Senior care facilities have always had too few staff. The pandemic has intensified the shortage and the soon-to-be-implemented vaccine mandate has put further pressure on current staff, employers and, ultimately residents.
While the mandate has had a clear effect on vaccine uptake, over 25% of staff are still unvaccinated, making properly caring for residents a difficult task.
Is technology the answer?
Labour shortages in senior care are not new. In fact, they’ve been increasing for years. What is new, is the rapid creation and adoption of technology aimed at solving the problems specifically faced by the senior care sector. While implementing digital tools to automate tasks may seem counterintuitive to person-centred care, technology can:
- Accomplish tasks accurately and effectively without the need for more staff
- Enable staff to better do their jobs
- Be simple to implement and use (yes really!)
- Create an engaging workplace and attract new hires
Furthermore, digital tools like Automated Care Messaging (ACM) can return time and resources back to care so efficiently, most facilities see an ROI of over 800%.
Save time. Save money. Save staff.
One of the tasks staff spend a lot of their time on is outreach communications. From composing messages, scheduling appointments and events, looking up contact information, making phone calls, sending emails, answering questions from family members and then logging the conversation and the outcome; the average 100-bed facility spends over 1,000 hours and $43,000 on outreach. Every year.
When a facility implements Automated Care Messaging, they do more with less. Without hiring more staff, current staff are enabled to be more efficient, effective and able to focus more time to direct care. Think of ACM as the magic that happens in the background. Because of its seamless EHR integration, ACM pulls the most current contact information directly from the EHR to send messages, and then writes communication outcomes back into the EHR, meaning all data lives in one place making it easy to find and manage.
Implementing automation: what you won’t have to do
The CIO of a national senior care organization had this to say: “Like everyone in senior care, we’ve had to make a lot of cuts over the course of the pandemic. If there is a technology still in place at this point in time, there’s a reason why it’s here. There is nothing that does what Automated Care Messaging does not only in price but in the time it saves in staff.”
Get in touch to learn the ROI specific to your facility or organization.
