managing with the system so far.

Carinity is a very large organisation with approximately 890 beds, and 12 facilities across Queensland providing home care, aged care, Chaplaincy service, and disability services. Our smallest facility is 20 beds, and our largest facility is 146 beds. We go as far north as Townsville, as far south as the Gold Coast, and we also go as far west as Toowoomba. We also have several facilities around the Brisbane region and a further facility at Bundaberg. We have approximately 250 registered nurses, and approximately 700 care staff who assist the registered nurses and undertake care for the residents.

We used the following tips and mechanisms to ensure that the newly embedded dashboard was meaningfully used by our staff across all 11 sites.

Tip 1: Make sure each of your sites have a sense of ownership

For each of our sites that began using the dashboard, it was important that from the beginning they had a sense of ownership of the dashboard, what it would mean for themselves as professionals, and for the outcomes of their residents. Of course, with 11 sites encompassing a lot of the geographical area of Queensland, that was challenging, and especially as we did the implementation during COVID-19 restrictions, so we became very good at using online meetings.

Tip 2: Start with a pilot site to practice with

We started by developing a pilot site, which was our residential aged care facility in Rockhampton who had already had an existing partnership with ELDAC. We practiced the rollout through this site until we had it as efficient as we could, and then we rolled it out to our other Carinity sites.

While there were some challenges in implementing the dashboard across multiple sites, having our ICT Business Analyst, Amie, available to assist the sites with any dashboard related support was very useful for all the sites. If our nurse had concerns regarding access or suggestions for information that could be included in the dashboard, it was important that Amie was able to listen to their ideas and see whether we could get that data.

Tip 3: Run training sessions for your multiple sites

COVID-19 impacted our ability to do in-person training at each of our sites. However, we managed to roll out education via online meetings, and in the end, were able to achieve a higher level of training to the staff through multiple online training sessions. There were still times when we implemented the dashboard where we were required to go onsite and to sit with the staff, show them how to use the dashboard, what information it could give them, and how it could assist them in their clinical role.

We also developed a Dashboard Champion at each site, who was usually a Clinical Nurse Consultant, and their job was to make sure that we were integrating the dashboard into the functioning of our care provision.

Tip 4: Budget additional time for your rural and remote sites

We needed to spend additional time supporting our residential aged care facilities in rural and remote locations. There were some challenges regarding internet connection and the level of ICT technology available at those sites, so it was important that we focused some more resources and time to support them. One of the solutions that worked for us was to set up a regional manager’s dashboard. The regional manager's view of the dashboard enabled us to access the dashboard for any of our sites, and we were able to continue to support each site as per their unique need. As regional managers, we were able to access each site’s dashboard and could have a real-time view of where each site is at, which enabled us to know where we need to focus our time.

The experience of rolling out the dashboard across 11 of our sites was positive and very manageable despite the challenges of COVID-19 restrictions and the usual pressures of the residential aged care environment. Being one of the very first aged care services to integrate and roll out this dashboard across multiple sites, we feel that this novel technology is simple enough to work with and offers great value to the aged care sector.  

Find out more about the ELDAC Digital Dashboard or download the Digital Dashboard kit (PDF, 702kb) to get started.

 

Profile picture of Tunde Bulman

 

 


Tunde Bulman, Quality, Compliance and Complaints Manager, Carinity

 

 

 


Profile picture of Larissa Gear

 

Larissa Gear, Quality, Regional Residential Manager, Carinity

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