The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has launched it ‘Capturing Innovation to Accelerate Improvement’ project which collates a group of resources and case studies from the sector to encourage innovation that benefits people using health and social care services in England.
The project explores several examples of innovation across care providers in their adoption or exploration of innovative solutions. This work sets out to encourage the provision of safe, effective, compassionate, high-quality care and encourage services to improve.
The project has been made possible by funding provided by the Regulators’ Pioneer Fund and the Department of Science Innovation and Technology.
Orchard Care Homes & PainChek
One of the innovation case studies published as part of the ‘Capturing Innovation to Accelerate Improvement’ project was that of Orchard Care Homes’ implementation of PainChek which began back in 2021.
“The PainChek app has been pivotal to our dementia promise and improving the overall wellbeing of many of the residents living in our homes.”
– Cheryl Baird, Director of Quality & Care, Orchard Care Homes.
The issue
Orchard Care Homes had noticed a high number of antipsychotic prescriptions among their residents’ living with dementia. This was combined with high levels of distress response behaviours as these residents had difficulty communication, or self-reporting their pain. Cheryl and her team of dementia leads were convinced that pain was a driver of these distressed behaviours and wanted better systems in place to identify the pain their residents may be experiencing.
The Impact
Since implementing PainChek across their 23 care homes, Orchard Care Homes have seen a reduction in polypharmacy, distressed behaviours and conflict related safeguarding reports due to improved availability of pain relief and more accurate, reliable and documented pain assessments.
You can find the full innovation case study here.
To learn more about how PainChek can help you, please contact us today.
