DepenSys is a web-based application to assist care home operators and managers to calculate staffing requirements based on the identification of their residents’ needs. It is for both nursing and residential care homes.
By providing a means of entering the needs of each individual resident within a home, the output is the total number of hours per 24-hour day required to provide care and the ‘skill mix’ – the hours of nursing and senior carer time for nursing and residential care respectively, and to reflect the additional skills of other staff. It enables staffing rotas to be modelled, and then demonstrates how the planned staffing compares with the required staffing as calculated by DepenSys.
DepenSys assists managers of care homes to demonstrate that the home is able to meet the needs of its residents, and to satisfy the requirements of regulators. For example, the Care Quality Commission in England under its KLOE (Key Lines of Enquiry) asks:
‘How does the service make sure that there are sufficient numbers of suitable staff to support people to stay safe and meet their needs?’
Regulators expect care homes to operate a system to determine staffing requirements, and DepenSys satisfies this expectation.
The algorithms within the system are based on over 35 years’ research and development and the intellectual copyright belongs to DepenSys Ltd. DepenSys Ltd will continue to support and develop the system to ensure it fulfils its purpose, and feedback from users is crucial to this development.
Please note that all examples in this guide of organisations, homes, and people are fictitious and used for illustrative purposes only. Any resemblance to actual persons, homes or businesses is purely coincidental.