When it comes to food safety, the stakes couldn’t be higher in care homes. Residents’ health depends on rigorous compliance, yet manual food safety processes often fail to keep up with modern demands, putting a drain on resources and leaving settings open to costly mistakes.
In this blog, we look at the hidden costs of paper-based food safety processes in care homes and explore how digital solutions can not only alleviate these burdens, but enhance efficiency, safeguard compliance, and prioritise the well-being of elderly, vulnerable care home residents.
The True Cost of Manual Food Safety Processes
Care homes relying on traditional pen and paper methods and manual procedures face significant direct costs, primarily due to increased labour hours spent meticulously managing and maintaining physical documents. This not only consumes valuable employee time – taking them away from their essential day-to-day care duties – but also creates a higher likelihood of financial penalties stemming from compliance failures.
The indirect costs, while less obvious, can be detrimental. Although the Care Quality Commission (CQC) isn’t strict on how data is documented, it will closely scrutinise processes and procedures during inspections, placing emphasis on exceptional compliance management in care homes.
The issue is, paper-based records can be inconsistent. Staff may forget to fill in logs, leave entries incomplete, or produce illegible handwriting. Paperwork can also easily get misplaced or lost. This can quickly become a recipe for disaster, leaving management scrambling for documents during an unexpected inspection.
The consequence of this is a care home may be branded as ‘requires improvement’ or ‘inadequate’. In some cases, a setting could face a fine or closure – either temporary or permanent.
Compliance Risks and Legal Consequences
Prosecutions of health and care providers in England are at their highest level ever since the introduction of the CQC in 2009. Analysis by Shakespeare Martineau shows the total fines levied by the CQC between 2019 and 2023 skyrocketed to more than £10.6 billion.
In an article in Caring Times, Jordan Glackin, healthcare partner at Shakespeare Martineau, comments: “The significant increase in prosecutions reflects a growing emphasis on accountability in the care sector, while the substantial fines imposed illustrate the severe financial consequences for failing to meet regulatory requirements.”
Poor ratings, reinspections, fines, and temporary closures can all threaten a setting’s sustainability and credibility. When families choose a care home for their loved one, they expect that person will be well looked after and their health, safety and welfare to be priority. Care homes that aren’t up to scratch will suffer, losing out on residents to nearby care homes with better ratings and reviews.
Negative press will also have an impact on reputation. Imagine looking into a care home only to discover it’s recently been in the media for all the wrong reasons?
The Time and Labour Burden
Staff must do all they can to prevent foodborne illnesses, or someone becoming ill due to an allergy which was overlooked.
The only way to protect residents is to have clear, strict policies in place. Tedious as it may be, everything from the delivery and storage of food to its handling and serving needs to be tracked as the risks are far too great. The administrative burden comes from having to manage multiple documents daily: locating the right forms, completing them accurately, and filing them correctly.
Digital solutions keep everything in a centralised location, providing both transparency and visibility to care home management, while highlighting any areas for concern, or training gaps.
Bespoke checklists can be put together and filled out in a matter of seconds for tasks including:
- Food storage checks
- Kitchen cleaning routines
- Special diets and allergies
- Residents’ mini-kitchens cleaning checks
- Post-caring activities
- Hand washing procedures
At Navitas Safety, we work with care home providers including Oakland Care, PH Care Group, and Borough Care to transform their manual processes into streamlined, non-cumbersome digital solutions.
Since becoming paper-free, Borough Care’s cooks save between one and one and a half hours daily by completing all necessary checks online. This equates to 40 hours per month per home, with cooks freed up to add more value to residents.
The Financial Benefits of Digital Solutions
While pen and paper may seem inexpensive, it is time-consuming. One of the most immediate advantages to digital transformation is the savings on staff hours. Automation of routine tasks allows staff to spend less time filling out paperwork, and more time focusing on resident care or higher-priority activities. This increased efficiency translates directly into lower labour costs and more productive teams.
The accessibility and searchability of digital documents, all on one platform, also aids audit readiness, reducing any financial implications of non-compliance.
Accessibility is also essential for providers like Borough Care, who operate across multiple settings. Ensuring consistency in processes can be challenging, and the lack of visibility for management makes it difficult to monitor whether standards are being met across the board or identify recurring issues that need attention.
Tony Gent, head of catering and hospitality at Borough Care, says going digital has helped him save time travelling across 12 different settings.
He said: “I have got easy access to the diaries on a daily basis where I can see all my kitchens are maintaining their food safety compliance. This saves me a lot of time and my focus can be moved over to other areas of the business.”
Check out our case study with Borough Care here, or get in touch with the team to discover how we can help your care home eliminate the administrative burden of paperwork.
