The home healthcare market is predicted to grow to nearly $663 billion by 2027. In the same way, WHO has projected that the number of older people will increase in 2050. This implies that there will be 2.1 billion older people across the globe. It is a given that a lot of them will require long-term care.
These numbers show that the market will become more demanding and competitive. Healthcare providers will need to shift to a more focused method of providing healthcare, which is a factor that will affect future efforts to meet requirements and satisfy the expectations of clients.
To streamline your processes to reduce costs and increase caregiver retention and the quality of your care, you must select a home healthcare software to keep you at the forefront.
Here are some helpful tips to help you complete this process and select the most appropriate software for your home-based healthcare business.
What Is Home Health Software?
Let’s get things started. Before choosing the best home health software to fulfill your needs, we must determine what software is and then discuss its essential functions and features. A straightforward definition is the home health program is a tool that assists in home health care agency management and improves the coordination of services. This system lets agencies plan appointments and visits, avoid duplicate bookings, monitor caregivers’ visits, streamline billing, and ease payment and management.
Home health care is employed interchangeably with home-care services, as both describe organizations that offer unskilled and skilled services and long-term and short-term health care services from the privacy of the patient’s homes.
Hospitals are working to decrease the amount of patients they have, and insurance companies see this approach as a way to cut down on medical expenses. In reality, 30 percent of hospitalized patients are eligible for care at home. This means there is an excellent opportunity for providers and agencies of these services to step up to fill in the gaps.
It’s an option that everyone will gain from.
Benefits of Implementing Home Health Care Software
When choosing a suitable home health care system, be aware of how it can enhance your day-to-day processes, customer service, and well-being. You cannot manage an agency with an Excel spreadsheet or simple accounting software. The best solution is multi-faceted cloud-based software capable of keeping track of your caregivers and other non-medical employees of your team, allowing appointment scheduling, informing your employees regarding any changes to their schedules, and exporting time-related records to the most popular payroll software systems.
Unlike on-premise solutions that operate only on a server within the agency, SAAS will provide your agency with more flexibility. Since this kind of home health software is cloud-based, you and your staff can access the information you require anytime, anywhere. Also, remember that electronic visitor verification (EVV) is needed for any home care provider providing personal care services.
Let’s talk about all this in more detail.
1. Keep your compliance in mind
On 1 January 2020, hospitals that provide home care must use EVV solutions to stop fraudulently recorded home visits, neglect, and abuse. Electronic verification of visits is essential to ensure your caregivers are at their scheduled appointments. Using this method will guarantee that your staff is accountable, charge your customers only for the services they receive, and record everything.
Health care fraud in the home is a severe offense that can lead to not just the denial of your Medicaid or Medicare claim being denied but could also result in as much as ten years of prison time per case. If EVV is generally done using an EVV-capable GPS device paired with the software for tracking, Timeero is the right option. It includes GPS-tracking, time-tracking, and scheduling functions, which means you’ll always know the location of every team member or was, and also when they landed at or left a particular area.
2. Enhance the patient experience
The home health agency’s success greatly depends upon your customers’ happiness. Patients are already concerned about their condition; therefore, providing them with a sense of security and stability can ease their fears and allow them to feel more relaxed. When your staff members are on time, trustworthy, and reliable, building credibility and confidence with their clients will be much easier. This, in turn, will enhance the experience for patients and your organization’s image.
So, choose the software you use for your home health industry correctly. You’ll have an effective instrument for monitoring your employees and ensuring they provide the best care possible. If you spot any warning signs, you’ll be capable of taking action quickly and removing a staff member who fails to meet the expectations of your clients and your organization’s standards. Furthermore, since the billing process is automatic, it can avoid any legal problems.
3. Enhance the experience of caregivers
In the same way, by enhancing your reputation for your home care business, you’ll establish yourself as a sought-after employer. It’s no surprise that this will draw the top talent and boost the retention of your caregivers.
Concerning the caregiving experience, home health software provides all the details about your staff’s daily schedule and activities at their access, which means they won’t need to worry about missing an appointment or being late.
Additionally, the time-tracking feature can ensure all employees get appropriately paid and can be a significant factor in their satisfaction and staying in your organization. Long-term care providers’ presence is crucial to patients’ overall experience, as some patients are more comfortable when they have the same caregiver supporting them.
Last but not least, If you select the right home health software for your company, you’ll be able to reduce both your staff’s and your administrative burdens, meaning your caregivers will be able to concentrate on what’s important – – their patients.
How Do I Choose Home Care Software?
You require assistance with scheduling appointments for your healthcare patients, monitoring your field personnel, providing better patient care, ensuring compliance with federal regulations, and automating workflows.
It’s a challenging task to pick a home health program because many options are available.
It is vital for your home-care agency before you decide to invest in this app. Here are the things to consider.
1. Essential features
Before you decide on the best home health software, it is essential to write down your needs and search for a program that offers all the vital features for a price that is in line with your financial budget.
A few of the most essential components to be looking for in your health home software are:
- Scheduling: This feature lets you effortlessly manage your staff, eliminate the possibility that a scheduled visit could be delayed or missed, and ensure that each shift is covered if an employee cancels at the last minute.
- Time tracking: What happens if a caretaker can’t clock out after completing their visit? It’s not a problem because Timeero will alert you of suspicious behavior, so you’ll be notified if someone’s working extra hours. This feature also helps you keep track of patient visit times as well as caregiver working hours. In conjunction with GPS trackers, this option gives the proof of service required to verify visits electronically.
- Invoicing and billing: To make it easier to bill and invoice, your home health software must be coupled with software for billing and invoicing so that you can create accurate invoices and then send them out to the patients you treat.
- Security of data: Healthcare organizations keep and store a lot of sensitive patient information, so it’s essential to select a HIPAA-compliant system to ensure that patient information and medical records are safe and protected.
2. Integrations and flexibility
We’ve mentioned before that the market for home health has seen rapid growth; therefore, you need to consider the future and select the right home health software according to its capability to adjust to changing needs. Choose a partner with various integrations and is constantly updating its software. This way, you can be assured that the software is constantly updated shortly to include new laws and regulations and ensure that it is in conformance.
3. Ease of use
Don’t undervalue this fact because it determines whether your brand-new home health software will succeed or fail. This is why it’s essential to select the right home health software that’s user-friendly and that your staff members will quickly adjust to without much training. For confirmation, request a demo because some of the features you read about in writing do not work correctly, leading to a complicated system that you and your employees cannot utilize.
Additionally, happy user testimonials and reviews can be a strong confirmation of your trust, and therefore, it’s a great idea to find out what other users from your field have to say about the software you’re looking at.
With the appropriate tools for managing your home’s health, you can streamline your workflow, move paperless, and improve the administrative processes. This means that your employees will have the chance to focus on their work and their patients’ plans for care. The capabilities and features we have discussed will allow you to maintain high standards and improve the experience of caregivers and patients.