Currently, many care providers use a range of messaging tools - including email and whatsapp - to communicate important and time-sensitive updates to their front-line care professionals. This runs the risk of crucial updates easily slipping under the radar, or causing concerns with compliance and auditing.

One solution for this comes in the form of the Birdie Message Centre. This is an in-app tool that allows Care Managers to send encrypted messages directly from the Birdie Care Agency hub to the Birdie app on carer’s phones - with each message clearly linked to a particular visit or client, to easily demonstrate responsiveness and personalised care when it comes to auditing. Along with this, each message comes with read receipts - so managers know who has or hasn’t got the message, and when it was received.

Based all across the UK, Newcross Healthcare has over 165,000 registered healthcare workers, making them one of the largest UK workforce providers. Last year alone they delivered over 8.5 million hours of care across 830,000 shifts. 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 find out how they had previously managed comms with their care professionals, and how they were using Birdie’s Message Centre tool to reduce compliance risks, contact care professionals at scale and take mass emails out of the daily routine.

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Check it out! Sara talks about how her and her team use the Birdie Message Centre:

Operating quickly, effectively and at scale is no mean feat. Newcross both create and work with best-in-class technology suppliers to make sure their teams are able to confidently operate a business while supporting the unique needs of their thousands of care recipients. 

One key area that the team were looking to develop further was around communications to care professionals out on the ground. 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.” 

Birdie’s 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 messages can be sent from the agency hub directly to Care Professionals phones, with a notification appearing directly on their phone screen so it’s much easier to access and read the message. Even more than that, the Care Manager is able to easily see if the message has been read or not -  so ‘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 is 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.

Along with other Birdie partner businesses, Sara and her team at Newcross took part in the initial Birdie beta of the Message Centre. They were crucial partners to help the product teams test and iterate the feature so it was able to be the best it can be for all our partners. If you’re interested in become a beta tester agency 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 to iIncrease 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.

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.

"It's little things like before this I used to wait to 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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About Newcross Healthcare

Newcross is at the forefront of driving and disrupting the healthcare staffing model.

Its HealthForceGo app is designed to connect healthcare providers with top-tier temporary colleagues efficiently and reliably. For healthcare workers it enables them to find and book shifts based on skills, location and availability. Healthcare workers can have shifts automatically assigned via the app’s AutoAssign feature, thus avoiding missing shifts and opportunities for work.  A key feature of the app is FlexiPay whereby care workers can access same day pay for shifts completed.  

The company now boasts over 150 product, engineering and data specialists, making it one of the largest dedicated development teams focussed on healthtech solutions. Newcross has a very ambitious timeline to roll out additional products to the sector and is currently looking at leveraging advances in AI and Machine Learning to ensure the healthcare sector can introduce greater efficiencies, carers and nurses get the right support from their technology platform and, ultimately people can get better more quickly by ensuring the right carers, are in the right place and at the right time.  

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Your business already delivers great care. With Birdie, you can take it to the next level. Book a Demo with us, and let's see what we can do together!