Thanks to donors who have stepped forward, the downtown offices have upgraded from Microsoft 2007 to 365. This is a huge jump, which has caused difficulties with the outdated equipment. The frustration is real but temporary! The next step includes replacing the 10 to 15-year-old equipment with new compatible machines. This movement toward the overall goal is exciting as it will increase speed, efficiency, and functionality! This next step will also phase into placing computers in the homes serving people in the Community Living program, which will make a huge difference in many ways across departments.
Because this is an unfunded necessity for program and service provision, we need help raising additional funds to keep this project moving forward to fully upgrading the computer technology at KETCH. This project impacts all departments, work, day, and residential programs, nursing, transportation, billing, human resources, maintenance, and administration.
It takes a village, and all donations are extremely beneficial!
Examples of how communication will improve include:
- Direct care staff in the home can access immediate updates, such as if a person served needs to prepare for a weekend visit with family. This advance notice will trigger staff to quickly determine what preparation needs to happen and how it affects dinner arrangements for the household that evening.
- Nursing sends medical instructions to homes via a driver in a KETCH vehicle. These are usually communications regarding treatment for illness or injury. Instead, nursing would send an encrypted email directly to that house, receiving a time stamp indicating when staff have read the information.
- Staff can email across programs regarding health concerns, such as noticing a person served is sleeping during the day but doesn’t know if they are coming down with a cold or if they may have had a seizure the night before. Seizures can cause excessive sleeping for up to 48 hours.
- Staff-to-staff at shift changes within the home can easily pass along information such as whether a person has a toothache, and whether they were given Ibuprofen, and the dosage.
The opportunity for improved communication and documentation across the organization is endless!
In reaching toward a long-term goal, the Case Records department sees the possibilities closer to accessing records electronically. Case Records Supervisor Cheryl Llamas reports that written paperwork can be cumbersome and time-consuming for staff. With computers in the homes, she said, “DSPs can type their answers onto a template and save it. Documentation is legible, and required fields ensure important fields are filled in and saved.” Then, staff can send all the paperwork from the homes electronically to the appropriate offices at KETCH, and then stored electronically and accessed, when needed, on the web.
Future technology upgrades will reduce the amount of time and labor currently expended as paperwork follows a route that can take weeks to complete as hundreds of pages travel through managers and vice presidents, re-routed for any missing information, and finally, return to case records to scan and store. Each person served has a binder of paperwork, including medical records, that remains in a file cabinet for two years. Then, the documents transfer to a folder for seven years in a different file cabinet
Storing thousands of folders takes a lot of space; searching for something requires time and often a ladder to reach! A new dedicated server will store all the records electronically in the future, greatly reducing retrieval time!
Regional Manager Matt Montgomery says, “Computers in the homes make it so much easier for everyone to communicate with the staff at the homes, sending secured emails, persons served appointment reminders, communication to and from all aspects of the business.” Matt supervises some of the KETCH homes and has worked for an organization that had computers in their homes. He says technology makes a difference, “I have done this for many years, and seeing how technology has changed, it makes life simpler, just being able to communicate the proper things to the right people.”