Community Care
Case Study: Lifeways Group
Gareth Roberts, Group Head of Quality, Health and Safety at Lifeways, recently spoke with us about how Radar Healthcare’s software has helped Lifeways Group centralise all its quality and compliance processes and how this has benefited their business and the service that they provide.
Summary of main successes:
- Lifeways Group replaced multiple spreadsheets with one single system, reducing time spent on admin and saving on average two days a month.
- Increased efficiencies, better communication between workers, and a higher quality of care delivered.
- Access to insights and trend data has opened up the opportunity to revolutionise their risk management.
- Gained a centralised system to help to support continuous improvement.
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Reducing several spreadsheets to one single system
When Lifeways Group, the UK’s leading team of support professionals for adults with diverse and complex needs, realised how many Excel spreadsheets had to be amalgamated every month to create their monthly data packs, the organisation knew it was time to look at a more efficient way to manage their quality and compliance needs.
Lifeways Group has 10,500 staff who support 4,500 adults at 1,300+ locations across the UK, so complete visibility of processes and procedures is fundamental in driving continuous improvement across the organisation. Manually recording processes and procedures every month, as well as regulatory inspections and audits, was proving to be extremely time-consuming.
Increasing efficiency and driving quality
With the aim to drive quality, improve systems and simplify processes for operational colleagues, Lifeways Group turned to Radar Healthcare for its all-in-one risk, quality and compliance software. Providing supported living and residential care for people with complex needs, it was essential that Lifeways Group got the right system to ensure they could protect the people they support, their colleagues and the organisation, both now and also in the future.
Having initially seen that Radar Healthcare had all the functionality they needed as well as a user-friendly interface, it was positive feedback from other partners, Radar Healthcare’s receptiveness to new ideas, and the willingness to listen that confirmed to Lifeways Group that they had found the perfect fit for that all-important collaborative approach.
“Radar Healthcare has replaced all our Manager Workbooks. We were collecting so much data each month via Excel which was time consuming and this meant data was often a few weeks behind. Now, instead of manual spreadsheets, we’re able to customise workflows to capture exactly what we need and use dashboards for oversight, so our Area Managers are saving on average two days a month. It’s a game-changer although we are still in early days.”
Engaging the end-users
With over 1,300 sites, phased implementation began in August 2021 with a single region acting as a pilot. The pilot helped to gain engagement around the system and ensure it was tailored to what Lifeways wants to achieve. Further regions were rolled out between December 2021 – June 2022.
“The support and response times from the implementation at Radar Healthcare have been fantastic.”
To ensure front-line engagement from day one, a communications strategy was put in place 6-9 months prior to going live so the teams could understand how Radar Healthcare would benefit them, this resulted in excitement for the system from the very beginning.
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With managers utilising and interacting with the system instantly, it was clear that having a large operational team involved in the consultation process had proved successful. It has also allowed Area Managers to become more efficient by using the dashboards to identify risks, assign actions and make sure any essential checks have been completed across all their locations.
“We recognised that the end-users must be the ones driving the project; they were involved in the decision-making process and have been involved in workflows so they can feedback where further efficiencies can be made. It truly is a team effort.”
A different approach
As a result of a fantastic relationship with their insurers, Lifeways Group took a different approach when they looked at purchasing Radar Healthcare. Having improved its risk management and claims experience, the organisation presented a business case to their insurers identifying how Radar Healthcare would be beneficial to driving further improvements in risk management. This included improved documentation archiving and retention, complete tracking of incidents and accidents, lessons learnt and ultimately better governance – so the benefit to the insurers would be fewer claims and improved claims defensibility. This resulted in the insurers partially funding the software.
“Not all insurers are open to this, but we have built an excellent tripartite relationship with our insurers and brokers so for us, these conversations are the norm. It goes to show how they could see the bigger picture of where Radar Healthcare would benefit our organisation.”
Radar Healthcare also met with the insurers to present the benefits and talk through in detail how the analysis and dashboards would help with the improved governance. The partnership working was evident from the beginning of the relationship and continues today.
What’s next?
With all locations now live, Lifeways Group is just getting started. The next step is to increase efficiency at all sites by allowing more than just the managers access to the software. Following that is the audits module later this year, which will allow a lot more oversight when it comes to tracking actions, meeting deadlines and improving governance.
But it’s analytics and trend data where the real insight lies for Gareth. “I’m really excited about getting to grips with the analytics and trend data. I’ve seen what it can do and know this will revolutionize our risk management for years to come.”
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