If you are a home care agency manager or administrator, you may often wonder what you can do to ensure success along with Federal laws compliance. In fact, the US home healthcare industry is expected to grow at a CAGR of 7.2% by 2029– which means a spurt of competitors in this space. Therefore, homecare software can be your best investment to take your business one notch up.
Features like effective medical care and quality caregiving are crucial for an agency. But in a competitive landscape leveraging cutting-edge technology with EVV (Electronic Visit Verification) compliance, these basics may not be enough to stand out.
Some changes within your agency can provide long-term benefits. Using homecare software provides hassle-free operations, customized work schedules, field data collection, etc. These features refine your functioning which will translate into satisfied employees and high-quality patient care.
The popularity of home healthcare services increased during the COVID-19 pandemic. With this surge, there has been a myriad of home healthcare software to cater to the growing requirements.
If you are planning to adopt a home healthcare software or already have one, you should have an in-depth idea about the key features it offers to suit your business needs.
In this blog post, we will cover 4 things that your homecare software must do.
4 Essential Features for Your Homecare Software
Geofence-based visit verification
EVV compliance is legally required in many states. However, you can leverage it by adopting a modern solution EVV software. Geofences, also known as geo zones, are virtual perimeters that can be set up around predefined areas on a map. In the context of home care services, geofences are utilized to represent the care recipient’s address and/or the business offices.
When geofences are established for all clients’ addresses, the homecare software can automatically record essential visit details, including the time of the visit, its duration, and the services performed. Geofence-based EVV is automatic. It requires no manual input from the caregiver. The system detects the caregiver’s presence at the client’s address and records each visit, creating an error-proof visit audit log. This approach eliminates any possibility of fraudulent entries.
Beyond visit verification, geofence based EVV offers numerous additional benefits. It allows for the automation of various day-to-day operations, including efficient routing, attendance tracking (number of visits, timings, and durations), and monitoring exceptions like missed visits or delays.
Send smart reminders & notifications
A single caregiver may have many patients to visit in one day. For regular task updates and records, they must clock in & out of a location manually if automated EVV is not implemented. Due to the volume of visits, they may forget to update the status of their patient visit details, arrival and/or exit, etc. Make sure that the software you opt for considers this possibility.
With allGeo, you can set up automatic reminders based on the caregivers’ schedule or exceptions. Automatically remind them to check patients’ vitals, clock in/out, and make task selections or missed visits via text message, custom voice call (IVR), or app notification. For instance, reminders like ‘patient details not recorded’, or ‘GPS turned off’ pop up on the app in case of missing update.
Collect field data
The reason why EVV was implemented was to eliminate fraud against patients like false claims of visits etc. Modern software systems go a step further to ensure patient visit coordination. For instance, using allGeo’s dynamic form, the administrator may mandate caregivers to obtain the signature of the patient on the app upon arrival at the location.
Apart from geofenced visit verification, you can also collect any field data– notes, signatures, pictures, etc. with allGeo. Custom forms allow you to further generate federal/state compliance reports.With the app on their phones, caregivers can share locations and communicate with the team via in-app messages. The back-office operations team can view real-time caregivers’ locations and dispatch any jobs.
Integrate with your payroll system
Your homecare software should streamline your entire working process. If that isn’t the case, then it is likely to add to your workload. By utilizing allGeo for EVV compliance, the data collected can seamlessly integrate with your payroll system, streamlining the entire payroll process. This integration eliminates the need for manual and time-consuming cross-checking of time and distance logs from the field.
With integration features, the payroll process becomes more efficient and accurate. Complex rule-based pay codes are automatically handled, reducing the burden on administrative staff and ensuring precision in payroll calculations.
Conclusion
Treating patients on homecare can be complex when relying on outdated legacy systems and manual procedures. The process is taxing for the caregivers too as there are chances of inaccurate work logs, lack of communication with the administrator etc.
However, the pandemic has sparked a growing interest in some of the top home homecare software solutions among patients, home care providers and hospitals.
Having a reliable system in place that caters to your unique business requirements is crucial. It supports your healthcare team’s efforts in enhancing the overall homecare experience for your clients.