Top 3 Home Care Client Complaints & How to Address Them

In the past few years the healthcare industry has been pushing hard on new initiatives to reduce the amount of hospital readmissions in order to cut healthcare costs and improve the quality of care. According to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), hospitals in the US spent roughly $41.3 billion in 2011 to treat patients who were readmitted within 30 days of discharge.

Focusing on home care as the obvious post-acute solution, due to its effectiveness at a low cost, patients are able receive the care they need in the comfort of their homes. But with the aging population growing at an alarming rate, it’s no surprise that home care agencies are under pressure to keep up with the demand.

While home care has a substantial amount of benefits, agencies aren’t always without fault. Home Care Pulse posted the top 10 client-reported complaints that many agencies are faced with.

To summarize, we’re going to take a look at some of these home care client complaints and show you how an end-to-end software solution like AlayaCare will eliminate these issues and lead to more efficient and effective home care delivery.

Lack of Communication

Some agencies lack transparency when it comes to patient’s health data and overall client-provider communication. With patient-centric models of care becoming more predominant, it’s increasingly important to have an open, two-way flow of information between the client and the provider.

AlayaCare offers a number of tools for agencies to ensure all key stakeholders have access to the information they need to improve client outcomes, including a complete virtual care delivery solution including an RPM dashboard and video conferencing, a mobile care app, and family / stakeholder portals.

Lack of Continuity

There are a number of home care clients who prefer to have one consistent caregiver as their main provider or point of contact.

This ensures a certain level of accountability for care workers, and also makes client-provider communication much easier. But it isn’t always as simple as assigning one care giver to that client every time – chances are that care worker has a number of clients who feel the same way.

While it’s important to ensure all of your care workers are receiving the proper training and providing quality care, the AlayaCare software uses an Employee Matching feature to accurately match a client’s needs and preferences to the skills and qualifications of care workers.

It is also designed to ensure that every care worker who visits a specific client will have clear visibility into the care plan and any notes or communication from previous visits that client had with other care workers so that every visit can feel more consistent to the client.

Late or Missed Visits

Missed or late home care visits are a regular cause of concern and can lead to distress and discomfort to clients and their families. While there are a number of factors which can cause visits to be late or missed, they can be simply avoided using electronic visit verification (EVV) software.

A mobile EVV paired with GPS (triangulated with client addresses), allows agencies to accurately track and monitor visit documentation including worker location, and length of visits.

Field workers can punch in and out only once they’ve arrived at the patient’s home, and providers are notified of these events through a portal or message notification in real-time. This assures services are being delivered to patients when and where they are scheduled to be. AlayaCare is a cloud-based solution with an incorporated mobile, GPS-based EVV that works seamlessly and in real-time across all modules.

While home care agencies sometimes have their struggles, it is important to consistently acknowledge and assess your performance so you can take active steps toward improvement.

What other complaints should your agency be addressing?