Making the switch from paper to digital care planning, or indeed from one digital to another digital provider is a difficult one for many providers.  Key among the reasons for choosing not to change are:

  • It won’t benefit us or our service users.
  • We don’t have time.
  • It’s too expensive.
  • The staff aren’t tech savvy.

Of course, while these are genuine concerns, they are sadly misplaced.  Here’s why:

Some of the key benefits to going digital include:

  • It saves time, several staff can access the record at once.
  • They are safer, they don’t get lost and if you spill tea on it, it is still retrievable!
  • You can share them with service users and families making for truly person-centred care planning

    Electronic records can’t be lost, destroyed accidentally and are more legible than some written records.

    Going digital is quicker than you think, many services only need an hour or two of training before they are able to create useable care plans and what a lot of people fail to realise is that digital care planning saves time as care staff with a mobile device can access and update records from anywhere.

When you take into account the time saved, not to mention the trees, digitalisation of care plans can be cost effective.

Most staff have some idea of how to use technology, if they can use social media and send messages, they can use digital care planning!  Where staff struggle, which is rare, having digitalisation champions (staff who support other staff to use digital care planning) quickly solves this problem.

Very quickly “we don’t want to do this” becomes “why didn’t we do this earlier?”

There are many benefits to digitalisation which are not discussed here, but the most important is that it creates additional time for caring and you can’t really um and ah at that!