August 19, 2020

Capturing outstanding evidence for your CQC report

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You’re doing a great job already. But when it comes to evidencing your care for your CQC report, we know that documenting your great work can be difficult. And it’s even harder if everything you do is tracked on paper. 


We hear time and time again from our partner agencies that collecting communication and log sheets monthly can lead to a delay in response times, and when it comes to CQC inspections it’s hard to know how you’re doing without an easy to access overview. That’s why we decided to change things. 


When you use Birdie, you get a comprehensive overview of everything as it happens, and to make sure you’re staying compliant and meeting the CQC KLOEs (key lines of enquiry) we send a tailored report each week, based on your performance - so you always know how you’re performing. 


In this blog, we're chatting with partner agency Alina Homecare who are using the Birdie Q Score to understand their performance every week and make their branches more efficient and compliant with the CQC KLOEs. 

The Q Score in a nutshell


The Q Score (that’s short for Quality Score) is Birdie's reporting system that uses the data between your agency's call monitoring system (like CarePlanner or Malinko, for example) and the actions you and your care team make on the Birdie system (like checking in, completing tasks, adding notes and resolving alerts). 


We combine the data and create a bespoke report every week, which you can use to show the CQC or Local Authorities how compliant you are with their requirements and show your progress. (We’ll get to a few ways you can do this later on). 


Although we are not directly affiliated with the CQC, the information in the Q Score is Birdie's way to help you in becoming more Caring, Effective, Well-led, Person Centred and Safe, as an agency. 


Find out more about the Q Score here or keep reading to find out how Alina Homecare think the Q Score is helping them to hit the CQC 5 lines of enquiry.


Screen with graph showing care delivery scoring

Do you feel that the Q score is in line with CQC requirements? Do you think it can help you to hit the KLOEs?


“Conceptually it is Birdie that is driving this behaviour and the Q Score is about driving us to make sure we are keeping best practice in Birdie, but that in turn can help us hit some of the KLOEs. 


For example, someone just doing their tick lists versus adding notes is not a direct correlation to reaching an ‘outstanding’ rating, but if you’re seen to be giving full, person-centred detail it will look positive to your CQC inspector. 


The more detail you have in care plans and log books the better. It could be the difference between ‘outstanding’ and ‘good’.


In particular, when you look at the CQC KLOEs, and the key questions around responsiveness, Birdie can help there. For example, looking at our reports, we can how that we’re not waiting for an audit to action things.


By showing that we’re managing an alert, to use a KLOE example, we can prove that we’re ‘routinely listening and learning from people about concerns that have been raised’.


Also when a concern is raised, we can put notes onto Birdie to say how we have dealt with that concern and remedy anything. 


So if a CQC inspector walked in we could instantly be able to show that we’re on it and that we’re dealing with issues straight away. 


You can also demonstrate that the agency is well led by using these tools to make decisions and change behaviour.


We have also used the tools with our local authority to prove when care requirements have changed, so we can make adjustments to timings. 


We can justify the need for extra time, by sending over the batch of notes for a week to show our carers are consistently staying for an extra 10/15 minutes per visit - so it’s easy to prove that through the data that Birdie provides.


The local authority has responded and they have added on extra 15 minutes in the mornings to finish tasks. And it’s the proof from Birdie that has given us that.”



Alina Homecare isn’t the only partner who has seen CQC success with Birdie. Elite Care North West has also managed to improve its ratings with the Birdie Home Care Software System. Find out how Birdie helped them by watching their short video, here

If you’d like to know how Birdie could help with your CQC inspections, get in touch with us or book a demo.

Get a free downloadable, printable tip sheet to help improve your CQC rating. Just click here to download yours now.

Got a CQC inspection coming up? Why not check out our top tips for getting prepped? Read the blog, here.

Want to find out more about CQC inspections? Check out our blog roundup of a talk held by Deanna Westwood, Head of CQC Inspections, held earlier this year. She talks about CQC's 2021 digital strategy and how they're evolving the ESF framework in the wake of COVID-19. Or if you're looking to capture evidence that proves your business is outstanding, get some top tips here, or find out how to improve your rating, here

You might also be interested in our on-demand webinar which focuses on improving your CQC score with care management software like Birdie.

Sign up for our CQC preparation webinar

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