5,110
The number of messages sent in just the first two months of the feature beta
6 weeks
The feature was built over 6 weeks, after months of initial discovery and in-depth research with care providers
Find out how Newcross streamlines communication with Birdie's secure Carer App
About Newcross
Based all across the UK, Newcross Healthcare has over 165,000 registered healthcare workers, making them one of the largest UK workforce providers. They delivered over 8.5 million hours of care across 830,000 shifts in 2023 alone.
Newcross Healthcare combine cutting-edge technology with a very human approach, to ensure they deliver outstanding care that truly supports everyone involved.
We caught up with Sara Alderson, a Community Care Manager at Newcross, to discuss how they'd previously managed care professional comms (and its limitations) and how, today, the Birdie Message Centre tool — inside the secure Carer App — reduces compliance risk, makes it easy to contact care professionals at scale, and takes mass emails out of equation.
Check it out! Sara talks about how her and her team use the Birdie Message Centre:
The challenge: when your tools can't scale with you
Operating quickly, effectively, and at scale is no mean feat. Newcross both creates and works with best-in-class technologies, ensuring their teams can operate confidently while supporting the unique needs of thousands of care recipients.
Communications to and between care professionals on the ground was a key area the team were looking to develop. Using tools like email to share important updates with care professionals came with a host of potential concerns: a lack of visibility, compliance and privacy concerns, less tech-savvy users not being able to get notifications…a familiar list for many care providers.
So when the opportunity arose to take part in a unique beta test of Birdie’s in-app Message Centre, Sara’s care team at Newcross were keen to be among the first adopters.
"We regularly get the Product Update emails from Krittika at Birdie,” says Sara. “When we saw the Message Centre come up, you should have heard the reaction in the branch. We wanted to be among the first to trial it.”
The solution: connection and transparency at scale
Birdie's smart homecare technology gets everything (and everyone) working together.
The Message Centre gives care businesses a centralised hub for communication, ensuring they can stay on top of conversations and audit their messages to care teams on the ground. Short, encrypted messages can be sent from the Agency Hub straight to a care professional's phone. Carers get notified directly — with each message clearly linked to a particular visit or client — so it's easier to access, read, and understand the message.
Better still for Newcross, each message comes with a read receipt, so Care Managers can see if the message was read or not. ‘Oh, I didn’t see that update!’ becomes a thing of the past.
"I can see exactly who's read the message, and I can see when it was read”, says Sara. “It gives us all this evidence, which is perfect for meeting CQC standards."
One other thing Sara has found particularly useful relates to the speed of which she can get messages out. "In response to any client changes that I get notified of, I contact every single one of the care team for that client — instantly — and tell them about the change. It's just being that responsive. We can prove that within minutes of receiving a change, the staff knew what was going on."
What is the Birdie Message Centre? Find out more here.
"I can see exactly who's read the message, and I can see when it was read. The Birdie Message centre gives us all this evidence, which is perfect for meeting CQC standards."
Building betas together
Along with other Birdie partners, Sara and her team at Newcross took part in the initial beta of the Birdie Message Centre. They were crucial in helping the product teams test and iterate the feature to make it the best that it could be. If you’re interested in becoming a beta tester for Birdie features, and you’re already a Birdie partner, then make sure to keep an eye on those ‘Here’s what’s coming’ emails.
Despite the feature still being relatively new, it’s been of instant value for Sara and her team. "I can see in a month or so, we won't be emailing staff”, says Sara. “We'll just be using the Message Centre. I already don't send anywhere near as many emails as I did, and I don't receive the same amount of emails because the information is always there for them."
During the beta testing, Sara did have some feedback on how to improve the tool — including increasing the character limit. This has since been increased and we’ll be taking other feedback into account, as we always do. For more about the Birdie product building philosophy, check out this page here.
"We can prove that within minutes of receiving a change, the staff know what is going on. It is being that responsive."
Sara and the team at Newcross use the Birdie Message Centre to keep the whole team informed
One of the earliest adopters of the Birdie Message Centre, Sara Alderson at Newcross has found the in-app messaging tool highly valuable for both her and her entire care team. Communication is streamlined, compliant, and easy-to-audit when CQC comes around — no matter the scale.
"Before this I used to wait until the end of a week to send the memo out to the team”, says Sara. “ Now they're getting individual messages as things are happening. So it's not just a round-up of the week — it's short and sweet, it's regular, and it's proving to be a wonderful communication tool for all of us."
Interested in using the Birdie Message Centre with your care teams? Why not book a demo with one of our friendly team today.
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