HIQA and Recent Compliance Issues

“Our inspections throughout 2022 continued to find that well-managed services with strong governance structures in place are key to providing a safe, good quality service for residents. While we found that this is the experience for the majority of residents, there was a notable deterioration in the levels of compliance across services…” Those were the words of Carol Grogan, Chief Inspector of Social Services for HIQA, in her opening message of the recently published Monitoring and Regulation of Disability Services in 2022 Report from HIQA.

Compliance is at the forefront of HIQA Inspection standards, and achieving and maintaining compliance, through good governance of your services, is paramount for Social Care Providers in Ireland. In this blog, we will explore how implementing a Digital Care Management and Planning system can enable Irish Care Providers to achieve good governance, and with that, provide the people that they support with a higher level of care and quality of life.

What does “Good Governance” mean Within Social Care?

What do we really mean when we talk about “governance”, then? “Governance for quality”, as per the HSE website, “involves having the necessary structures, processes, standards and oversight in place to ensure that safe, person centred and effective services are delivered.”

More broadly speaking, good governance involves having the appropriate standards, structures and resources in place to ensure that high-quality, person-centred Care and Support is delivered to the people that you support within your organisation, as a Social Care Provider.

Maintaining a high standard of governance as a Care Provider is crucial to ensuring that the people you support are leading as high a quality of life as they can, and feel both encouraged and enabled to achieve the ambitions and goals that they have set for themselves.

Ensuring strong governance is ever-present across all levels of your organisation is vital not only for the people supported by your organisation, but also for your organisation itself. Failure to ensure that appropriate measures are taken across all levels of a Care Provider’s services to maintain the highest standards of care and planning are maintained will lead to a lapse in the quality of care within your organisation, and with that, the risk of non-compliance with New Directions & HIQA’s standards increases.

Wooden square blocks with individual letters on their face spell out the word "regulation" on top of a dark wooden table, with other letter blocks scattered around the edges of the image.
Good governance involves falling in line with the regulations of a given market. Within the Social Care sector in Ireland, HIQA and the HSE are the two main bodies responsible for establishing and enforcing the guidelines and standards by which Care Providers must operate.

How does Having a Social Care Software Solution in Place Ensure that Quality is Maintained and Compliance and Governance is Upheld?

As we have all experienced, both inside and outside of our work, being able to keep track of our important paper-based documents and records can be challenging. This issue is of particular importance when it comes to the Social Care sector, where not only records of supported people’s personal and medical details must be stringently kept, but so too must the actions within a person’s plan be evidenced and recorded.

Failure to demonstrate the actions undertaken by a Care Provider, whether that be down to accidental loss of documentation, fire, theft, or other unforeseen circumstances, can contribute to poor governance, and with that, poorer HIQA ratings in line with their quality standards.

So, how does having a Digital Care Planning and Management tool, such as iplanit, help to enable good governance for Social Care Providers? There are many multiple benefits to having a Digital Care Plan system in place, which may also be referred to as an Electronic Care Planning system, despite the myths that you may have heard surrounding the topic(check out our blog on some of those myths right here!).

For now, however, we’re going to keep things simple, and focus on a selection of those aspects of a Digital Social Care software solution which directly help to enable good governance for Care Providers.

1. Accessibility in a GDPR-Compliant Fashion

Unlike paper-based records, a Digital Care Planning system allows appropriate access (full audit trail) to records and care plans of the people that you support, any time and in any place. This eliminates the time needed to fetch individual documents from folders, which may be missing or take considerable time to locate. The time saved by accessing someone’s plan digitally can be better spent enhancing the health and wellbeing of the people that you support. Giving access to the service users and their extended support circle is also a key enabler to ensure greater empowerment and ownership.

2. Tracking of Outcomes

As Social Care continues to adopt a more outcomes-focused approach, being able to accurately and efficiently evidence and keep track of a supported individual’s outcomes is vital. This is true not only from the perspective of Care Providers, regulatory / commissioning bodies such as HIQA or the HSE, but also the service users themselves, who want the ability to be able to see the progress that they are achieving in relation to their goals. This really helps them to stay motivated and encourages them towards achieving both greater independence and satisfaction within their own lives.

3. Reporting and Evidencing Impact

An organisation needs to have information at their fingertips to enable effective decision making. Having the following available within a digital system positions you to not only deliver quality services for the benefit of the people you support, but also fuels the impact that you are creating:

  • Maintaining up to date and Person Centred Plans.
  • Alerts in relation to actions or support tasks being missed.
  • Incidents Monitoring and Risk Alerts.
  • Reporting to monitor trends and inform future actions.
  • Supports Monthly / Quarterly / Annual submissions regarding New Directions and HIQA requirements.
  • Monthly monitoring of services – using the system centrally before heading out to the services saves so much time and keeps your visits less invasive and more focused.
  • Evidencing progress against KPI’s such as New Directions, HSE Standards etc. supports the level of impact that is be made

4. 1-1 / Supervision Preparation:

Managers having the ability to see how each support staff are supporting the people the care for and more:

  • Quality checks – see by each staff member what notes they are writing up.
  • What outcomes they are enabling others to achieve – congratulate them!
  • Alerts to see the areas they have missed or need help in
  • Planning for plan reviews etc.
Using a digital means of care management, like iplanit, offers a range of benefits to Care Service Providers, including being able to access and record information on the go, anytime and anywhere.

iplanit and Achieving Service Compliance in Ireland

As has been evidenced by recent HIQA reports, maintaining high standards and sufficient levels of compliance is essential to Social Care Providers across Ireland, and one vital means of doing so is by having an accountable, effective, and well-run governance structure within your organisation.

iplanit could be a key enabler for you in implementing and maintaining solid, strong governance within your organisation. If you would like to learn more about iplanit and how it can help you in enabling good governance standards within your organisation, get in touch with our Client Director, Clive Evans, to organise an iplanit demo of your own, and to get the opportunity to view his recent webinar demonstrating iplanit’s suite of functions that enable good governance for Irish Care Providers.

Clive can be contacted on LinkedIn or via email – cevans@aspirico.com.