ADA Care Homes

A guide to care homes on using the ADA (After Death Analysis) audit tool.

Introduction
The After Death Audit (ADA) for care homes has now moved to Omega, The National Association for End of Life care. This is the quality unit of GSF and affiliated charity. Measuring the outcomes of what we do is very important; the ADA is a way of showing what you do in the care of residents in your care home. You are now invited to enter your baseline data for 5 consecutive resident deaths before starting the GSFCH programme. Data input for a further 5 must be completed 2 months after the last workshop of the GSFCH programme. This brief guide provides a starting point for using ADA, the simple online After Death Analysis tool. This evaluation is the key to the measurement of the effectiveness of the programme. Commissioners, whether the individual care home owners, PCTs, SHA’s or other organisations will be interested as well as staff working in the home.

Your role
Here we tell you how to log on to a secure online system and enter brief information that is fully anonymised and confidential. Entering data is quick and easy once the information is to hand. Additional information can be added later if required. The audit is completed online and either you or your facilitator can input the information. The majority of questions have yes/no answers and some have a drop down pick list of options. Your username is the same as your email. Provided you have given an email address, you should receive an email with your password. Passwords are randomly generated and you may wish to change it to something more memorable when first using the system. Don’t worry, if at any time you forget your password there is somewhere to automatically get a reminder from the website.

Getting started

You need to:

1. Register with ADA
We’ve done this for you. Your email address is the username. If you have not received your password or forget it at anytime just go to 'Forgotten your password? Click here' on the website. Your login is unique to you. Do not share it with others outside the care home. If you have any concerns contact: the ADA Online helpdesk on 0845 259 3163.

2. Put someone in charge
The contact person is responsible for the accuracy of data and can add other users within the care home if required. Audit data is completely anonymised, so the system will not be able to identify duplicate entries. This means you will need to make sure that each resident death is only entered on the system once. For this reason, we strongly recommend one person co‐ordinates adding new deaths into ADA (Questionnaire part 1). Other people can help to edit or complete the questionnaire if required.

3. Log onto ADA online
Within the next week, why not log on to ADA and have a look? The website address is www.qualitycareonline.org.uk Simply enter your user name and your password then hit OK. We suggest you save the website address to your favourites right away.

4. Provide information
It’s easy to use ADA. When adding residents just click the ‘Add New Resident’ button and you’ll be taken to a new form. As deaths are added a list will appear on your home screen. You can choose to enter all resident data at once or in sections adding more when information is available by using the 'View Summary' button. Help buttons (labelled ‘?’) are available next to questions if it is not clear what is being asked. Don’t worry - mistakes or wrong answers can be easily altered. At the end of the questionnaire a summary will appear. This can be printed if you wish. Each section of the summary can be edited, now or later. If you have any questions, please get in touch with the ADA helpdesk on 0845 259 3163.

All the questions must be answered and something written in each of the ‘traffic light’ audit boxes. Once you’ve definitely finished, and 100% of answers are present, then hit ‘submit’ at the top of the summary screen, and you’re done. Until you hit ‘submit questionnaire’ we shall assume that you are continuing to verify and collate information for the audit. Completion of the online ADA audit tool gives consent by the care home for the audit information to be shared with the local facilitator / PCT and for anonymised information to be used nationally to evidence outcomes of GSF in care homes implementation.

The care homes ADA is in two stages: both the pre and post‐training ADAs need to be completed by each home.

The pre‐ADA needs to be completed as soon as reasonably possible. Usually it is completed before the first training workshop. Thank you for your patience on this occasion. This is mandatory. The post‐ADA needs to be completed 8 weeks following the last GSFCH workshop, showing the last 5 deaths at that time, when you have implemented the learning of the programme into practice. If care homes have not had any deaths during this time – the GSF Centre needs to know, so this can be recorded. If only 2‐3 deaths have occurred then complete the data for those deaths and submit in the usual way.

Ongoing audit following the start of the programme is advised as a good way of monitoring the progress you are making. You can continue to enter deaths as they occur once you have printed off the baseline report. This can be evidenced in your portfolio for accreditation. A further ADA is completed as part of the accreditation process. The process will be explained in full following registration to the accreditation.

Exploring the home page

The home page
The main feature of the home page is the list of resident questionnaires. This will not contain data when you first log in. On each page just below the Omega logo there are 3 or 4 tabs. If you add extra users they will only have the first three. The home tab always brings you back to this home page. Change password tab allows you to change your own password to something memorable for you. Interim Feedback shows you information about data submitted by the care home compared to other submitted data. (This will not be active initially, but will appear later). The Manage Users tab allows you to add other care home users of the ADA online system if you wish.

Changing details
Once a resident death is added you can edit their details by clicking on the view summary button on your home page. Just double check that you are editing the correct resident.

Adding a new user
You will need to enter a salutation (e.g. Mrs), forename, surname and the new users own email address. The ‘add new user’ button is at the top left (where the ‘add new resident’ button would be on the home screen). It’s easy: click the ‘add new user’ button, add the information as requested and the system will send them a password to the registered email address which you just added. All users should be ‘active’ unless they leave the home, when you should seek advice from the ADA helpdesk about inactivating them. Only add users who are going to use the ADA online system. It is important to stress that one person should be responsible for adding new residents to avoid duplication.


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