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Technology Supporting Better End-of-Life Care

on Tuesday, January 11, 2022

Queensland aged care provider Carinity is embracing new technology designed to enhance and streamline information about the care needs of end-of-life residents.

Carinity is one of Australia’s first residential aged care providers to embed a newly developed palliative care digital data dashboard into their existing IT systems, with support from ELDAC and Flinders University.

ELDAC – End-of-Life Directions for Aged Care – is a national specialist palliative care and advisory service helping care providers to offer older Australians high-quality end-of-life care.

Amie Butler, Carinity’s ICT Business Analyst, said the palliative care dashboard makes it easier for aged care professionals to use and analyse resident data.

“Historically it has been time consuming to search for end-of-life documentation and information within our residential clinical system as the details are contained within multiple sections of a resident’s profile,” Amie said.

“The ELDAC digital dashboard has brought this data together in a single location, presenting it in an easily understandable manner so that clinical staff can see whether the end-of-life assessment is current.

"Furthermore, multiple pieces of data can be combined to create trends across time, residents, and sites. This provides greater insight into our clinical information.”

Carinity’s ICT team also created data dashboards specifically for use by aged care managers and clinical staff to manage their residents’ end-of-life journey.

Carinity Aged Care Regional Residential Manager, Larissa Gear, said there is a growing need in aged care for timely, accurate, and relevant data which is essential to regulatory compliance and decision-making.

“Carinity aims is to ensure that each of our residents experience palliative and end-of-life care as they choose, and this may look very different for each of our residents,” Larissa said.

“We ensure from the moment that they come into our service that we partner with them, completing case conferences and collaborating with external palliative care providers or pain management experts.

“We then make sure that this is translated on to their wellbeing plan so that staff know what is meaningful to each of these residents. It’s our responsibility to ensure that their wishes for palliative and end-of-life care are carried out, to make sure that this last decision is theirs and they know that staff are there to support them.”
In addition to Carinity’s 12 residential aged care communities using the palliative care dashboard, two Carinity seniors’ services in Rockhampton – Shalom aged care and Carinity Home Care – are involved in a pilot program for ELDAC’s Working Together project.

The Working Together program helps to provide the best possible palliative care and advance care planning for older people.

Click here to find out more about Carinity

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