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By Paul Botsford – Head of Assisted Living Technology & Services at Secure
On Wednesday and Thursday 15th and 16th September I’ll be presenting at the Home Care Expo as part of Secure’s Beanbag Care independent living technology team.
After so many months of online Teams meetings and working from home, I, like most, really can’t wait to get to the Birmingham NEC and meet and catch up with home care business owners and managers.
In particular, I’m looking forward to better understanding how technology fits into the future of commercial home care – an industry that has faced up seismic challenges over the past two years or so. Let’s be frank: many businesses have buckled under the strain of increased demand combined with chronic staff shortages.
And just when we thought there couldn’t be any further upheaval in the care sector, along comes the bombshell of the government’s levy. Interesting times.
The Home Care Expo has also come at a good time for Beanbag Care, particularly as we’ll soon be releasing our own research on how home care businesses have adopted, but also perceive smart and connected care technology – or TEC.
Interestingly, just over half of recipients believe that TEC is already having a big impact on home care, but around 50% also expressed a degree of scepticism.
When I speak to home care leaders they readily acknowledge that they need more support to understand and access the benefits of technology, they are focused on providing care and don’t have the time to evaluate the myriad of technological options on offer.
We also asked Home Care Business leaders how often they sought feedback from their customers, and currently, 85% of businesses claim to seek feedback from customers quarterly or less.
This is of particular interest to myself and the team at Secure, as Beanbag Care now gives home care customers the power to quickly rate the satisfaction of a care visit, and share that with both the care provider and if they wish, loved ones.
Accessing regular, honest feedback from customers not only displays good business governance and leadership, but is also a key way to ensure that standards of care are improved and maintained.
The care businesses we surveyed also recognise a range of benefits to enabling easy, regular customer feedback, with benchmarking quality, identifying problems quickly and improving CQC ratings, coming out on top.
In my opinion, the CQC’s interest in the use of technology is only set to grow, and as certain technologies become more widely accepted, available and affordable, then these solutions will increasingly become formally linked to achieving better ratings.
In the meantime, the Beanbag Care team will be taking every opportunity to find ways to collaboratively accelerate his process, improving standards for those delivering and receiving care.
To request a copy of our Innovation in Independent Living Market Intelligence Report for home care, please drop me an email at the address below, otherwise, I look forward to seeing you soon at the Home Care Expo.
Beanbag Care is exhibiting on stand D98 at the Home Care Expo, and Paul Botsford will be presenting at the Digital Transformation Theatre at 11:45am, Thursday 16th September.
Paul Botsford is the Head of Assisted Living Technology & Services at Secure, the developer of the Beanbag Care platform.
To get in touch email paul.botsford@securemeters.com