Focus area: Quality of Life

People who seek and are granted care services often have long-term needs for support in their daily lives. Attendo has long-term experience of adapting care to the individual’s needs and preferences and is engaged in systematic efforts to improve customers’ health and quality of life.

Quality that is measured and followed up

Attendo strives to continuously improve the quality of care by working systematically to develop, measure and follow up care services. Much of that currently considered industry praxis, such as social documentation, contact persons and personal time, are the results of Attendo’s development work.

In 2022, Attendo began developing a new quality framework with associated
systems for follow-up with more focus on health outcomes and quality of life.

Service and interaction that improves the customer experience

Attendo puts great emphasis on treating every individual who needs care with
respect and concern for their unique needs. By seeing and accepting every individual for who they are now and have been, we can adapt care to personal needs and preferences, which we know leads to higher quality of life.

A programme for improving the customer experience called ASKO has been applied for several years in Finland. The aim is to support employee dialogue
and feedback to customers and their relatives. About 400 specially trained
ASKO coaches are leading the effort in the local units, where tools including
conversation maps are used to support the conversations.

The Swedish operations continued to roll out the Nära (“Close”) app for
relatives in 2022. Relatives can use the app to look up mealtimes and find out
about activities and to follow the lives of the people they love on a regular basis. More than 6,500 posts were made during the year, an increase by 82 percent compared to 2021.

Surveys confirm high quality

Attendo regularly carries out surveys to verify that the trend is aligned with
set customer satisfaction targets. In addition to the results provided
through the national service user survey, Attendo carries out its own
customer surveys at least twice a year to monitor the customer satisfaction
trend. Several questions that allowed freeform responses were added to the
survey in 2022 aimed at increasing our understanding of the factors that drive customer satisfaction. Special focus was also placed on developing a relatives survey in which relatives perceptions of care are measured and considered. The outcome is measured as an NPS (Net Promoter Score*) and shows that the NPS was 36 among customers and 29
among relatives to customers.

* Net Promoter Score = the percentage answering 9-10 on whether they would recommend the unit minus the percentage who answered 1-5

Care that exceeds minimum requirements

The content of our care services is regulated in contracts, laws and ordinances. This also applies to requirements in areas including health and safety (work environment), information security, infection prevention, food handling and fire prevention. Supervisory authorities and local authorities are jointly responsible for monitoring that care is of good quality and regularly inspect our operations. Attendo documents and regularly evaluates care services as well as overall operations. Quality work is based on guidelines, support and follow-up from central quality functions in each business area and is led locally by specially appointed quality coordinators at the local units. 

Continued efforts against Covid-19

The pandemic continued to affect the practical aspects of care delivery in 2022. Virus transmission increased sharply in the early winter months due to the new omicron variant of the corona virus. The impacts included increased absenteeism due to illness in Attendo’s operational units, particularly in Finland.

In spring 2022, the status of Covid 19 was downgraded from being a
“dangerous to society” to “notifiable disease”. Attendo has continued to
work systematically to reduce transmission, with careful hygiene procedures,
use of PPE and testing as the primary measures. Booster vaccines have been
administered to protect high-risk groups in accordance with national
recommendations.

As a result, very few cases of Covid 19 occurred in Attendo’s operational units in 2022. The conclusions of the external assessment carried out in 2021, that
Attendo managed the pandemic better than other care providers, thus remain valid.

Development of Attendo's quality work

During 2022, Attendo has started extensive work to develop new ways of working with quality. The work has been based on a new quality framework that puts greater focus on health and well-being. Read more about how we developed our quality work here.