Welcome to Kirsty Meets!
Each month I meet key stakeholders and business leaders in the social care sector. This month I met Max Parmentier, Co-founder and CEO at birdie.
I caught up with Max to discuss retention, digitisation, and predictive analytics.
So Max, whilst recruitment is clearly crucial to social care, I understand that you think there should be a larger focus on staff retention in the sector. Can you tell us a little about this and why it is so important?
The care sector staff shortages aren’t solely being driven by a lack of talent. The people are there, but, for a multitude of reasons, they aren’t staying in the sector. Before we as an industry look to initiate a widespread recruitment campaign, we must first address staff retention. Otherwise it’s like trying to plug a leaky bucket.
Other industries offer work/life balance perks, streamlined ways of working, standardised progression, and a community. All these factors contribute to staff feeling valued and therefore more likely to stay in their sector.
To really start increasing job satisfaction and retention rates, enabling the care sector to compete with other industries, we must initiate true reform centred on the needs of care professionals today.
“Before we look to initiate a widespread recruitment campaign, we must first address staff retention. Otherwise it’s like trying to plug a leaky bucket.”
And what are some of the specific ways employers can try to improve staff retention?
There are many ways the care sector can address the issue of staff shortages and bolster retention rates. Streamlining time consuming processes is a strong place to start. By driving efficiencies, care agencies are able to start passing the savings onto care professionals.
Another key focus must be enabling a work/life balance for staff. Empowering care professionals to book shifts online, and view their schedules on their devices, enables them to exert more control over their wages, and their time.
The care sector must also prioritise progression. Standardised training and progression pathways are non-existent, leading many professionals to seek new opportunities in different industries. Upskilling staff also helps increase satisfaction levels by encouraging care professionals to learn new skills.
It’s important to note that few enter the care sector due to their love of paperwork, but rather because of their passion for helping people. Through using digital tools and technology to streamline processes, care professionals can spend more time with the people they care for – helping boost fulfilment as well as retention rates.
As a tech platform, birdie is clearly invested in technological solutions to these problems. What may some of these solutions look like?
The UK’s care sector is in crisis, with over 170,000 vacant jobs and a backlog of half a million adults awaiting care, which has been exacerbated by the pandemic. This pressure often limits the services that providers can deliver, which affects the quality of care our friends and family receive. Technology can help tackle these challenges through a number of different ways, including:
- Digitising the planning, rostering and scheduling to optimise visits
- Streamlining the process of providing proof of quality care delivery to meet regulatory requirements.
- Information sharing by integration of the social care and health care system
Technological innovation addresses the care providers capacity issue by offering better workforce planning, through rostering and scheduling, and capacity optimisation, route planning and travel-time optimisation, to make sure that existing care professionals are able to deliver as many care visits as possible.
Furthermore, it streamlines the process to provide proof of quality care delivery that meets regulatory requirements. For example, having a digital solution that could help plan, coordinate, deliver and assess care visits in real-time, allowing ease of reporting based on digital records. From this, care delivery operation becomes more efficient, offering ways to streamline shift scheduling, payroll management and invoicing to mention a few. At the same time, care professionals are empowered to identify care recipients who need special care so the care providers are able to easily prioritise care delivery and provide special instructions when appropriate.
With these innovative digital solutions, care providers are able to move from being reactive to care recipient needs, to being proactive in knowing when to revise care assessment to capture additional risks. From this, care providers are able to be predictive on possible upcoming change of care needs based on patterns assessed by the AI engine.
Technology in care could also help facilitate info sharing, such as integration of the social care and health care system where health care needs are flagged by social care providers to the health providers. Sharing this necessary information means that health providers prescribe interventions, with follow-up observations being completed by social care.
What are the current barriers to implementing technological innovation on a national scale?
A lack of digitisation. There are still many health and care providers that rely on paper records, which in 2022 is far less efficient than using digital records.
There is also a lack of interoperability, the software exchange between computer systems sharing and making use of information. If there was interoperability between the NHS and social care providers, for example, it could be particularly beneficial for those in care.
How do you think we may overcome those barriers?
Digitisation could be addressed by increasing awareness of the benefits of digitisation in health care. There needs to be better support, and potentially incentives, to drive forward the need for digital transformation.
Different care providers, such as the NHS and birdie, should work together to share medical/care records to help offer better care. This could be helped by a standardisation of data records and structures so data from different sources can be integrated and shared.
In what way did the Covid-19 pandemic inform the future of technology for health and social care?
Almost overnight, the pandemic forced the healthcare industry to digitise and move away from the traditional methods that had been in place for decades. Suddenly, paper-based documents were replaced with a digitised process that could facilitate data collection and information sharing. Personalisation, which is based on data analysis through digitisation, soon followed, enabling more personalised care to be delivered.
Decentralisation – care delivery in the community – also became front and centre, as vulnerable patients weren’t able to leave their homes. From this came the proliferation of telemedicine to allow care to be provided remotely.
Despite previous concerns about digitalisation in the NHS, these forced changes proved that using software for medical records and information could be successful and actually improve efficiency of healthcare.
Why does the future of technology for health and social care matter to you?
My passion for the subject and ultimate motivator for founding birdie came from a personal connection to social care. My grandfather suffered from Parkinson’s and we had to make the difficult decision to place him in a care home at the age of 78. He was unhappy from the start and sadly died not long after. Had he been at home, getting the care he needed, things might have been different and I believed technology was the answer to this.
Technology innovation in the care industry is able to prevent this from happening to others in the future by transforming how care operations can be run and how care is delivered. From this, care professionals are able to deliver care at home, in a more proactive, predictive, and personalised way.
What are the most important and exciting innovations we might see on the frontline of health and social care within the next 10, 20 and 30 years?
The future of technology in the health & social care industry is exciting. There are many innovations in tech that are likely to revolutionise how care is provided and delivered to recipients. Predictive analytics gather already stored information, and use it to proactively predict how many factors will affect a care recipient. For example, it may predict how a patient is likely to react to certain medications, or provide early detection of risks such as a fall at home or the impact of drastic temperature changes.
Hardware integration collects more data on individuals that can be used to provide recommendations for patients. Another thing is a shift in data ownership, allowing individuals to own their own health data and medical records to share with whomever they’d like.
The continued use of telemedicine will continue to rise, giving care recipients and professionals ways to communicate remotely. With this, health-related information can be distributed through virtual consultations, and care professionals can administer medication without having to be with the patient in-person.
To find put more about birdie, please visit: www.birdie.care