Action tracking and escalation in care homes
Assurestack helps with care home incident tracking and escalating through:
Real-time, centralised action tracking
Managers get a live dashboard view across sites where all audits, incidents, corrective actions, and follow-ups are logged. Having this all in one place helps to prevent tasks from being missed.
Automated reminders and alerts
Manual prompting takes valuable time. When something needs to be acted on without delay, be it an incident, audit follow-up, or risk, Assurestack triggers automatic reminders and escalations, so that staff stay on track.
Trend analysis and early detection
The platform highlights emerging risks and recurring issues through the aggregation of data. This helps teams address problems before they escalate.
Photo workflows
Staff can capture evidence on their phone or tablet and attach photos to actions. They can also sign off actions in the moment to immediately close the loop, preventing delays and saving paperwork from being lost.
Customisable templates and workflows
Actions can be tailored with Assurestack, and staff can build their own audit/action templates to suit existing processes. This makes the adoption of the platform less daunting to those less comfortable with technology.
Scheduled reporting
The auto generation of weekly, monthly, or quarterly reports provides a clear audit trail that gets sent directly to stakeholders, informing them of actions that are open, overdue, or resolved.
Efficient action tracking and escalations in care homes
The well-being, safety, and dignity of residents are of the utmost importance in care homes.
Action tracking and escalation are vital in achieving this where residents are older, medically vulnerable, or living with complex needs. This means that delays in addressing health concerns, for example, signs of infection, falls, or medication errors, can quickly escalate and become life-threatening.
Unresolved issues like equipment failures, hygiene problems, or staff shortages can also compromise safety, making tracking and escalating problems quickly all the more important. Not to mention it helps care homes meet legal obligations and maintain trust amongst residents and their loved ones.
Traditional action tracking in care homes
Before the era of digitisation, sectors of all kinds relied on manual, paper-based action tracking. In care home settings, daily care notes, medication logs, incident reporting, and care plans were all handwritten and stored on-site.
Despite eight decades passing since the development of digital solutions, many care homes continue to rely on these methods, either in part or entirely. In addition to paper-based methods, outdated digital applications for action tracking and escalation are still being used.
Outdated digital tools include Excel spreadsheets, which are prone to errors and hard to manage at scale, email reliance that often results in missed or forgotten tasks, unsupported or incompatible software that creates data silos, and basic databases accessible only on desktop computers, restricting staff from updating or accessing information on the go.
The shift from paper to digital and more advanced software has been driven by the need for greater efficiency, accuracy, compliance, and better care outcomes.
Assurestack complements traditional methods for action tracking, helping carers transition to a more effective way of escalating issues in the long run.
The Digitising Social Care Programme (DSCRs)
The Digitising Social Care Programme was established in 2021 to accelerate the adoption of digital social care records, sensor-based falls prevention and detection technologies, and other types of care technology to improve the quality, safety, and efficiency of care.
Action tracking and escalations are a core feature of most DSCR systems. At the outset of the Digitising Social Care Programme, approximately 60% of Care Quality Commission (CQC) registered care providers (care homes, supported living, etc.) did not have a digital system in place.
While it's acceptable to rely on some traditional methods for action tracking, risks like illegible handwriting and misfiling of paperwork are more likely to occur.
Action tracking in care homes
This involves clear recording and storing of what needs to be done following an audit, inspection, incident report, or day-to-day observations.
Resident safety, medication management, infection control, care homes incidents, staff training and competency, cleanliness and hygiene, care planning and documentation, safeguarding, equipment maintenance, and compliance with health and safety regulations are all examples of what’s reviewed during an audit.
Assigning responsibility to a specific staff member or team, setting deadlines, and follow-ups until the action is complete helps prevent problems from being overlooked or forgotten, which supports compliance with regulations and promotes accountability, safety, and continuous improvement in the quality of care provided, all of which has a direct and positive impact on the outcome of CQC inspections.
Tracking and following-up on activities in care homes for better accountability
In care homes, if issues are found during audits, inspections, or checks, they are often tracked but not always followed up on. This is especially the case when there’s no clear assignment of responsibility, as the problems highlighted are more easily forgotten or completely ignored.
There are several applications for monitoring activities in care homes, giving care workers access to vital information concerning the health of occupants at the touch of a button.
Immediate action assignment features in applications like Assurestack mean that any issues logged must be linked to a specific action and assigned to a named member of staff and or team, removing ambiguity while reducing care home admin so care workers can focus on what’s most important—the residents.
Escalating issues in care homes
Escalating issues in care homes refers to the process of raising concerns or unresolved problems to a higher level of responsibility when they cannot be addressed at the immediate level of care. This is a critical part of resident safety, maintaining care home compliance, and promoting accountability.
Assurestack facilitates this by providing a digital platform that automatically flags unresolved or overdue issues and routes them to the appropriate manager or senior staff member. If an action assigned to a care worker is not completed within a set deadline, the system sends reminders and escalates the task to higher levels of responsibility. While this might sound daunting, it’s purely to ensure that no issue goes overlooked.
By establishing who is responsible for each action, issues can be tracked until resolution. A structured escalation process helps care homes respond promptly to risks, maintain compliance with regulatory standards, and foster a culture of transparency.
Resolving escalated tasks
Escalation starts from the point of identification of an issue, triggering a formal process where a task is advanced through designated roles or departments. By doing this, the appropriate attention and expertise are involved to prevent actions from being overlooked and escalating into serious harm or regulatory breaches.
Assurestack gives you full visibility and control over what’s happening in your home, in real time. From health concerns like infections or falls, to safety risks, staffing shortages, or maintenance issues, Assurestack ensures nothing is missed, delayed, or forgotten. Actions are tracked, escalated, and resolved faster, with clear audit trails and automated reminders that keep your team aligned.
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