By: Jason du Preez, Senior Vice President Asia Pacific, SugarCRM
Over recent years, the aged care sector has been under significant scrutiny. One of the lessons learned through the recent Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety is that aged care facilities are really community hubs. And while caring for residents is a paramount need, this requires communication with family members and other carers who are concerned for the health and well-being of older Australians.
The challenge is that these communities are complex. For the operators of aged care services, there is a raft of information to manage for the client. Highly personal medical information including the details of healthcare professionals, medications and known conditions is just the start. Then there is personal information pertaining to family member contacts and, in the COVID era, contact information that needs to be held.
But caring for a person in aged care, whether they are at a purpose-built facility or receiving at-home care, is about much more than a medical and healthcare challenge. By tracking and analysing data at every stage of the engagement with clients and families it’s possible to create and maintain far more personalised interactions and care.
And with an ageing population, aged care providers need to use data intelligently to offer more specialised care into the community through in-home care and hospice services. A powerful Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution helps providers create a single view of their customers that facilitates a faster and easier way to understand their needs. This improves communication, increases engagement, enables better service provision and assists with meeting compliance and regulatory requirements. And it all does this while supporting both a business and a community mindset.
Aged care, in many ways, resembles a typical commercial business. Leads turn into sales. Once the client enters care, whether that’s at home or at a bespoke facility, the focus shifts to meeting the customer’s needs for care. At every stage of that process, valuable information is collected. Having a system that can collect and store that data is critical. But, perhaps more importantly, that system must break down the silos that exist between the different teams that carry out those functions.
A CRM platform can do that. Every stage of the client’s interaction from an initial inquiry through to moving into a facility or receiving home care, is documented. When a carer or staff member looks at a client’s information they can instantly access the full picture – everything from medical information through to when they will be looking forward to visits from grandchildren or a birthday.
CRM solutions that are ready to meet the needs for aged care providers are flexible so they can be tailored to meet specific business needs. This is critical because not all aged care facilities and services are the same. Different providers offer different levels of care depending on the needs of their clients. But having a central platform that can securely hold this data can make reporting easier, as there’s no need to integrate data from disparate sources and it can be customised to support changing rules and other obligations.
Our communities are changing and there is an increasing expectation that digitised services are delivered. Outside aged care, communities expect service providers in all sectors to intelligently and safely handle data. When a family member calls in to check on an older friend or relative, they expect accurate information to be delivered promptly. For carers, having effective digital systems that allow them to record everything from when a client took medication to their current health and mood, makes it easy for that information to be relayed to other members of the client’s family.
Perhaps the strongest reflection on the health of a society is how well it cares for its most vulnerable members. The aged care sector focuses on ensuring older people are well cared for, either at home or in purpose-built facilities. Delivering great care is about knowing the client and that information is acquired from the moment the first inquiry is made right through a client’s entire time receiving services. An effective CRM solution supports aged care providers at every step of that journey. And it ensures the client and the community around them can be confident in the quality and accuracy of care being delivered.
