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Highlights from Better Outcomes User Conference 2023
What do live workshops, engaging sessions on industry topics, glow-in-the-dark drummers, the most electrifying host in health care, Layla, Margaritaville, and daring to deliver better care all have in common? AlayaCare’s Better Outcomes 2023 user conference!
This year’s event was our biggest user conference to date, and it was an absolute blast! Hosted in Niagara Falls, Canada on September 6 to 8, Better Outcomes 2023 welcomed over 500 attendees from all over the U.S. and Canada who are as passionate about home-based care as we are.
The action-packed agenda featured special keynote guests such as Joost van Engen, Founder of Healthy Entrepreneurs, Brandi Kurtyka, CEO of MissionCare Collective, and other expert speakers from major home-based care organizations and industry partners who shared incredible success stories and powerful insights.
The conference began with a day of live, on-site workshops through our AlayaCare University program followed by 2 days of informative sessions, industry keynotes, and talks about problem-solving approaches with real-life examples. Better Outcomes 2023 encapsulated the urgency and importance of adopting efficient technological solutions in the home-based care industry.
Check out this article to read more about this year’s Better Outcomes.
At last year’s event, AlayaCare declared war on repetitive tasks. This year, we focused on further optimizing workflows so providers can continue elevating care despite frequently needing to do more with less.
Here’s a recap of this year’s conference and several major highlights from the event:
The need to optimize workflows to elevate care
In today’s world, we’re dealing with economic challenges and the rise of AI. These factors pose unique challenges to the home-based care industry. AlayaCare’s Better Outcomes 2023 conference served as a key meeting point for industry leaders, providers, and experts to discuss how efficient technology and key partnerships can help overcome these challenges.
AlayaCare’s CEO, Adrian Schauer, opened the conference by highlighting the current problems in home-based care. He stressed that AlayaCare is dedicated to working with providers to find practical solutions.
“With low unemployment and high inflation, finding skilled caregivers has become more difficult. Healthcare systems understand the need to move care into homes, but funding sustainable models is challenging. To make matters worse, public trust in institutions, including businesses, is at a record low.”
However, there’s a promising solution: generative AI. This technology isn’t just about keeping up with tech trends but using these tools to transform how we work in the home-based care industry. It’s time to use this innovation to increase efficiency, improve service delivery, and ultimately, deliver better outcomes for those we serve.
As Adrian put it, “The old business models aren’t good enough anymore. It’s clear that we need value, courage, a focus on results, and a willingness to challenge the status quo.” In other words, we all need to do more with less. This idea sparked three major themes that were discussed throughout the conference.
3 trending topics from Better Outcomes 2023
1. The drive to boost productivity
As the need to accomplish more with less resources continues to grow, related themes that arose were ideas for boosting productivity. Various discussions and presentations, including a notable conversation with Elara Caring‘s CIO, Christian Mate, on the second day, offered numerous tactics and solutions to enhance productivity.
Christian Mate sees caregivers as clients of their technology, just as much as the patients they serve. He believes that enhancing the user experience for caregivers can significantly improve patient care. In his words,
“We aim to deliver top-notch care, but we also view our caregivers as users of our technology. I believe one of the best ways to elevate patient care is by providing a smoother, superior experience for our caregivers… These tools have helped us boost utilization in some of our markets. Orchestrating this has been quite powerful.”
Several presentations further explored this topic. For example, Alex Skinner, AlayaCare’s Value Creation Consultant, discussed maximizing productivity through optimized scheduling. Meanwhile, Erin Baker, AlayaCare’s Director in Solutions Engineering, focused on enhancing productivity via the Caregiver Mobile App and Visit Verification. Utilizing the right tools effectively can indeed make a significant difference in productivity.
It’s important for the industry to explore how we can leverage these tools and strategies to do more with less and enhance productivity in the home care industry.
2. Taking care of our caregiver workforce
Adrian Schauer, in his opening keynote, highlighted a pressing concern: “With low unemployment and high inflation, finding qualified caregiving staff has become more challenging than ever before.” This issue of the caregiver workforce was a recurring theme throughout the conference.
One notable discussion took place during our live recording of the Home Health 360 Podcast on the Better Outcomes stage [Listen to the full episode now]. We were joined by special guests from three different home-based care markets: Alison Green, CEO and Founder of Bien Chez Soi, Joey Hsu, VP of Operations at MedTec Healthcare & Private Duty, and Conner Nelson, Director of Operations at CSI Pharmacy.
