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4 Operational Best Practices for Home Care Agencies

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In a time when home care is on the rise and more clients are seeking home care services, you may feel as though your agency is running low on time and resources to keep up with the growing demand. Many home care agencies are struggling to find a way to provide efficient and effective care, without placing too much stress on their employees.  

While hiring more staff could temporarily ease the stress of increased client referrals, there are still several workflows associated with each visit that can leave your agency bogged down; verifying paper time sheets, processing billing and payroll, preparing clinical documents and reports, etc. 

While a buildup or delay of agency workflows may sound like a minor disruption of your overall agency operation, these factors could eventually result in more serious issues. 

If your employees don’t have the tools and processes in place to complete their tasks efficiently and effectively, not only could the client’s routine and satisfaction be disrupted, but there could be major impacts on their health. 

Here are some of the tools and best practices your home care agency could implement today in order to help increase operational efficiencies: 

1) Go Digital

If your home care agency is littered with mounds of paper and you’re running out of tedious, manual processes to find and input the information, now might be the time to consider looking into your digital options.  

Technology—even the most basic EHR software solutions—allows you to keep all your information in one digital format. This will give you the ability to find information, and complete processes at the click of a button, which can be a huge time saver. Eliminating paper reduces data entry, minimizes errors and duplication, and will give your employees more time and space to focus on more important tasks. 

See how Lake Ridge Community Support Services eliminated manual paper processes with one platform: 

2) Use your Data

Operational visibility and insight are extremely important for the success of a home care agency. If you feel like you don’t know where your agency’s time and resources are being allocated, you need to start collecting and analyzing data in order to gain more visibility into operations. 

This might be more time-consuming if you’re working with paper processes, but if you’ve implemented a home care software solution, you should have clear visibility into all operational activities and data. 

Consider leveraging this technology to quickly pull information and generate home care business intelligence reports in order to determine processes that need improvement or require more attention. 

3) Leverage Mobility

Field workers are generally always pressed for time. They need fast and easy access to client information in order to complete visits efficiently and effectively.  

Mobile solutions give care workers all the necessary information they need to efficiently complete a visit at the point of care, while also eliminating paper time sheets and increasing safety. If you have yet to implement a software solution, consider one that offers a mobile solution to really streamline processes, reduce spending and save your employees valuable time.  

Check out AlayaCare’s mobile application: 

4) Don’t Underestimate Technology

New advancements such as optimization and predictive analytics allow agencies to anticipate future events and enable invaluable decision support.  

While implementing new technology can be challenging, intimidating, and costly (at first), its purpose is to help make the lives of home care providers easier and save your agency time and money.  

The capabilities of technology are only expected to grow, and it’s certain that the future of home care will be increasingly efficient and streamlined. Rather than holding onto dated processes, take the time to step into the future. 

Learn more about how your Home Care organization can leverage technology to achieve better operational outcomes.  

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