We asked our home care scheduling software partners to share some of their top tips with us. Here’s what they said.

Scheduling is often one of the most difficult and time-consuming aspects of running a home care agency. With the endless features and options for customization, it can be challenging to use your home care software to its fullest extent.

In order to help make things a little easier, we asked our home care scheduling software partners to share some of their top tips with us. Here’s what they said:

#1: Review and make use of the integrations that your scheduling software provides. (AxisCare)

Does your scheduling software play well with others?

Many software products now integrate with partners in the same industry, providing enhancements such as merchant transactions, employee onboarding, and clearinghouse or aggregator functions for your billing needs.

It’s a good idea to periodically review what integrations your software offers, as new ones may have been added since the last time you checked. Be sure to reach out to your software support team for advice on what integrations may help you enhance your business.

#2: Keep up with enhancements and upgrades to your home care software. (AxisCare)

Be sure to subscribe to your software provider’s newsletter and social media to keep up with product enhancement and upgrade announcements.

Your scheduling software may also have internal pop-ups announcing new features. Don’t close that pop-up or delete those emails without reviewing them closely, as the new feature may impact your business more than you might think.

Be sure to reach out to your software support team periodically to ask for a product review and walkthroughs or demos of new or upcoming enhancements.

#3: Review EVV data and info every day. (Rosemark)

Electronic visit verification (EVV) tools aim to ensure that scheduled care is provided when and where it should be. However, to fully realize the benefit of these tools, you should make it a practice to review EVV data as it comes in at least twice daily.

If information that’s recorded is contradictory to the established schedule, you want to connect with your caregiver in real time to identify the issue while that caregiver still remembers what happened.

For example, if you’re checking EVV data regularly and you see an alert that tells you that a caregiver clocked-in 20 minutes late one morning, you can talk with the caregiver that same day and then reconcile the information recorded in your software system to reflect the reason for the late clock-in. Doing so will ensure that your billing and payroll reports are correct at the end of the period, and you’ll save yourself from scrambling for details after the fact when memories are fuzzy.

#4: Use your software to increase client referrals. (Rosemark)

Home care agencies often miss an opportunity to increase client referrals simply because they neglect to nurture their relationships with key referrers.

At the same time, we get asked all the time how to get more clients. One simple solution? Put your software system to work to help you keep track of everything related to client referrals.

Understand who your top referrers are, save their contact information, record details around your communications with referrers, and be alerted when it’s time for regular check-ins. If you fully utilize your software system to help you manage this critical piece of your business, you’ll find that attracting new clients isn’t as difficult as it seems.

The same approach can also be used in recruiting new caregivers. With caregiver turnover a top issue for most agencies, every little effort to help alleviate the issue helps.

#5: Take advantage of any available mobile apps. (SmartCare)

We live in a mobile world today – everyone is on the go.

Top home care providers see increased staffing, sales engagement, scheduling, and operational efficiencies using mobile app technology that gives each user the right access to their workstreams.

If your software provides a mobile app, make sure all staff are using it to increase engagement, promote faster responses, and improve efficiency.

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#6: Implement a caregiver reward program to increase caregiver retention. (SmartCare)

Research shows that offering rewards for behaviors like on-time clock-ins, covering difficult shifts, and other ideal behaviors improves employee engagement and reduces missed shifts that an agency might need to cover suddenly.

Some platforms offer automated reward systems to make this easy. Taking advantage of this system within your home care software eliminates the burden of tracking and increases caregiver satisfaction and retention.

#7: Take advantage of any options to customize the interface to make it more user-friendly. (AlayaCare)

If a home care software is too difficult to use, no one will use it. It’s important that you simplify your software for your team.

Visual cues such as color coding can go a long way in making it simple to see visit statuses, while drag and drop functionality enables quick scheduling changes.

Furthermore, having multiple views to sort based on departments, geographies, service lines – and even deeper into daily, week, monthly, or episode views – is an effective way to improve your processes.

Such flexibility allows people to align their schedules with personal preferences and ultimately goes a long way in improving both productivity and the client experience.

#8: Use your software to match patients and caregivers based on distance/location. (HHAeXchange)

There’s a lot that goes into client and caregiver matching, but another thing to consider is distance and location. In order to minimize commuting time, and help improve your caregivers’ overall schedules, most scheduling software have a feature that allows you to measure this.

#9: Understand all the features your home care software offers. (SwyftOps)

Most software platforms in the home care industry will provide several “bells and whistles” in terms of features. Using every feature offered is typically not necessary or realistic; however, every user should be aware and understand the various features included in their subscription.

Finding that “sweet spot” of features which will create efficiency and operational fluidity, and overall will make life for all team members easier while saving valuable time.

One of the main goals of any home care agency is to grow and expand operations. With that being said, as your needs adapt, your software platform must grow with your agency.

#10: Implement management of schedule generation to varying and multiple payor authorizations. (KanTime)

Patient care is often governed by multiple authorizations, either from the same payor or multiple payors that require utilization. If your software handles this in the background to scheduling staff, you’ll see a huge benefit.

It’s also important that you take advantage of the ability to automatically split the invoice generation by payer and authorization after the services are provided. This configuration makes it easier for the agency to send and collect the right amount of money from the patients and payers without massive manual effort.

Home Care Scheduling Software Integrations

Home Care Pulse is lucky to integrate with some of the top scheduling vendors in the home care space.

All the companies listed above are fully compatible with Home Care Pulse’s survey platform, meaning that client/caregiver rosters will be automatically synced, allowing users to avoid unnecessary time spent updating individual records.

If you haven’t yet integrated your home care scheduling software with a surveying platform, we’d recommend this as a good place to start.

Capturing great feedback and insights from your clients and caregivers is as easy as connecting your home care software, and the integration allows you to keep your interviewee lists up-to-date automatically.

Using your home care software to its fullest extent

Every scheduling software is going to have different features and attributes. It’s important to know the needs of your home care agency to understand how you’re going to choose a software, or how you’re going to implement its features into your daily routine.

There isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to using a scheduling software; however, there are universal tips and tricks you can apply. By using the tips above, you’ll be able to build on the success you’ve already had with your scheduling software.

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