Improving health and safety in care homes with Sign In App

Visitor management systems are becoming a vital addition in care homes. With regulations and government guidance changing regularly, it’s crucial that processes for health and safety in care homes are seamless and easy-to-follow for everyone; a visitor management system can help with this.

Safety has always been at the heart of Sign In App, and we have a variety of different features which are ideal for improving health and safety in care homes. Below are just a few of the top features...

Safety Check

From 11th November 2021, new government regulations in the UK will amend the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014 to state that all care home workers and anyone visiting a care home will need to be fully vaccinated, unless exempt under the regulations. As part of this, CQC will monitor care homes to ensure that they have a robust process in place to ensure that any employees or visitors to the site have been checked for vaccine status.

Earlier in the month, we released Safety+ which is a new series of features that put health and safety at the forefront; one of those features was Safety Check. Safety Check provides a solution for improving health and safety in care homes and complying with the new government regulations coming into force in November. Safety Check provides you with the tools you need to manage entry requirements such as vaccine status and issue digital health certificates following confirmation of a visitor or staff member’s health status, without storing any personal health information. Safety Check also enables you to create a block list to prevent high risk individuals from signing in and gaining any further access to your site.

Messages and policies

With new regulations and guidance changing frequently, there may be times where your important site information such as health and safety policies need updating. Sign In App makes this process seamless with our messages and policies feature. New information can quickly be updated via the online portal as text, images, PDFS and videos, and can be presented during the sign in process for employees, visitors and residents to read and accept when signing in. Messages and policies can be tailored to each visitor group and the feature is supported on the iPad, contactless sign in and Companion app.

Emergency evacuations

We’ve always believed that having an accurate representation of everyone on site in the event of an emergency can save lives. This is especially important in care homes, where there is often various different groups on site such as employees, visitors and residents. Sign In App keeps all of your sign in data in sync and up-to-date; in an emergency, your real-time evacuation list can be accessed on Companion app. Safety+ also introduces shared evacuation reports which allow colleagues to start or join a roll call, time the evacuation and work together to account for everyone on site. Evacuation reports can be saved to the online portal to refer back to when analysing how to streamline your health and safety processes in future.

Visitor badges

Visitor badges are already quite common for improving health and safety in care homes. So where does Sign In App come into play? Sign In App allows you to create customised badges with our intuitive badge builder so you can choose what information is presented. By connecting Sign In App to a compatible wireless printer, the visitor badge process can also be automated.

Contactless sign in

In a time where it’s still important to minimise shared contact, particularly in care homes, it can be really helpful to activate contactless sign in. Contactless sign in is a secure, zero-touch sign in solution which allows visitors and employees to sign in from their personal smartphone device by scanning a QR code displayed on your reception iPad or a Sign In Point poster. The full sign in process is supported, so you can still take advantage of using the various health and safety features such as messages, policies and questionnaires.

Employee sign in

Sign In App is designed with flexibility in mind, and we have a variety of ways for you to manage the sign ins of your employees. Our mobile Companion app is available on iOS and Android, and is free as part of your annual site subscription for an unlimited number of staff members. As mentioned earlier, all of our health and safety features like messages and policies are also supported on Companion, so you can ensure you’re adapting and complying to new regulations and guidance that affect your employees.

In addition to the features outlined above, we also have various additions which make the app ideal for improving health and safety in care homes. V4 of our iPad app brought improved accessibility features including larger font sizes to make information easier to read for those with visual impairment and clearer buttons which are easier to tap. With data privacy also being a big concern in a variety of industries, including care homes, we have a secure, global infrastructure built around data privacy so you can ensure you’re complying with local and industry regulations; we’re also GDPR compliant and ISO27001 accredited for Information Security Management.

If you’d like to learn more about improving health and safety in care homes with Sign In App, get in touch with our customer experience team. Whether you prefer to chat via live chat, phone or email, you can find all of the ways to contact us here. Alternatively, if you’re ready to get started, you can try Sign In App free for 15 days here - no credit card details are required.