All kinds of healthcare facilities, whether they are nursing homes or assisted living facilities, need to run by following a standard set of rules and regulations. This is necessary to ensure the safety and health of both the patients and the employees. For this same reason, such organizations are often subjected to routine inspections — to ensure if they are complying with state and federal regulations. Facilities must always stay prepared for these regular checks because if they fail to showcase that they are not following the standards, they might face a penalty. Poor inspection results could sometimes even result in closing down a facility for good.
What do inspections include?
Assisted living facilities are inspected from time to time by their respective governing bodies, primarily for licensing purposes. The sole aim of this survey is to assess if the organization is offering the required level of healthcare as outlined by the legal authorities and as demanded by the residents.
A crew of certified inspectors arrives at the site and inspects multiple areas, which may include:
Care procedures in place for the admitted residents
Communication between the staff and patients
The overall environment in the facility
Preparation methods of food and the storage procedures
Proper adherence to safety measures such as fire codes for safe construction
Inspection forms
One of the primary tools during an inspection is an inspection form. Professionals, while arriving at the assisted living facility site, will always carry this checklist to inspect the above areas. These documents are used as records to ensure that a particular piece of equipment or aspect has been checked. The inspector ticks off each component on the list, and by doing so, he/she verifies that all the elements in the facility are adhering to the set compliance regulations.
An alternative to paper inspection forms — digital forms
Of course, carrying inspection forms to respective locations and then filling them up is a pain. Moreover, it results in a lot of paperwork. Most of the time, these forms become outdated, and one can lose track of so many documents. Additionally, this means that the person has to come prepared with a camera, smartphone, tablet or a computer — to look up the latest information. Again, he/she has to send the papers to the office for follow-up and further analysis.
All of the above issues can be addressed with the help of digital inspection forms. In a technology-driven world, where everything is digital, it makes no sense to print forms and manually fill them every time one goes for an inspection. Digital inspection forms ensure that the process is simplified and the date is always up-to-date.
Advantages of digital inspection forms in assisted living facilities
Digital inspection forms are becoming quite popular in assisted living facilities as well. They not only minimize paperwork but also ensure fast compliance reporting and adherence to transparency. One can create customized or personalized forms as per the requirements of a particular area to be inspected. Most of these apps work online as well as offline and hence can be used at any site. Adding photographs and uploading signatures become easy. Other benefits include the options of adding pins to drawings of buildings, maps, or images. It can be used to import customer data, add automatic geo-location, and share notification emails to the related parties as and when the process is complete.
Therefore, if you are a dedicated inspector for assisted living facilities, the best option is to ditch the traditional paperwork and opt for digital forms. It saves time, money, and saves you from the pain of pouring through poring over piles of paper.
About allGeo
allGeo is a cloud-hosted, carrier-grade location and messaging platform that helps SMB and Enterprise businesses better manage their mobile employees by improving productivity and accountability, while reducing payroll and operations costs with solutions such as GPS tracking & time clock, Lone worker safety, Automation of field activity monitoring, Mobile forms & data collection including signature, notes, pictures, barcode/QR code, etc. The allGeo platform enables these solutions across a wide range of industries such as field service management, trade services, emergency responders, sales reps, transportation & logistics and home health care providers.
