The importance of writing effective progress notes or a handover notes can’t be overlooked as these communication notes play a vital role in better case management for NDIS workers and participants. However, in many cases, it is noticed that these crucial updates are not conveyed properly or sometimes completely missed out. This results in a frustrating experience for the authoritative person and creates unwanted issues. To handle such issues and simplify the task of writing case notes, Pynx’s Comm.care, case management system is here for you. In this article, we will shed light on how one can utilise Comm.care’s user-friendly features in the best possible way to get the most out of it.

Significance of Communication Notes

NDIS providers need to collect, store and disclose personal information of the participants in order to provide better care. Some might argue that documentation is tedious and a waste of time. One can better-utilise it for patient care instead. But In the long term, the documentation helps in finding better ways to offer effective care to the participant. Writing effective notes can help understand patterns, learn new things, and collate data to explore new healthcare possibilities. It enables communication with the participants and other healthcare service providers. Communication notes evaluate service delivery and its compliance with the legal obligations.

Well-documented case notes or communication notes offer NDIS providers or other healthcare providers access to participants’ information to understand their case and provide top-notch care. Case managers or the organization's coordinators access the participants' personal information on a need-to-know basis and monitor treatment accordingly.

Comm.care, a collaborative care management system, is a one-stop solution for healthcare organizations to manage participants’ sensitive data at a single place and have access to it in no time through its most sought-after "Timeline" feature to offer personalized and effective care.

After knowing the importance of communication notes for healthcare service providers, we will focus on how one can write case notes effectively and what to keep in mind while taking generic case notes.

Tips to write effective notes

Set aside time to write case notes and create a habit

It’s understood that having time for case notes on a hectic day can be challenging, but making a habit of reviewing and drafting case notes as a part of each session can do wonders. And our Comm.care case management system makes it pretty simple and less time-consuming. It takes less than 5 minutes after every session to jot down notes as the session remains fresh in mind.

Know what you must write

Writing case notes is simplified with our collaborative case management system. It auto-populates all the required fields for NDIS invoicing or CHSP monthly reporting, so that the support worker just needs to put down key information on the page like activities, meals, medications, etc. Well-written case notes turn out as a useful practice tool.

Write clear and concise communication notes

More is not always better. Whenever writing communication notes, always keep in mind that they should be clear and concise. Unnecessary information that is subjected to your assumptions or opinions is not recommended as it can’t be evaluated. Also, it would be challenging and time-consuming to find out the pivotal information while going through your case notes.

‍

Things to remember while writing case notes

• Avoid abbreviations.
• Write case notes in a way that everyone else can read and understand it easily.
• Keep it brief and subjective with all the necessary information available.
• Write “just the facts” as it is the foundation of writing effective case notes.
• Finish writing case notes as soon as possible following the interaction with the client.
• Write down events in the sequence they occurred.

‍

The Timeline feature for NDIS support service delivery

Timeline is the most sought-after feature of Comm.care. It provides a single view of client data built upon the communication notes and other documents. The feature enables care providers to access and extract significant information about the participants on-the-go . With "Timeline", care providers can trace back in time and find the important entry in seconds. They don’t need to go through the stacks of notebooks keeping progress notes records.

‍

Practical uses of Timeline feature in care management

One can utilise our case notes software’s Timeline feature for the following operations:

Seamless Communication among staff/between teams

This tool keeps staff updated about the recent events and interactions with the participants to provide effective care to them. The feature works as a ‘team chat’ to allow colleagues, including behaviour support practitioners, disability service workers, and nurses, to communicate and discussed about the participant's progress.

Quick access/extractable information

The nursing staff had to use the spirax A4 spirilated notebook in the past. Searching for particular information or entries from those notebooks was a tedious job to go through all the entries. But with the "Timeline" tool, finding the important documents becomes really quick. Staff can even flag that set of records as ‘reportable’ to raise awareness about any issues at the point of care.

Seamless shifts handover

It is important to keep yourself updated about the recent activities and events from colleagues to offer effective service delivery. With the timeline tool, progress notes can easily be shared with your peers who have been given access to view the participant details to discuss and update their care needs. Also, the tool provides the facility of mentioning specific notes and instructions in the progress notes for upcoming staff to refer to.

A single view of documents

With "Timeline", you can go back in time to view the activities as per the occurrence order. They can be worked on, referred to, or managed as per the case.

Document service delivery at the point of care

Keeping notes of all your billable and non-billable hours is important and a legal obligation. Progress Notes or Communication Notes can be captured by the services provider on the go with any device, anywhere. Checkout Using comm.care on your Android or iOS (iphone\ipad) Device

Translate the notes to claims in no time

Documenting service delivery with correct NDIS line items makes it easy to process claims. All the billable hours will be reflected in the invoices to be sent out to the plan managers and/or participants. See how to create a claim in Comm.care.

The timeline tool can be an ideal feature for:

• High-intensity daily activities
• Social and community participation activities
• Improved daily living skills
• 24/7 support in STA, MTA
• Nursing services
• CHSP & Homecare package services like personal care, respite, and other nursing support

Types of documents which can be stored in the timeline are:

• Assessments
• Progress notes
• Personal plans
• Case instructions
• Notes
• Claims

All the circle documents can be stored and segmented under each mentioned category, which can be treated as folders to easily create, navigate and extract the documents when needed.

Using the NDIS collaborative care management tool.

Documenting service delivery is never-ending and full of data. It can be hard to manage this information and may compromise the data privacy of the participant. Implementing an NDIS case management framework like Comm.care helps get rid of paperwork and saves time finding the document required at the point of care. It is also a perfect tool to go back in time and review activities for an NDIS audit.