What Do Better Outcomes Mean to Us?

If you know AlayaCare, you know that we’re always talking about Better Outcomes.  In fact, we named our annual user conference Better Outcomes – because it embodies so much of what we want to achieve for our employees, our customers, and most importantly, for their clients. The ones who rely on home care and home health to live independently for as long as possible.

The panorama of ways we can achieve better outcomes lays at the heart of our software company. Since our very first days, we have stayed committed to the core focus of helping deliver better outcomes across four key areas.

Better Outcomes… financially

 When we speak about better financial outcomes, we’re focused on not only delivering value to home care agencies, but to the clients and care workers who depend on them. 

Managing the rise of VBP

For agencies, the rise of value-based purchasing means it’s imperative to implement software that clearly tracks how patients and clients are doing, and precisely how their care is helping. That’s because reporting standards are more stringent than ever for referring sources such as hospitals and skilled nursing facilities.

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Today, agencies must quantify how the medical and non-medical services they are providing boosts the quality of life and positive health care outcomes for their clients. This can only be achieved through a seamless flow of real-time data that drives analytics, performance management and other key metrics that payers build into their payment system. (For example, the number of clients being readmitted to hospital that quarter.)

Financial well-being of caregivers

Of course, modern agencies have also begun experimenting with financial strategies to attract and retain caregivers in an unsettled labour market.  For example, building tools to ensure caregivers receive at least minimum hours to provide income stability.  One of our technological partners, Even is also structured to support caregivers in their financial wellbeing.

Better outcomes… operationally

Achieving better operational outcomes helps agencies realize new efficiencies and improved performance that lead to improvements across the board.

Data-driven performance

By setting key performance indicators (KPIs) in action, agencies can monitor benchmarks and work to improve performance in both organizational priorities and tangible goals. (For example, reducing caregiver travel time by a certain number of hours each month, or boosting intake processes to onboard new clients more efficiently.)

Billing

Our software makes billing practices far more efficient by significantly reducing manual input time, while reducing or even eliminating paper processes for timesheets and billing. With easy e-billing systems, claims can be processed faster and more accurately, with a shorter turnaround time from payer back to agency. 

 Predicting employee churn

AlayaCare’s intuitive platform can help prevent an employee’s departure before they even entertain the notion — and can predict hiring needs months in advance too. It does this through machine learning, analyzing and then identifying the specific indicators that are linked to the reasons why employees typically leave.  This, in turn, allows agencies to be far more proactive with their operational planning. 

Better outcomes… for your people

Employees are the engine of every organization. And better outcomes for them can be achieved by software solutions that make their lives easier.

Better schedules

Poor scheduling not only requires coordinators to remember client and staff preferences but take them into account on an ongoing basis. Tech enables accuracy and real-time information: an atmosphere that makes the lives of nurses and PSWs – and back office staff – easier. Mapping software, optimized visit routes and machine learning makes for convenient, efficient scheduling that puts the right person in the right place at the right time. (Bonus: the ability to make one’s own hours is quite empowering for staff.)

Safety first!

Caregivers deserve to feel safe and secure when they’re visiting clients. Features such as electronic visit verification confirm they’ve arrived safety at their destination, and real-time alerts and risk visibility provides staff with critical information about the clients they’re seeing. Technology puts the caregiver in charge, eliminating the uncertainty of heading into a client’s home uninformed or ill-prepared.

Streamlining efforts in the back office

Just as electronic visit verification can offer a measure of safety for caregivers, so too can it offer ease of communication for staff in the back office. From billing and reporting to scheduling and client needs, there’s a lot to take care of – and  GPS-based mobile care management systems like AlayaCare’s solution can rid busy professionals of tedious work, while ensuring accuracy of data collection and reporting.

Better outcomes… for your clients’ health

And we arrive at the most important outcome of all. Clients are the purpose behind everything home care agencies do, as well as what we do here at AlayaCare. People should live as comfortably as possible at home and get the level of home and community care they deserve. 

Remote patient monitoring

Clearly, elements such as remote patient monitoring bear tremendous fruit. RPM allows clients to receive medical care in their own homes from afar, giving them greater control over their own care plan and helping build better outcomes by keeping them out of hospital. This technology brings transparency to integrated care among all health-care providers – and can trigger important preemptive care when needed.

In our SmartCoach trial, we found that for patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and heart failure, the use of RPM dropped emergency department visits by 73 per cent and admissions to hospital by 64 per cent. This three-month trial not only helped these people, but saved the system over $150,000.

Caregiver matching

If agencies can continually and effectively match clients and caregivers, that’s a major contributor to better outcomes. Optimized scheduling software is invaluable for ensuring clients build relationships with their caregivers, particularly clients with specific needs – as are “do not send” lists for staff and clients who don’t get along for various reasons. This level of coordination can seem tricky in a busy agency but in fact, care worker continuity can be featured as a percentage right in the dashboard, ensuring the right staff are matched up for that week’s visits.

Client-focused care

At AlayaCare, we are looking at the social determinants of health and our newest module – Care Plan 2.0 – fits this new perspective. Through this innovation, all clinical or non-clinical interventions are dictated by a client goal. Meanwhile, a new AlayaLabs project is using data science to recommend optimal care plans, with alert mechanisms sent to clinicians when a client isn’t progressing as expected.

Really, every technological feature could be detailed here, as they all flow back to this (now measurable) goal: better client outcomes.

Better technology equals better outcomes

For more than 400 home care organizations around the world, AlayaCare software enables these better outcomes. We have opened an ecosystem of care, where companies with applications to support agencies can integrate with our system to make care delivery even better. Ultimately, we want this to be a communal effort to help the providers in our industry and the people they serve. 

We host the Better Outcomes conference each year to explore the journey we are all on together, to learn from one another, and to showcase a critical industry that is transforming at a dramatic pace.

We hope you join us this September in Niagara Falls – and invite you to submit abstracts or award nominations anytime. If there is a pressing topic you want us to dive into, please let us know!

Submit your ideas and award nominations now for Better Outcomes 2020!