SCIE Evaluation

The aim of the evaluation was to assess the extent to which the PASSsystem is helping social care providers to demonstrate and deliver safe, efficient, high quality care, and accountability.

What is Our SCIE Evaluation methodology?

In total, 57 care managers and 95 care workers provided feedback through interviews and/or surveys, both of which form the basis of this evaluation’s findings. The literature search did not find any other published work of this type. Therefore, this report is the first evaluation in building an evidence base around effective use of technology in social care.

Aim

The aim of the evaluation was to assess the extent to which PASS is helping social care providers to demonstrate and deliver safe, efficient, high quality care, and accountability. Five key evaluation questions were formulated to achieve this aim.

Evaluation Part 1 – Key findings

  1. Care providers can better manage risk by using PASS
  2. Care providers can realise business efficiencies by using PASS
  3. PASS helps care providers to deliver high quality care
  4. PASS enables care providers to demonstrate accountability to services users, families and regulators

Aim

The aim of the evaluation was to assess the extent to which PASS is helping social care providers to demonstrate and deliver safe, efficient, high quality care, and accountability. Five key evaluation questions were formulated to achieve this aim.

Part 1:

  1. How and to what extent does PASS help to reduce the risk of: (a) avoidable harm to service users? (b) compliance actions from regulators?
  2. How and to what extent does PASS improve efficiency in the delivery of care?
  3. How and to what extent does PASS enable improvements to the quality of care?
  4. How and to what extent does PASS improve accountability in care businesses?
 

Part 2:

  1. How and to what extent does PASS help to create financial savings to the State? (See p.8)
 

In Part 1 of the project, participants – including care managers, care business owners and care workers – reported benefits of PASS across each of the four questions in Part 1 of the evaluation. Part 2 of the project will be reported in early 2020.

Risk management

PASS was considered to help reduce and manage risk for all participants.

Care managers reported benefits in terms of:

Care workers reported benefits in terms of:

Aim

The aim of the evaluation was to assess the extent to which PASS is helping social care providers to demonstrate and deliver safe, efficient, high quality care, and accountability. Five key evaluation questions were formulated to achieve this aim.

Quality of care

Participants reported that PASS enabled improvements to the quality of care delivered to service users by:

Care managers suggested they were able to monitor staff more effectively, indicating that they felt confident in the quality of care that had been delivered, particularly supporting care workers to adopt a person-centred, outcome-based approach.

Some care workers suggested that PASS had a lower impact in enabling service users to be directly involved in their own care. Some care workers also reported no impact to job satisfaction.

Accountability

PASS was considered to improve overall accountability in care businesses. Family involvement was explored as an area of strength for PASS across all participants indicating that PASS promoted openness and transparency between staff delivering care, service users and their families. Care workers and care managers suggested that PASS made it easier to keep accurate records in the care they deliver to service users.

Care managers and business owners suggested that this was particularly true in relation to:

Care workers reported benefits across all the survey areas in relation to accountability with high numbers agreeing that benefits included:

Economic assessment – Baseline data

As part of this evaluation, a method has been developed to assess the use of other services (for example, ambulance callouts, GP visits) by service users. The use of services will be recorded and assigned a financial value. This system will be used to compare costs to the State before and after engaging with a care provider using PASS. The first results of the impact of PASS on costs to the State will be reported in early 2020.

Suggested areas for improvement

Suggested areas for continued improvement to PASS based on participant feedback were as follows:

Care workers and care managers who did offer insight into areas of improvement to PASS spoke about this in the context of system performance and functionality. Some care workers reported experiencing issues with logging into the system, or slowness on occasion during the feedback window between October and December 2018. In some instances, it was reported that users found PASS frustrating if they were timed-out of the system and suggested a longer time-out window. At the time of completing this evaluation, works to address logging in and time-out period had been completed and improvements deployed.

In terms of functionality, there was some feedback relating to the presentation of observation data and to exploring fingerprint scanning as a login option. For the care managers who gave feedback on areas of improvement, the majority commented on the reporting functionality of PASS, with many observing that the current reporting capability needed to be extended. Work to improve reporting capability has been completed and the ‘Insights Dashboard’ improvements already deployed.

PASS could be improved by having more outcome templates and the ability to pre-populate data fields as this would help speed up the process of formulating care plans with relevant ones being included. It was suggested that body maps could be improved by being interactive and available for use across all care intervention as required. Work to address both of these points is underway.

Recommendations and conclusions

everyLIFE Technologies has committed to implementing the recommendations highlighted in the evaluation.

Recommendations

Conclusions

This evaluation has demonstrated a well-planned digital solution that continues to be refined and developed. We found evidence of early successes where the digital solution elements are performing effectively, as well as some further areas for improvement for everyLIFE to consider. This evaluation has provided evidence from business owners, care managers and care workers that PASS – a digital care management platform – has benefits in terms of managing risk, efficiency, accountability and quality of care.

The evaluation has established a range of tangible benefits in terms of supporting care managers and workers and enabling them to provide high quality care to people who use services and their families in a caring, transparent and accountable way.