The Importance of Giving Time Back to Provide Person-Centered Care

Background

Algoma Manor has been providing high-quality and reliable long-term care services to the rural community of Thessalon, Ontario since 1967. The not-for-profit and CARF-accredited care home strives to promote the positive possibilities of life’s next chapters. Their mission is to help residents live fully, every day. 

Melissa Milford is an Activation Aide at Algoma Manor. She has held the position for about a year, but has worked at the manor for 3 years in total. As a member of the activity department, her goal is to engage her residents through the different dimensions of wellness, including emotionally, intellectually, physically, socially and spiritually through personalized programs that resonate with each resident.

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Challenges

Melissa and her team at Algoma wanted to offer person-centered care through programming designed to meet their residents’ unique needs, hobbies, and interests. But they were not fully confident that they had the resident data or the time they needed to tailor their program offerings. Getting to know each resident personally takes time, and they felt that too much of their work day was being spent on administrative tasks. The team estimates that they were losing 6-10 hours a month on calendar creation alone. 

The team needed a solution that would enable them to offer person-centered programming by accomplishing three goals:

• Improve time-consuming administrative processes
• Enable staff to quickly learn residents’ needs and preferences
• Analyze resident data to create personalized activities

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Solution

Algoma Manor onboarded with Welbi in July 2021 and utilized the platform’s host of recreation-planning tools to tailor their program offerings. Welbi’s digital resident profiles allow staff to gain a holistic understanding of a resident within minutes. The platform analyzes resident data to provide activity teams with the insights they need to offer person-centered care. Melissa now uses Welbi’s Attendance Recommendations to receive personalized activity suggestions based on the profiles and preferences of each of her residents. 

“It’s one of our favorite features that everyone always comments on. It’s such a time-saver. When you’re planning something and you don’t know anybody, you just go into that and it shows you which people will probably go.”

The feature leverages community insights to predict the residents that are likely to attend a program, which allows Melissa to quickly build a personalized activity calendar that addresses her community’s unique needs. The time she saves on planning can now be better spent engaging her residents.

“It takes a lot of the running out of your job. We don’t always have time to look up who we think would want to go to a program or to go around and ask everybody. With Welbi, all that information is already there. It does so much extra work for you.”

Welbi’s Print Designer tool saved the team even more time by replacing their former calendar-building process.

“[Welbi] makes building your calendars a thousand times easier.”

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Results

With Welbi, Algoma Manor reduced time spent on calendar creation by as many as eight hours a month, enabling staff to spend more time with residents. The platform’s community insights and activity suggestions allow the team to plan programming based on their residents’ needs and interests. The activity team is now confident that they have the time and resources they need to offer the person-centered care their residents deserve.