Navigating compliance effectively – QPS Benchmarking is leveraging software for heightened provider impact

As compliance regulation continues to change, providers are increasingly needing to be agile and dynamic in their response to keep pace. In order to meet these upcoming challenges, providers across the sector are looking to utilise software and human skill to secure efficient systems of insight for how they are performing. Adam Holcroft, General Manager of QPS Benchmarking, is no stranger to facing an overwhelming onslaught of information and change. Starting at QPS out of university with a degree in IT, he learnt organically that it takes incredible people and systems to maintain the excellence needed in the critical work of aged care.

QPS Benchmarking is in the business of issue and risk detection automation, leveraging software to make integration management, compliance and continuous quality improvement efficiently possible for clients, so that caring can be prioritised.

QPS Benchmarking grew out of listening to the “old school crew from aged care who were just so knowledgeable.” Integral to the shaping of the business was listening to the concerns, the stories, the frustrations of those with decades of experience in the industry and pivoting from this listening. While current frustrations across the sector are being raised at compliance regulation, derived at a distance from ‘on the ground’ functioning in aged care, Holcroft speaks of being in a room with Whiddon’s former CEO, Lee-Anne Irwin and being amazed.

“I remember just sitting in a room with her and feeling as if I could not learn enough.” He praises the privilege of learning from straightforward and transparent leaders, “She was no frills, and it was amazing, she’d never fake anything, she would tell you straight up if this [software/process] was good or not.”

For any systems that are offered to aged care providers, the baseline standard must be excellence because that’s what’s expected of leadership and care in the space. With unintended consequences of top-down regulation increasingly felt by provider leadership, systemic stability to meet change is needed. Holcroft recalls instinctively knowing to lean in to hearing about the needs of the sector, from those that were best positioned to know. Working with Sue Macri, nurse and Executive Director of the Aged Care Association Australia at the time, he fondly remembers, “fixing a printer because that was my skill at the time, and then being able to listen to her invaluable insight about the sector and what’s going on,” continuing, “learning, it’s always been about learning.”

From all that listening first QPS has been built up to efficiently respond to the needs of the sector. Holcroft shares how, “we’ve created our own software team”, shaping their internal growth to the feedback from clients.

He shares, “we’re always trying to learn from what direction the industry is going in, instead of [in silo] making software we want, we’re making it for the people who are using it.”

Holcroft shares that in the scheme of the market, “we’re not big, we don’t have the name and power of other large organisations,” emphasising that in response they have only one option, “to be really good at what we do.”

“It’s meeting the needs of whoever the client is,” Holcroft says, “and that’s only going to come from listening to what they need.”

From decades of proximity and pivoting to feedback, QPS Benchmarking has crafted a software package that is agile for the diverse needs of the host of actors in aged care, from small to large providers, home care organisations and everything in-between. Converge CQI, their powerful analytics and management offering to the market is the product of these decades of learning without cutting corners. To create this real-time digital platform to efficiently manage risk and quality management in multiple healthcare sectors, including home and residential aged care, has taken humility and perseverance for Holcroft and the whole team at QPS Benchmarking.

Holcroft reflects that in being small, another super power is QPS’ position in the market, agility in bespoke customisation.

“We partner with providers and big clinical systems, and smaller providers who are still using paper and pen, we just want to work with great people and to help any client make use of their data in ways that have previously been un-realised.”

Key to how QPS Benchmarking does business is accessible communication, simply put, they answer the phone, no-ifs or buts. If a client has run into a system error, if anything is confusing, if an executive is having a frustrating time with any aspect of the system or software, or if front-line staff are struggling, “clients always compliment us on our ability to answer emails and to listen to them.”

He boils it down to their tagline, they mean what they say, “it’s to get carers back to caring.” The executive and clinical team, along with front-line staff must be supported, that’s what QPS Benchmarking and software Converge CQI and QPS Integrations are at their core, “Our application of technology is so that no one is stuck ticking boxes and filling out numbers that they shouldn’t have to.”

“There’s so much opportunity to save people time in the face of all the regulatory creep.” Holcroft shares how QPS Integrations means ensuring that clients have customised integrations with any leading clinical platforms they are using, including Telstra Health’s Clinical Manager, Health Metrics’ eCase and any platform with the ability to make data accessible, alongside the QPS team supporting with digital and regulatory expertise. With the team “stitching up data, running that through our algorithms, cleaning data for analytical use, we can talk to managers daily, providing immediate data checks as it comes in, ensuring smooth syncing and automation.”

“We’re hearing we’re saving the time of two to three staff members per quarter, so they can be freed up to make their provision of care amazing in other needed areas.”

Speaking about supporting providers to provide the best care, Holcroft notes, “Converge CQI will automatically live pull the non-compliances in and create an issue and give you the entire digital chain to manage that issue, allocate corrective actions, close them off with the outcome and then one-touch accreditation report from there. So, that, it’s all automated.”

Holcroft shares that in the lead up to July 1, it was all hands-on deck, all the time, through some very stressful long nights. He shares that, “we spent a lot of sleepless nights getting ready for the original date,” with a profound result to-boot, “we were ready for the original date.”

He highlights that current clients with QPS Benchmarking were ready for July 1 and certainly ready for Nov 1. Their software was overhauled to update according to every single audit question, linking to the new standards and requirements in those standards.

“You can imagine the type of job going through every question, across every audit,” Holcroft good-naturedly laments, “it was massive but we raced and raced to update the old software and automation points to be ready for July.”

With the free trial on offer for QPS Benchmarking – Converge CQI, meeting the significant changes ahead of Nov 1 is clear and possible.

“If you’re already using our digital audits, you’re already complying with the new requirements from the accreditation point of view.”

See Converge CQI for the trial offer at QPS Benchmarking.