Derry care home residents use iPads to air views in award winning project

Care home residents have been using I-Pads to register their views.

Ardlough and Meadowbank care homes in the city are among those enlisted in the Quality of Life programme that has just been named overall winner in the UK Customer Experience Awards.

Both homes are using purpose-designed technology to listen to the views of residents and their families to understand how to give them a better experience.

The Quality of Life programme, run by Four Seasons Health Care, has helped its homes to achieve customer satisfaction levels averaging over 97% in feedback from residents and their relatives.

The Quality of Life Programme uses technology that is exclusive to Four Seasons’ care homes.

Residents, their families and health professionals can use iPads that are programmed with a touch-screen questionnaire linked to purpose-designed software systems to tell the company what they think about any aspect of care.

The information is transmitted instantly to the Home Manager and Regional Manager.

Carol Cousins, Managing Director of Four Seasons Health Care in Northern Ireland, said: “This feedback has enabled our care teams to find and fix issues or niggles. “Most of these are little things which make a big difference to someone’s daily life. They have included always cutting the rind of someone’s bacon, changing the time someone’s medication is delivered, re-decorating a room to a resident’s taste.

“When the majority of our residents are of the generation who don’t like to make a fuss, our Quality of Life Programme has helped us to uncover customer needs that they might otherwise not have expressed.”

The programme was chosen by the judges ahead of more than 750 companies across all sectors of industry and commerce.

It was also winner in the award category for Insight and Feedback – A Focus on Understanding.

Carol said: “It is a huge endorsement for our Quality of Life programme to have been selected as the best customer experience programme in the UK and it’s a credit to the people in our care teams who have used it to listen to the residents in our homes and act on their feedback to make them happier.”

Neil Copping, host of the Customer Experience Awards, said: “It is the first time that a company in the care sector has won this award and it is very significant because Four Seasons is embedding a customer focus and service culture in its homes that has resulted in increased levels of customer satisfaction.”