Aged Care Residential Home Chooses Mobile Clinical Assistants to Drive Mobility and Paperless Initiative

Motion’s new C5v Mobile Clinical Assistant ‘sold itself’ as mobile wireless solution

SYDNEY and AUSTIN, TX – August 12, 2010 – Residential aged care home Jacaranda Village is one of the first Australian healthcare organisations to take delivery of the new Motion C5v Mobile Clinical Assistant (MCA) as it commits itself to mobility solutions and aims to be paperless within two years.

The aged care facility ordered the new Motion C5v for nursing staff through Melbourne-based aged care solutions experts Axishealth; and early reaction to the new wireless technology is universally enthusiastic.

Jacaranda Village CEO Susan Bowditch said that they wanted to work more efficiently, while operating within their limited resources. “We have been working for some time finding ways to work smarter. So far this has generally been in areas of work practices and equipment, such as trying to cut down staff time spent walking up and down corridors. This is our first serious venture into technology solutions.

“We discussed our goal of going paperless for greater efficiency with Axishealth’s Doug Smith, who suggested adding a solution of mobile tablet PCs to more efficiently use our specialist aged care software i-Care.

“We’d been thinking of going to an electronic medication chart, and quickly understood that Doug was offering a fantastic option with the tablet PCs. We researched other options and tablets, but no-one else had the range of quality features we wanted. The Motion tablet had so many features that were a fit for us that it was a ‘no brainer’ decision – they sold themselves.”

Bowditch commented that they also needed to ‘nurse-proof’ their new mobility solution. “Nurses in this aged care area are very unforgiving on anything that they touch, as they work very hard and are constantly dealing with a dynamic carer environment. We needed a rugged solution that could stand up to that challenge.”

Bowditch said that the paper systems used by staff created considerable room for human error, such as omitting important notes, or administering the wrong medicines. “Moving to the tablet PCs means we are as error-proof as we can be. For example, a warning alarm will go off on the device if the nurse scans a bar code for a patient’s medication that does not correspond to the medication chart that she has open.

“For each shift handover, new nurses can now go over the information without having to make notes or read hand-written entries from previous shifts. It gives them portability at the point of care, where they can write on screen in people’s rooms. Also duplication is tedious for our nursing staff and a waste of time and money.”

Bowditch said that in the short time they’ve had the C5v’s, Jacaranda Village staff and management has already thought of new uses outside of direct care.

“If we are heading towards going completely wireless and paperless, then this mobile wireless technology isn’t just for our nurses. It will be great for our hotel services manager who orders nearly everything that we use; and it will be a brilliant tool for our maintenance manager. We’re just starting to think of the overall potential.”

Axishealth’s Doug Smith said that Jacaranda Village also saw substantial benefit from utilising the tablets in the area of wound care, sending direct reports to the doctor and getting long distance advice.

“The tablet’s integration with the i-Care software system was also important to them, together with the ease of handwriting on-screen and the security provided by fingerprint-reader log-in and good battery life.

“Training was another very important area. The average age of aged care nurses is mid-40s, but we were all surprised and pleased that all of the nursing staff quickly became excited over the benefits and time-savings in their daily workload.

“To train all nursing staff, we committed to three-four days of initial training, including ‘train the trainer’ support.

Jacaranda Village’s chief executive Sue Bowditch said the adoption of the solution was a huge step up for the nursing home. “We hope to be fully paperless in two years. It will mean our staff can spend more time with the residents and still get their work done.”

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