They emphasized the need to truly understand your caregiving workforce, rather than making assumptions about their needs and desires. As Alison Green insightfully pointed out:
“People choose caregiving because they want to make a difference in people’s lives. We’re not emphasizing enough the importance of supporting these caregivers as industry leaders. It’s easy to push someone who is driven by their heart to do more, but we must remember to take care of our community and ourselves.”
Our host, Jeff Howell, shared a revealing statistic: the top reason caregivers leave their roles is a lack of communication since their hiring. The second most common reason is not getting enough work hours quickly enough. He summed it up perfectly: “They need both appreciation and a decent paycheck right from the start.”
Understanding these challenges is the first step toward creating effective solutions. By focusing on efficient software training, we can equip our caregivers with the knowledge they need to excel in their roles and feel valued within the organization. It is important for home-based care leaders to act now to ensure our caregivers receive the support they deserve, ultimately leading to better outcomes for all involved.
3. Leveraging technology to make better business decisions
Another highly-discussed topic was the impact of digital transformation and innovation within home-based care. On day 2, Katherine Evans, Divisional Director of Operations at Brookdale at Home, spoke with our SVP of Strategy Geoff Darling about the business value of digital transformation. Katherine spoke about how health care is changing and so are people’s needs, and agencies need to recognize that in order to grow.
“It really is a strategic goal of ours to be able to operate as freestanding home care agents and we recognize that to be able to do that, we must have the appropriate technology. [In addition], we have to be able to have the data, to be able to make key business decisions and do it nimbly and quickly. To be able to be successful in that we would need to have a partner in an EMR that would be able to support those.”
Matt Kroll, Practice President at BAYADA, also spoke about the importance of leveraging data science during his talk on Day 3 with our own SVP of Data and Intelligence Naomi Goldapple. He talked about how hospital readmissions are a key quality metric that is frequently tied to referrals, reimbursements, and value-based care arrangements.
Providers who wish to mitigate and reduce these events should leverage data science and artificial intelligence to alert clinical managers when a patient is at risk of a negative event.
“By acting on, and measurably improving these outcome performance metrics, providers can directly and positively, affect their revenue.”
By using these data tools, his organization is now able to detect 80% of hospitalizations before they happen, with about a 24-day warning.
Partnering with the right software provider to not only digitally transform your organization’s operations but also to implement data intelligence can not only grow your business but help you effectively achieve better outcomes in the long run.
Want to learn more about home-based care data? Download our guide on how to make the most of your home-based care data!
Big announcement at Better Outcomes… Introducing Layla!
As we delve deeper into digital transformation and AI, we’re thrilled to announce a groundbreaking development from this year’s Better Outcomes conference. AlayaCare is excited to introduce Layla, home-based care’s very own virtual assistant.
Layla is designed to revolutionize the coordination of care and communication between care providers, patients, and family caregivers. By extending the circle of care, Layla ensures clients, and their families stay connected, fostering a sense of community and support.
But that’s not all. Here are some future opportunities we envision for Layla:
- Clinical assistant: Layla can assist in clinical tasks, streamlining operations and reducing workload.
- Employee rewards and recognition: Layla can help manage reward programs, ensuring hardworking employees receive the recognition they deserve.
- Client and family concierge: Layla can provide round-the-clock assistance to clients and their families, enhancing their service experience.
- Coordination between supply and demand: Layla can negotiate with caregivers and care seekers, ensuring efficient allocation of resources.
- Handling EVV exceptions: With real-time processing, Layla can handle Electronic Visit Verification (EVV) exceptions without requiring coordinator intervention.
And guess what? Layla will be coming your way in 2024!
So, get ready to embrace this innovative solution that promises to transform the landscape of home-based care. Let’s step into the future together, making healthcare more efficient, effective, and empathetic.
Next year is already approaching fast…what can you expect?
Get ready for an even more grand and insightful experience at Better Outcomes 2024! In 2024 we’ll be returning to stunning Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada from September 18-20.
Better Outcomes is the meeting ground for home-based care agencies of all sizes and ranges of services. It’s a place to learn, connect, celebrate, and envision how we can collectively address the demands of today and tomorrow in home-based care. Join your peers from across the US and Canada for this enriching event.
Sign up now for early access to Better Outcomes 2024 here.
Our promise to you, as Adrian Schauer puts it, is “End-to-end. Heart-to-heart. You found your why. We’re tackling the how.”
Don’t miss out on this opportunity to stay ahead in the ever-evolving landscape of home-based care. Sign up for early access now and prepare to join us for Better Outcomes 2024.
