All care homes are subject to regulation and audits from the Care Quality Commission to ensure they are running to a high standard of compliance. One way that care home owners and providers can maintain the best service in their care home is to regularly practice mock inspections and identify any faults that the CQC may be looking for. We help our clients develop the right audit toolkit for their social care services.
What issue did the care home have?
Holding mock audit inspections to meet Care Quality Commission (CQC) compliance can be a great way for care home owners, providers and care home management teams to maintain care quality and identify any issues within their care home. But, when it comes to care home groups, keeping an eye across all of their audit reports can become a handful. This makes having a watertight system in place to monitor multiple care homes a necessity. In this case, we were approached by a care home group to help them develop a manageable way in which to track their audit results, to ensure a consistent quality of care was being delivered across all of their care homes.How did Fulcrum Care help?
To help unify the care home group, Fulcrum Care created and implemented a new audit framework that could be installed across all of their care homes. This included training for the care home management teams, as well as the support and guidance necessary to help them carry out their own mock inspections to report into the system regularly.What were the results for the care home?
Once the new audit framework was properly installed and integrated into the care homes, they received regular alerts of upcoming audit schedules and could log their process instantly. This allowed the care home provider to have an immediate overview of all of their care homes and track their progress over time, creating a simple and easy-to-use digital platform. Another benefit relates to an issue arising at one or multiple homes. Care home owners and providers can identify which care homes are not conforming with CQC regulation and can monitor the situation as new measures are brought in. This helps assure the CQC that Good Governance requirements are being met at all levels of the care home group’s structure.Why should you consider care consultancy for your care home?
Although you may have full trust and confidence in your care home management team, there are a whole host of benefits to having an experienced care consultant visit your care home. The CQC frequently updates its guidelines for compliance, so having an experienced care consultant to support your care staff can help ensure the best standards of care. This includes:- Giving confidence to the regulators. Having third-party, experienced care consultants evaluating your audits assures the CQC and care home funders that their standards are being upheld
- Preventing care home closures. Immediate crisis management that brings new balance and stability for care home owners, providers and managers
- Support for residents and care home staff. Evaluation of systems and training that bring positive changes for your team and their methods of delivering quality care
- Managing care home turnarounds. Helping your care home implement new systems that can improve your CQC rating
- Optimising recruitment and occupancy. Whether it’s improving your staff or occupancy retention, recruitment or more, we can help you optimise your messaging and approach (discover key tips in our free eBrochure, Recruitment and Occupancy: How to win the key battles for care homes in 2022)