11.20.2023 PCS
Kingsley has grown rapidly to become a successful and innovative care provider, employing nearly 1,600 staff and caring for 1,100 residents in 30 homes across the country. Lukasz Wawrzenczyk is one of a team of Service Quality Managers at Kingsley Healthcare.
From a quality commission perspective, Lukasz has an important role to ensure the safety of medicines management throughout the care homes. Lukasz must make quick and important decisions to ensure best practice; Lukasz works closely with the ATLAS eMAR team to highlight any medicines management concerns so that issues are swiftly actioned. Lukasz provides his experience of using ATLAS eMAR and how the team has supported best practice.
What are some of the barriers facing industry?
In the past we had been using traditional MARs, and it we found that it only really allows staff to document and record issuing of medicines. MARs for medicines management ‘gets messy’. Staff can forget to sign the records. With traditional MARs it was also time-consuming booking in medication because there was no barcode scanning involved. This often led to stock management errors. This is a problem for traceability and auditing. This is a general issue in the care home industry, at least where medicines management is concerned.
What is it about the technology that is attractive?
There are various clear advantages for using ATLAS eMAR and ATLAS Scorecard. For example, I can see medicines management ‘behaviour’ across all Kingsley Healthcare Group. I could not do this with traditional MARs. The technology has empowered me because I can monitor missing entries, whether staff require more training. I have access to daily reports which also allows me to anticipate I need to take, and to ensure our homes are following best practice in meeting compliance. With traditional MARs, it would mean going over records individually and this is physically impossible. ATLAS eMAR and ATLAS Scorecard automatically notifies you when something is not right, which is incredibly helpful.
In relating to care home regulations, where are you trying to get to?
Using MARs is labour intensive and is a problem, especially where documenting and recording is concerned – it doesn’t work well. As a care home provider, we want to be able to monitor medicines management more effectively, to ensure safety and in meeting CQC compliance. We want to be able to do this smarter. I also want to be able to see how individual staff members are performing. Using ATLAS Scorecard – you can see the duration it takes for a member of staff to conduct a medicines round.
What can you now do that you couldn’t do before?
ATLAS Scorecard allows me to understand any potential irregularities and inefficiencies. Both ATLAS eMAR and ATLAS Scorecard are very intuitive. We can identify when medication should be issued. For example, time-sensitive painkiller-like medicines (Paracetamol or Co-codamol) ATLAS eMAR allows us to ensure these medications are issued safely and on time and provides us with smarter understanding of our stock management. We feel really supported by the ATLAS eMAR team and our work has become more efficient because we are delivering innovative care.
What benefits do you believe this technology can bring to care homes?
ATLAS eMAR is great because once you barcode scan medication, this will automatically update stock. This has reduced our workload so staff can now spend more time with residents and supporting them. Using ATLAS Scorecard, I can see where homes are failing. Once I have this information, I can swiftly prompt my care home manager colleagues where they need to implement a strategy to improve areas of practice. This is a fantastic way of working. You cannot make errors.
What’s been the biggest improvement you’ve seen since implementing ATLAS Scorecard?
Using ATLAS Scorecard helps empower and supervise staff to ensure we are doing the best we can to provide residents safe practice. No other technology has helped achieved this. Because ATLAS Scorecard allows me to see medicine rounds, start and finished times, this information can be used to understand how improvements can be made. This information can also be used to counter CQC queries relating to medicines management.
Would you recommend ATLAS eMAR?
ATLAS eMAR is easy to use and all my staff interact with it. It reduces the number of medication errors in the care home environment. Yes. I would recommend ATLAS eMAR and ATLAS Scorecard for smarter medicines management. It saves time and helps meet CQC compliance.
Find out more about ATLAS eMAR Technology can support your medicines management needs in your care home.
"When it comes to medicines management, ATLAS eMAR is so clever. Using ATLAS Scorecard helps empower and supervise staff to ensure we are doing the best we can to provide residents safe practice. No other technology has helped achieved this."
Lukasz Wawrzenczyk
Service Quality Manager, Kingsley Healthcare
