12 months with GoAudits:
35+
locations & departments
150+
checklists
46,000
audits in 2021
1128
Quality improvement actions
Industry
Care Homes | Adult Care
About
Northern Healthcare is an independent specialist provider of residential care and supported living services for individuals who require enhanced clinical support, due to a mental health diagnosis, learning disability or autism.
In 15 locations across the UK, personalised 24-hour clinical and social support is provided by specialised personnel in high-quality accommodation.
Location
United Kingdom
The requirement: frequent and multiple internal checks
Northern Healthcare is a specialised adult care provider, with a network of 15 locations across the UK. Working with individuals who may require 24-hour support, Northern Healthcare aims to provide personalised experiences, while ensuring the highest standards of care.
Frequent internal audits are necessary to check the standards of care, health and safety, as well as to verify and document compliance. This is to ensure the safety and consistently excellent care for residents, but also to meet and even surpass all the regulatory requirements – such as the Health and Social Care Act, and all the requirements of the Care Quality Commission (CQC).
To that effect, Northern Healthcare teams conduct frequent monthly, weekly, daily audits and even hourly touchpoints in different areas.
Selecting GoAudits to streamline compliance reporting
Before GoAudits, these internal inspections were performed on paper forms, later transferring the information to spreadsheets. With the large number of daily checks, this was a time-consuming and inefficient process, with information scattered across different tools. Looking to simplify this process, the management team tested GoAudits for several months, before gradually rolling it out for all internal compliance checks across all 15 locations, onboarding dozens of staff members.
“Despite the pandemic, we have pushed forward with continuous improvement across the service and in particular digitising our compliance audits”, explains Danielle Ruane, Manager of Training, Compliance and IT at Northern Healthcare.
One audit app for over 150 different care audits
The GoAudits checklist library includes dozens of templates relevant to care homes, which can be easily customised. As the system administrator, Danielle used the Form Builder tool to quickly build checklists meeting exact requirements for each property – with support from the GoAudits team whenever needed.
Example of care home checks on the GoAudits inspections app
The user-friendly app was quickly adopted by all members of staff. Seeing good results and time-savings, the management team rolled out the app to an increasing number of audit areas – more than doubling the number of audits in 6 months, compared to the previous period.
Today, dozens of Northern Healthcare staff use GoAudits in all locations, using over 150 different checklists to perform 150-200 daily audits in different areas:
- Weekly, monthly, daily audit checks; night shift checks
- Cleaning, Premises and Equipment audits, including hourly cleaning checks
- Room, common areas and flat checks
- Infection prevention and control, including Covid-19 safety checks, hand hygiene and PPE
- Fire safety, evacuation drills, safety huddle
- Controlled drugs checks, Medication stock checks
- Service manager reports
- … and more.
Time and resource savings, 1100 process improvements
Bringing all audits and follow-up actions into one platform has created many efficiencies and improvements. Danielle Ruane explains:
“With GoAudits, we concentrated various compliance checks and audits in one single app that works online and offline. This allowed us to reduce the time we spend on these checks, increase quality of care, and most importantly, to reduce our response time if anything needs addressing. This ensures we maintain a safe and responsive environment for both staff and residents”.
Indeed over 12 months the team logged and resolved over 1100 issues and follow-up actions – improving processes and increasing the quality of care every day.
Improved governance and environmental impact
All information in one place gives extra visibility to the Management team, to make decisions and allocate resources where needed the most. It also makes it easier to provide evidence of due diligence and compliance in case of external audits, such as the CQC inspections.
Danielle highlights how GoAudits enables Northern Healthcare to ensure compliance with all applicable regulations: “Regulation 17 of the Health and Social Care Act draws attention to good governance. With GoAudits, we meet and surpass the requirements of this regulation – making sure our systems and processes meet the requirements of all other regulations – meaning that we operate a safe service.”
Danielle highlights the efficiencies and environmental benefits of going paperless: “In addition to the streamlining and increased efficiency of the auditing process, GoAudits contributes to our concerted efforts to reduce paper usage – as a result improving our environmental impact, which of course if only a good thing!”
Read more about the GoAudits inspections app for care providers here, or contact us for a free trial and demo.
Despite the pandemic, we have pushed forward with continuous improvement across the service, introducing GoAudits as our compliance reporting system.
This allowed us to reduce the time we spend on compliance checks, increase quality of care, and to reduce our response time if anything needs addressing. Additionally, GoAudits reduces our paper usage and environmental impact!
Danielle Ruane
Training, Compliance & IT Manager
Northern Healthcare
More Customer Stories
SMEATON HEALTHCARE
Read how this provider of Care at Home and nursing agency services saved over 8 man-hours per week and improved quality scores after digitising internal audits.
CAREVILLE
Careville, one of UK’s leading nursing and care staff providers, saved time by simplifying its self-audits, pre-CQC inspection checks and more.
STERLING DENTAL
Sterling Dental Group uses GoAudits for paperless self-audits, improving hygiene standards and ensuring compliance with British Dental Association and CQC standards.
Seeing is Believing
Get a live demo customized to your unique needs, or get started with a 14-day FREE trial.
- No credit card, no commitment.
