UK telehealth firm Docobo Ltd has announced an exclusive deal to distribute ComCare, an Australian community care client management system.
The ComCare product has been developed, and is widely used by, Silver Chain – a Western Australia-based, not for profit, charity that provides district nursing and care services to 40,000 clients annually.
ComCare is a client management application designed for community and residential health care organisations.
The system covers both staff and patient management system, and is designed to run on mobile devices, enabling case co-ordination and the support and management of community based staff.
Docobo, which already provides the doc@Home telehealth systems, says that bringing ComCare to the UK will enable community care organisations to meet the NHS Quality, Innovation, Productivity and Prevention agenda.
“Docobo will be offering ComCare in the UK to meet the requirements of both Community and Social Care services to accelerate their efficient use of resources whilst improving the care provided” added Adrian Flowerday.
Silver Chain developed ComCare in-house as a comprehensive mobile system to support their workforce of 2,500 home carers across Western Australia, supporting 40,000 clients annually. The system currently has 300 desktop users and 1400 using it through mobile devices.
Alan Turner, general manager IT, Silver Chain, told EHI that the system combined the functionality of a PAS with clinical tools and a logistics management system for scheduling visits and appointments.
“The main benefit of ComCare is that a home carer can do everything the need to do on their phone, including recording client information and accessing their records. This includes medication records, assessments and appointments.”
“We now provide all staff with a a SmartPhone running ComCare and say to them you can use the it for personal calls as well as work calls, its been incredibly effective.”
ComCare captures all referral, assessment and minimum data set information via a user friendly system wizard. This approach significantly reduces errors and data processing time. A screening tool on ComCare assists the user to identify eligibility and primary assessment prior to service allocation.
Turner said: “The Smartphone enables our nurses to be able to access information about clients such as their details, referrals, diagnosis, alerts, contacts and services they are receiving with just a touch of a button no matter where they are.
"Smartphones also enable our nurses to record in real time the client’s assessment details and information about wound care."
Turner added that ComCare enables strategic delivery of client care and organisations wishing to reduce unit costs and improve productivity, whilst managing staff workloads and maintaining the best possible care for clients.
One of the cost savings enabled by ComCare has been to cut the amount of travel carried out by Silver Chain 2100 staff to treat clients.
“We applied Google Maps across all staff rosters to see if we could better cluster visits and were able to reduce total travel by 30%, a reduction of 270,000 km a year,” said Turner.
Flowerday added: “By combining the solutions from Docobo and Silver Chain we are positioned to offer our clients a truly unrivalled comprehensive and integrated system that will deliver the means to improve patient care, better scheduling of home visiting staff, reduce mileage and carbon footprints, and support call centre management.”
Link: Docobo