Care Choice Nursing Home Group are one of Ireland’s pre-eminent care home owner- operators, with 14 sites across Munster and Leinster. Care Choice has been an established name in the Irish care sector for nearly 20 years, but in the past 4 years has recently experienced a rapid period of growth through acquisition. This has seen their number of sites rise threefold. In total the group hosts around 1,500 beds, supported by 1,400 members of staff.

At GoldStar, we’re proud to have worked alongside Care Choice Group for 15 years. As it happens, we specialise in the sector, with relationships with homes that go as far back as the 1990s. Over this time GoldStar has cemented itself as Care Choice’s go-to technology provider, developing a fantastic longstanding partnership. That’s why, when Care Choice began work on their 15th site, Parnell Road, Dublin, Goldstar were one of their first ports of call. Today we’re taking a closer look at our relationship with Care Choice, and why effective communication technology is so important to the care sector.

How Goldstar supports Care Choice Group

Every care home is different. Across Care Choice’s sites throughout Ireland, there is a huge variety in the age, size and location of their care homes. Many will have a combination of residents living on site, and those living in their own home who their staff will routinely visit and support. These variations mean that there is no one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to the technology that Care Choice uses. That’s where GoldStar comes in.

All of our solutions for Care Choice homes start with an iPECS on-premise phone system. We favour on-premise to cloud for these sites because resilience is the most important quality we look for in a care home communication system. Many of Care Choice’s sites are in rural areas where the internet is not stable or reliable enough to support a full cloud deployment.

Our range of on-premise systems are incredibly robust, and support the additional services and applications that teams in nursing homes require. IVR (interactive voice response) is a great example. An IVR is a little like a virtual receptionist for incoming callers. We provide this service across all of Care Choice’s sites, which means that when loved ones call in to the home, they can be directly routed to a resident, or the appropriate member of staff.

iPECS on-premise systems are innately customisable, so IP or digital handsets can be provided in every room in some sites, whereas others may favour integrating with mobiles. We can cater to any of Care Choice’s requirements.

It’s fair to say that every care home is built around the service provided by nurses. GoldStar supports these vital members of staff with IP DECT handsets. These portable phones are connected to the same internal comms network as desktop handsets, but are completely portable. This ensures that nurses can respond quickly in emergencies, and generally improves internal collaboration.

Why Care Homes need a dedicated technology partner

The relationship that we’ve developed with Care Choice Group illustrates what care homes need from their communications. Care is an industry where downtime just isn’t an option. Both external and internal comms need to be resilient, easy to use and built around resident care above all else.

If an internal comms system goes down in a care home, it is a genuine life or death situation, especially in larger sites where moving around isn’t quick. Similarly, many of Care Choice’s sites will offer an outpatient care service, so they can receive the same level of care while still living in their own home. They need to guarantee that their main sites can still reliably make and receive calls from these people at this vulnerable stage of their lives.

A communication provider working in the care sector needs to be prepared to handle all these responsibilities and more. At GoldStar, our relationship with Care Choice means we handle the whole process from start to finish. The team at Care Choice know they can reach out to us when needed. From our end, we proactively monitor and check up on their sites to ensure that they still have a service that meets the changing needs of their staff and their residents.

What Care Choice have to say about us

We asked Luke Howard, Director of Property and Development at Care Choice Group Ireland for his thoughts on Care Choice’s relationship with GoldStar, and his feedback was glowing.

“Goldstar are our go to phone service provider, they provide partnership, problem solving and an operational centric approach to the systems they recommend, install and maintain for us – a crucial member of our external team.”