Beyond the delegation crisis: Lycksele's investment in assisted mode for compliance and flexibility

Lycksele’s high medication deviation rate stemmed from a system where a single delegated staff member was responsible for medicines for all residents in a care home.

This centralisation of responsibility created two key challenges:

• Compliance risks: High deviation rates compromised patient safety and required increased oversight.
• Limited flexibility: Staff scheduling depended heavily on delegated personnel, meaning that absences quickly translated into operational strain and increased workload.

Lycksele chose Evondos Assisted Mode to address these challenges.

The solution allows medication to be dispensed by trained staff, regardless of full or part delegation status, while maintaining safety through system controls and reminders. Nurses and delegated staff remain responsible for filling the devices, but the administration of medication can be shared more broadly across the team.

This made it possible to reduce dependency on a small number of delegated individuals and introduce a more flexible, resilient operating model.

The need for change arose from the fact that many staff members were not able to manage the standard/full delegation for medication. This created significant planning challenges and a high workload for those with full delegation.

With Evondos Assisted Mode, medication dispensing is handled entirely by staff. Each resident has their own device, and staff receive a notification when it is time for medication. They then log into the device and dispense the correct medication at the right time to the right person.

This new model has fundamentally changed how responsibilities are distributed. Previously, all residents required staff with full delegation. Today, a simplified delegation model allows almost all staff to administer medication using the robots, making it much easier to distribute tasks across the team.

Since the introduction of assisted mode, there have been no medication deviations related to residents using the system. The new way of working has also reduced the need to call in additional staff and minimized overtime, particularly in urgent situations.

Staff who were previously solely responsible for medication management now share the workload more evenly. This has led to reduced stress and increased confidence in daily work.

Sick leave has decreased, and the working environment has improved. At the same time, total medication deviations across the facility have decreased by 40% on an annual basis.

Planning has also become simpler and more balanced, allowing tasks to be distributed more efficiently across the team. Today, 35 out of 51 residents at Skytten care home use a medicine dispensing robot in assisted mode, and the staff clearly see that the model works in practice.