2021 Allevia Annual Report

New eyes solving an old Problem
By Mohamad Kamal, Health Support Practitioner
After the dust settled following the
appointment of Daniel Carter as the Chief
Operating Officer (COO) in November,
and my appointment as Allevia’s Health
Support Practitioner a month earlier, we
decided as a team to focus on continuous
improvement. Having spent several weeks
orientating myself to Allevia’s existing
process for health and welfare record
keeping, it was clear that a revamp of the
medication record keeping was a priority.
The historical method of recording
incidents of assistance with medication
was a single signing sheet for each person
supported. The accumulated impact of
this system meant, for a month it became
4 sheets and six months it became 26
signing sheets. In terms of record keeping,
it appeared to be very hard to store
properly those significant number of loose
papers. The Official Community Visitors
(OCV) had also commented on the time
it took checking through this volume
of pages for each person, time they
would have preferred to be spending in
conversations with the people they were
visiting. In terms of cost, each person was
paying a staggering $65.00 every six
months to their Pharmacy to produce the
required documentation.
What we needed to achieve was a
generic system that would not only
enable us to simplify the record keeping
system, but also keep the cost for each
person to a bare minimum. We were also
looking for a better way of storing more
than one week of records at a time in a
single record book.
We quickly identified a very basic
generic medication management booklet
used in the health care system. The
booklet contained recording for the
regular medication sign in sheet including
webster pack/ non webster pack and the
PRN under one umbrella and would last
for six months. In terms of money, it was
much cheaper ($4.10) than the traditional
weekly single sheet.
The medication booklet we introduced
following service-wide training, holds
six months records with a single sign-in
point for all types of medication. Cost
wise it is a significant reduction. The
Community Visitors are very pleased with
the transformation. The reduced need for
weekly pharmacy visits is giving everyone
more time to engage in activities they
enjoy.
Mohamad Kamal, Allevia’s newly appointed
Health Care Practitioner delivering staff training
on the new medication recording booklet.
Allevia 2020/21 Annual Report • 25