Simple Ways to Use an eMAR Medication System in Home Care

Specialist care management software company, CareLineLive, focused on helping home care agencies improve quality, compliance and person-first in home care, explains all you need to know about eMAR

Digital transformation is a significant trend across the healthcare space, with eMAR medication systems a primary focus for care agencies and other providers looking to operate with greater efficiency and avoid preventable errors.

Alongside enhancements to carer time management, eMAR ensures that managers and coordinators have real-time access to information recorded during care visits, can coordinate updates and tasks across their workforce, and uphold exacting standards around medication administration.

CareLineLive, a specialist care management software company focused on helping home care agencies improve quality, compliance and person-first in home care, explains all you need to know about eMAR, how it works, and the right ways to transfer your records and care management to an app-based system.

eMAR Applications in the UK Home Care Sector

While many people find the concept of digitisation complex, eMAR is fundamentally the same system as a care agency might use through their paper records – but faster, accessible, accurate and without the potential for mistakes or miscommunications.

The emphasis of eMAR is to ensure carers working in their communities provide the correct medications in the right doses and according to prescriber instructions, including administering medicines at the appropriate time of the day and with or without food.

Because eMAR is digital, each carer can download the app to their device, with digital communications that ensure care records are updated immediately should an individual’s care plan change, dosages need to be adjusted, or where a previous carer has administered the necessary medication for that day or shift.

In home care, eMAR is universally beneficial and optimises the time a carer spends with each individual, enhancing client safety and the efficiency of care, with automated reminders prompting carers to follow the indicated tasks during each visit, with administration instructions for clarity.

Introducing eMAR to Your Home Care Agency Processes

One of the suggestions we often make for agencies concerned about the transition from paper-based record-keeping to eMAR is to utilise the printable MAR record feature available through our software. While printed sheets are not often necessary, this functionality can provide reassurance and help agencies and carers smooth the shift to digital-based records.

We provide user-friendly tools and uncluttered interfaces to make software straightforward to use and understand on any device, and offer free demonstrations to showcase how eMAR and carer tools work, with insights from our skilled care tech experts.

A strategic transition is best practice, where home care agency managers can assess all of the information, tasks, medications and care services a client requires and set up custom records for each service user, covering areas such as:

• Dietary requirements and meal preferences
• Medical administration records and dosages
• Insulin charts and other condition-specific records

Carers can explore the app before deployment, learning how to add observations, tick off completed tasks, and even add photos to create a comprehensive care record accessible by all authorised agency users and other carers interacting with the same person.

Agencies beginning their transition are welcome to contact CareLineLive for further guidance about how to implement app-based care records and eMAR within their organisations.

Benefits of eMAR for Person-First Responsive Home Care

The challenges of paper-based medication systems are well known, from illegible handwriting to unclear abbreviations, mistakes such as forgetting to log an event that impacts the next dosage, or lost documents, meaning carers may not be certain when the client last received their medication.

Particularly in home care, where many service users may be older people or with conditions that affect their cognitive ability, it is the care agency's responsibility to guarantee that the individual will receive the necessary medication, in the right dose, administered correctly, and at the appropriate time.

eMAR acts as a log of events, tracks the actions of each carer, provides prompts, and instantly updates to reflect changes that a care team and other caregivers, such as family members, must be aware of.

The advantages from a home care agency perspective are as follows:

• Quality control: implementing an eMAR shows good practice in client safety, where ongoing and new carers can follow the instructions provided and log each medication given for streamlined communications across care teams.
• Compliance: the relevant regulator, such as the Care Quality Commission in the UK, can evaluate eMAR records to satisfy requirements around record-keeping.
• Data protection: our eMAR software and app include high-performance security safeguards to protect confidential information from unauthorised users.
• Flexibility: carers can add notes, record evidence of medications given, and add observations and other information, such as blood pressure readings.

Agency managers can use their eMAR system for audit purposes, reducing the workload associated with month-end reporting and compliance inspections, and collate administration tasks easily by preparing detailed reports covering days, weeks or months as required in seconds.

The Future of eMAR in Home Care

Transitioning medicine administrative record-keeping to digital is a priority, with government targets aiming to ensure 80% of organisations and healthcare providers across social care have digitised their records by 2024.

As technology evolves and develops, the focus is on developing integrated care plans and delivery, with GPs, consultants, other prescribers, pharmacies and care agencies all working cohesively with accurate information sharing to promote the highest possible patient safety standards.

While eMAR is proven to boost efficiency and reduce or remove potential errors, plans to introduce joined-up health and social care record-keeping into a central system across integrated care systems are scheduled by March 2025, providing a detailed overview of all relevant details that clinicians and carers need to know.

AI applications are also in development, where doctors and prescribers will be able to leverage machine-learning-based diagnosis applications, with image-sharing and interpretation tech, to help triage patients faster, deliver more accurate and expedited diagnoses, and dispense the appropriate medication without delay.

Across home care, agencies with a live eMAR system and an emphasis on quality improvements and the benefits of digitisation will be in an excellent position to integrate these proposed information-sharing systems into their home care processes and demonstrate adherence to the highest care standards.

Read more about CareLineLive - CareLineLive Explains Why Care Tech Is Critical To Meet Growing Demand For Professional Home Care

About CareLineLive
CareLineLive is an award winning UK care management software system that delivers complete functionality for home care businesses. Set up in 2014, CareLineLive has used the latest technology to develop for agency owners and managers an innovative, easy to use, cloud based home care management system that is truly fit for purpose.

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Source Company: https://carelinelive.com/