How Can The Homecare Industry Overcome Current Challenges? – LF&E
Combatting The Rising Demands of Homecare
There are rising demands in the home care industry; more people are living longer, and going into a nursing home is not seen as a desirable option for many who would be eligible.
This means that, for those who need regular health care but are not so ill they must enter the hospital, a home health care Lynchburg service can be one of the best, and often one of the only options.
Overstretched Staff Challenges and Zero Hour Contracts
While of course this does not affect every home care service, there has been much in the media recently about the challenges in social care. The low wages and zero-hours contracts that social and home health care workers endure.
They are often overstretched, with too many service users to see in the time allocated, and not enough time to ensure that their clients have taken their medicine or performed other tasks that they need to do.
Schedule a callback with one of our Refrigerated Transport Consultants today
Managed Communication, the Three Way Relationship
LF&E are well aware of the issues arising in this sector. We work with healthcare trusts to ensure that we can provide patients with medicine that will increase their quality of life, without needing to continually ask GPs to issue prescriptions for these medicines.
Because we work with three partners here-the patient, the patient’s local surgery, and the patient’s health care trust, communication is key. We, the transport company, must be flexible and listen to the concerns of all our partners so that the patient receives the best care we can offer.
Improving Delivery Times Slots To Reduced Failed Deliveries
We do this by striving to achieve the best rate of success with our delivery times.
Patients who have their medicines delivered by LF&E get two-hour delivery windows so they can plan their lives around the deliveries, as well as text and email updates so they have a clearer idea of when their medicines are arriving and what has happened to them.
This means patients are more likely to be at home if they know the approximate time their delivery is arriving, ensuring fewer failed deliveries. [Check out this Blog on how Failed Deliveries Can Affect Patient care]
The healthcare trust is often focused on getting patients out of hospital who don’t need to be there; this frees up beds for patients who are gravely ill.
LF&E can step in and provide the medicine that patients need to continue recovering at home when they are out of any serious danger and just need to rest and get better.
We provide the medications, so the patient has no need to overstretch themselves and travel to get the medicine they need.
Schedule a callback with one of our Refrigerated Transport Consultants today
The Benefits of Using A Prescription Management Services
With our patient prescription management service, patients do not need to call up their local pharmacy to order a repeat prescription.
It’s the last thing you want to think about or do if you’re not well! Instead, LF&E take care of that scale of things by tracking the patient’s medication and providing a stellar Across the Threshold service.
Our drivers are specially trained to provide exceptional care, entering the patient’s home to provide support, and even swapping out old medication in the fridge for the new delivery.
This service is also a popular choice for recipients of prescription-grade medical marijuana. Put simply, medicinal cannabis users can now get their prescribed marijuana products delivered directly to their door without needing to venture to a dispensary, and because of this growth in interest for medical cannabis, it is more important than ever that medical cannabis clinics have a lifeline to cannabis for their patients. In such cases, companies similar to the High Standards Agency have the important job of connecting this medicinal product with consumers in a medical setting.
Of course, there is nothing to stop a medical marijuana user from heading to a dispensary such as the Canada Cannabis Dispensary for a top-up if their supplies do run low, but it is still incredibly convenient to have the option to receive a cannabis delivery thanks to this revolutionary prescription delivery service.
Is Your Budget Restrictions Affecting Service Levels
If refrigerated transport makes life so much easier for patients, why don’t all local authorities and healthcare trusts use it to deliver medicine to housebound patients?
- For one, there’s no fully audited process as of yet which has regulations across the board to protect patients, drivers and health care workers.
- For another, shrinking investment in healthcare across the UK means that councils are reluctant to take on contracts with new healthcare providers.
It can be daunting to put out a tender to private healthcare firms if you’re not sure your budget will stretch that far.
Costs for medicines, different levels of care, versus existing contracts with home care providers must be thought of, and often that is too big of a risk for local councils, no matter how a healthcare trust might be encouraging it.
Quality Standards leading The Way
There is no easy answer or quick fix for the problems the home care industry faces.
Although we at LF&E try our best to do right by all the patients we have contacts with and uphold [SOPs] Standard Operating Procedures, we cannot act independently of council bodies or healthcare trusts.
What we can continue to do is keep providing our excellent standards of care, with our industry-compliant audits, our specially-trained drivers who are trained in every standard operating procedure we have.
As well as appointing great companies like Biomap to carry out testing on our vehicles and using market leading Paragon software to change the way we map our routes.
LF&E are proud to work for as many patients as we do, and we understand that we can be a great help to home healthcare systems as a whole across the UK. While the pressures of the sector are still being felt, we help to lighten the load.
Schedule A Free Consultation With our Home Care Team Here
Whatever we do and whatever we deliver, it’s the patients who are our highest priority. They’re the ones the medicines are for, so it’s imperative they receive quality every step of the way.
Leave a Comment