Closing the Foot Care Gap in UK Care Homes with PPS
I caught up with Thomas Calderbank, co-founder of Care Home Podiatry, to talk about how PPS supports their mission to improve foot care standards across UK care homes. The software has helped the team build standardised clinical workflows while managing a growing, multi-region service.
Solutions used:
Closing the Foot Care Gap in UK Care Homes with PPS
I caught up with Thomas Calderbank, co-founder of Care Home Podiatry, to talk about how PPS supports their mission to improve foot care standards across UK care homes. The software has helped the team build standardised clinical workflows while managing a growing, multi-region service.
Solutions used:
Overview
Challenges
- Maintaining consistent standards across regions
- Managing high admin workload after care home visits
- Supporting a multi-region workforce
- Generating patient and care home reports quickly
- Managing third-party care home records and service locations
Solutions
- Standardised Care Home Podiatry treatment forms built in PPS
- PPS letter generation using merge fields from consultation notes
- PPS cloud access and PPS Express for remote record updates and visibility
- PPS reporting tools to track clinical activity and service performance
- PPS third-party management to link care homes with individual residents and services
About Care Home Podiatry
Care Home Podiatry was founded in 2021 by Thomas and his wife, both former NHS clinicians, with a strong social mission behind the business.
The organisation was created to improve access to professional foot care in UK care homes, where service quality can vary by location. While NHS podiatry services are increasingly focused on high-risk conditions, routine preventative care is often delivered through private providers or, in some cases, by unregulated practitioners.
From the start, Care Home Podiatry focused on building a service that could provide consistent care wherever it was delivered. The business began in the Midlands and has since expanded across the UK, with continued growth driven by demand for reliable, professional care.
A key priority has always been making sure clinical standards stay the same across every region and every practitioner. PPS has played an important role in helping the team achieve this as they scale their services across the UK.
Day-to-Day Operations
PPS sits at the centre of Care Home Podiatry’s daily work, supporting both clinical delivery and administration.
The business uses a central management and admin team, along with a mix of employed podiatrists (mainly in the Midlands) and independent contractors across the UK. This helps them scale services nationally while keeping care standards consistent.
PPS was essential from day one, as the team needed digital records to support remote working. Today, Thomas and two administrators manage the central PPS system, while around 12 to 13 podiatrists use PPS Express to access patient records from their smartphones while out in the field. This is especially useful for contractors, as they can update notes and view patient information without needing specialist equipment or office-based systems.
The PPS diary is also flexible enough to support their working model. Rather than using fixed appointment slots, clinicians can add patients to the diary as they are seen during care home visits. This works well for residential care settings and keeps records updated in real time.
The platform also supports variable practitioner numbers working at any one time through concurrent user access, helping the team stay operationally flexible.
Care Home Podiatry also supports NHS podiatrists working in care homes by centrally sterilising and preparing all treatment equipment at their Birmingham hub before sending it out by courier. This means clinicians can arrive ready to treat patients without needing to carry or invest in their own equipment.
Administration is also simplified through PPS, with bulk invoicing and automated outcome letters generated directly from consultation notes using merge fields, helping keep care homes informed while reducing manual admin time.
Why Care Home Podiatry Chose PPS
Care Home Podiatry chose PPS because of its flexibility and ability to support their specific way of working.
While they reviewed several systems, PPS was the only platform that allowed them to build workflows, templates, and processes around how they operate. This level of customisation was a key deciding factor for the team.
The combination of PPS Hosted and PPS Express was also important. The hosted system supports their central team with administration and clinical data, while PPS Express allows clinicians to access records and update notes easily from their smartphones while working on-site.
Custom forms and templates are one of the most useful parts of the system for the team. They help guide clinicians through treatments while keeping documentation consistent across regions. Being able to update templates quickly also means improvements can be rolled out to everyone straight away.
The team also uses PPS for reports and letter generation, pulling information directly from clinical notes to create outcome reports and referrals. This helps reduce duplicate admin work and keeps care homes updated.
Core PPS Features Supporting Their Service
Care Home Podiatry uses PPS to support both clinical quality and day-to-day operations as they continue to grow across the UK.
A key part of their workflow is the four custom clinical templates they have built in PPS. These include assessment and routine treatment forms, along with additional clinical documentation templates. The forms help guide clinicians through treatment sessions while still giving them the flexibility they need when working in care homes, which is particularly important for their independent contractors.
The custom forms help the team do more than just standardise treatment. They also make communication clearer and reduce administration time by creating detailed treatment histories for every patient. From these forms, the team can easily generate personalised treatment outcome reports using PPS letter templates. Using PPS merge fields, key information from clinical notes automatically populates these reports, allowing care homes to receive detailed, professional updates after treatment sessions.
Because Care Home Podiatry works across multiple locations, keeping records organised is essential. The third-party management features in PPS help the team maintain accurate records for each care home they work with, including contact details and service information. Each patient can then be linked to their relevant care home, making it quick and easy to find important information directly from the client record.
Reporting is another feature the team relies on heavily. PPS reporting tools allow them to review clinical and operational data in real time. Thomas and the team use this data to monitor performance, track new projects, and make informed improvements to workflows and service delivery. Being able to access data quickly has been particularly valuable as Care Home Podiatry continues to expand its services nationally.
Supporting Growth with Automation
Looking ahead, Care Home Podiatry would like to make even greater use of PPS Automations to help reduce administrative workload and support continued growth.
The team is particularly interested in using automation to help streamline invoicing and outcome report generation.
Because Care Home Podiatry delivers a high volume of similar treatments across multiple locations, automation will help the team scale efficiently while maintaining high standards of care and fast, reliable communication with care homes.
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Supporting a Mission That Matters
At its heart, Care Home Podiatry was built to make a real difference to the people they care for. The team remains focused on improving access to professional, consistent foot care for care home residents across the UK, while continuing to grow their service in a way that stays true to that mission.
PPS helps support this work behind the scenes, helping the team stay organised, work efficiently, and spend more time doing what really matters: delivering care to the residents they support.
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