Long before Covid-19, the month of October would have long-term care facilities managing multiple building closures due to influenza. Countless man-hours are dedicated every year to managing building closures and communications about those closures. Covid-19 restrictions only increase the need for such communications.
Care facilities across Canada and the United States are entering the 2020 flu season with varying levels of restrictions, based on geography and public health guidelines. Regardless of the level of restrictions, resident families are navigating the new waters of having limited access to their loved ones. Providing information, and comfort, to these families falls to the staff of long-term care facilities who are also simultaneously dealing with increased workloads and challenging staffing situations.
CareQ provides long-term care facilities with the ability to reach out to family faster and via more communication channels. With a single message from the CareQ platform, staff can simultaneously contact family members via text, phone call and email.
In three easy steps, staff can send a message to all families at the same time:
- Select the audience.
- Create the message.
- Click the SEND MESSAGE button.
The message is sent to families via the message channels they choose. Options include text, phone call and/or email.
As soon as the message is sent, users can see immediately that the message is being transmitted, allowing them to return to other duties.
Time and date stamped records are created for every communication, allowing staff to review what messages were sent, to whom they were sent, as well as how and when they were delivered.
Using CareQ, keeping families updated takes minutes instead of hours. The experience of a North American care facility at the onset of the Covid crisis demonstrates clearly what this means. Armed with family contact lists, multiple staff were dedicated to contacting families to update them on restrictions surrounding the facility.
Hundreds, if not thousands, of phone calls made only to be repeated each time the situation and protocols changed. An analysis of these efforts over a 12-week period came in at more than $15,000.00. Those communications were costly; and, while critical, provided only a list of who was contacted and when, not what was said.
CareQ provides accountability in communications while simultaneously reducing the cost of those communications.