The Orders of St John Care Trust (OSJCT) has introduced electronic care records (eCare) across its 62 care homes and 8 extra care housing schemes. The new technology has been introduced in partnership with Nourish Care, who provided the platform and worked with the team to bring the project to life to fit the needs of OSJCT.

The introduction of eCare, at a cost of more than £2million over five years, has been made possible by grants from Lincolnshire County Council, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire West Integrated Care Board (BOB ICB),NHS Bath & North East Somerset, Swindon & Wiltshire Integrated Care Board, NHS Gloucestershire Integrated Care Board, Sussex Health and Care ICS and investment by the not-for-profit Trust which supports over 3,000 residents and clients with tailored care to live their best lives. 

With eCare, all care plans and records are available to care teams via secure and dedicated handsets, instead of cumbersome paper files. Through reducing administration time care teams can spend more time with residents and clients on delivering personalised support. It has made it quicker and easier for employees to record the great care and support they provide, in the moment. The technology also enables The Trust to better evidence the great care that it delivers every day to its residents and clients.

During July, Millbrook Lodge became the final OSJCT service to adopt eCare. OSJCT Chief Executive, Dan Hayes, and Director of Group Operations, Mike Stredder, met with members of the care team at Millbrook Lodge and the project team who have supported the roll out across OSJCT services. Paul Barnes, Nourish Care Chief Customer Officer and Ruth Norman, Nourish Care’s Director of Customer Success also attended the celebration at the home to see eCare in action. 

Since December 2022, when eCare launched at OSJCT Madley Park House, it has supported:

• Over 24 million interactions
• Enabled high quality care for 5,500 residents and clients 
• 6,900 care employees trained 
• 860,000 activities recorded
• Recorded 2.3 million wellbeing checks on residents
• Over 1,300 eCare handsets in use in OSJCT services 
• Installed 5,300 QuickClose tags to monitor doors 

Dan Hayes, OSJCT Chief Executive, said: “Moving to digital care records is part of our long-term strategy and supports the Trust’s vision to improve the health outcomes and safety of our residents and clients and enable carers to spend more time delivering personalised care.”

Paul Barnes, Nourish Care’s Chief Customer Officer said: “We are delighted that The Orders of St John Care Trust chose Nourish as their digital care planning partner. It has always been our mission to improve the lives of the people who need support and to empower those who provide it, through our easy-to-use, flexible, and truly person-centred digital platform.”

Paula West, Deputy Manager at Whitefriars, said: “eCare makes it so easy to monitor and view residents’ activities and records, we have wonderful insight into residents’ wellbeing, recorded on our handsets, which wasn’t practical with paper records.”