Care Worker Mobile App
Reduce caregiver churn with a caregiver-first mobile app
Caregiver churn has reached 60% or higher in some agencies, putting staffing, client relationships, and margins at risk. Home-based care organizations are under pressure to do more with less, but many are still asking caregivers to manage complex, fragmented workflows on outdated tools. A caregiver-first mobile caregiver platform changes that reality. By unifying scheduling, documentation, communication, and EVV in a single caregiver…
Why software is crucial in modern caregiving: 10 signs you need an upgrade
Home-based care software: It’s not the first thing on your mind as a caregiver, manager, or administrator focused on providing exceptional care to those who need it. However, the right software solution can transform the way your organization operates, streamlining processes, and freeing up time to concentrate on what truly matters – delivering quality care…
Guide: Evaluate the security and performance of your home-based care software
Home-based care organizations rely on software that both performs well and has the high capacity and security they need to keep their business running smoothly and protect their data. In the last ten years, data breaches in healthcare have increased by 83%. Cyber-attacks and data breaches could seriously affect your business, so taking the appropriate…
4 ways tech can optimize daily home care scheduling and routes
For many home care providers, there is no lack of clients or business coming their way. The real challenge is how to recruit and retain high-quality staff to meet the demand. Many HR and Operations Managers look to bring on more staff, which is part of the answer, but we believe increasing the utilization of…
Collaborate quickly and easily with AlayaCare Secure Messaging
Improving collaboration among staff is a top priority for many home care agencies. However, a solution needs to be secure and encrypted when discussing client information through a HIPAA-compliant* communication system. Most agencies find themselves juggling multiple different solutions for communication and work function, such as texting, email, voice notes, phone calls etc. However, not…
4 Ways to retain caregivers in home-based care
As the senior population continues to surge, projected to double by 2031, the criticality of hiring and retaining high-quality home-based care workers has never been more pronounced. The demand for compassionate caregivers who can provide exceptional care in a home-based setting is escalating rapidly. However, agencies are grappling with the challenge of retaining these invaluable…
4 ways home-based care technology reduces mileage for rural agencies
While no two home care agencies are alike, those that serve rural areas face several unique challenges compared to those that solely serve urban centers. In fact, though urban populations continue to rise, about 20.0% of people who live in the United States and 19% of those in Canada have rural abodes. For older adults here, ensuring access to…
3 Ways Home Care Software Streamlines Agency Processes
Home care agencies are under constant pressure to provide their patients with the best services possible. But making sure you have the right resources and capabilities in place isn’t easy. The home healthcare industry is notoriously resistant to change, but thanks to advances in technology like home care software, agencies can now streamline processes more…
Key performance indicators: The power of data in home care
To those who are not executives or data analysts, key performance indicators (KPIs) are an out-of-focus business term that is easier to avoid than to understand. But the reality is that KPIs are an everyman’s tool and are only as useful as employees outside the data world understand them — and see how their efforts…
Reduce missed visits and improve client outcomes by leveraging technology
The number one challenge that all home and community care providers face is care worker shortage. Providers need solutions to allow them to deliver more care in the community with their existing resources by increasing utilization and efficiency. Scheduling is a clear area where modern software can help an agency deliver more and better care…
Can a user-centric mobile app be improved? Yes, it can.
Elevating the User Experience: How we improved our mobile app at AlayaCare From Good to Great: User-centric mobiles app improvements When you partner with AlayaCare, system updates are good news. And we’ve recently made some improvements to the AlayaCare Caregiver mobile app that we’re especially excited to share with our customers. Day in, and day…
4 Operational Best Practices for Home Care Agencies
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,…
Home Infusion Therapy… Without the Paperwork
For patients with conditions that require medication to be infused by needle or catheter, staying at home for treatment is optimal. Not only is it more comfortable and more manageable for them, but infusion-based treatments in hospitals and outpatient clinics — particularly for those who suffer from chronic disease — is an unsustainable expense that…
Supporting patient, caregiver and family engagement with technology
Families have turned away from nursing homes and other institutionalized settings at record rates over the last few years. Instead, they’re choosing home care for their loved ones. As a result, home care organizations are not only caring for more clients – but more clients with acute and complex needs.
How Technology Can Help Eliminate Home Care Employee Churn
Across the United States, 16 percent of residents are over the age of 65 — and by 2060, it’s expected that one in four Americans will be in the retirement zone. This aging society presents challenges and opportunities across a wide swath of industries and sectors. It’s hard to imagine a market more invested in…
How to Leverage Digital Patient Engagement Tools to Improve Outcomes
Home healthcare providers have an increased focus on “patient engagement”, or in the words of Judith Hibbard, Ph.D., MPH, “an individual’s knowledge, skill, and confidence for managing their [own] health and health care.” There is plenty of research that supports the notion that patients who are confident and who can participate in their own care…
5 Tips for Improving your Client’s Home Care Experience
Like many other industries, the home care industry is beginning to put the consumer at the core. Care models are becoming increasingly client-centric, meaning customer service will be hands-down the most important role at your home care agency. This is especially true considering the increasing demand for home healthcare services; clients will be attracted to,…
[Now Live] Log Into the Mobile App Using Fingerprint or Face Recognition
We’re pleased to announce that we’ve simplified the mobile app login experience by launching Biometric Authentication on both iOS and Android devices! With this feature enabled, mobile app users can now sign in faster and more securely using their face or fingerprint instead of a password, significantly reducing the time it takes to log in or renew a session.
AlayaCare’s Mobile App Gets a Spring Tuneup
A useful, easy-to-use app is one effective measure in making any caregiver’s job more efficient and rewarding – reducing administrative burdens so they can spend more time caring for clients. A reliable app becomes integral to a caregiver’s workday, and can play a big role in maintaining job satisfaction in an industry where retaining and…
Why ‘Net Promoter Scores’ are Important for Home Care Agencies
In the golden age of metrics, there’s another interesting tool that can help your agency collect important data insights: the “Net Promoter Score”, or NPS for short. If you haven’t heard of it already, NPS is a way virtually any company can measure its customer experience. By measuring that experience, it’s then possible to understand…
Nurse Appreciation Through the Power of Technology
Each year, National Nurses Week acknowledges the challenging job of nursing and provides an opportunity to let the four million registered nurses in the U.S. – and the millions more around the globe – know that their hard work is recognized and appreciated.
Allied Health Professionals Realize the Benefits of Cutting-Edge Mobile Technology
As a registered dietitian, Brandy Durant frequently travels between doctors’ clinics in her hometown of Windsor, Ontario, providing comprehensive advice and counselling on diet and nutrition concerns to hundreds of clients. Because she’s consistently on the move, it’s important for her to access patient information quickly and efficiently. That goes not only for her own…
How Innovation Empowers Home Care Clinical Staff
In some industries, administrative backlogs and inefficient processes can cause minor disruptions, like pushing back a deliverable for a couple of days. Companies live with this because it doesn’t ultimately affect their missions. But in certain industries, such inefficiencies can carry a very real and human cost.
How to Deliver More Quality Home Care Without Hiring More Care Workers
For many home care providers there is no lack of clients or business coming their way. The real challenge is how to recruit and retain high-quality staff to meet the demand. Many HR and Operations managers look to bring on more staff, which is part of the answer, but we believe increasing utilization of your…
CODE RED: Emergency Preparedness Rule set to impact Medicaid business
In 2016, there were 46 “major disasters” and another 50 fire-related national emergencies, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). There were also “emergency declarations” across another seven states in the wake not only of Hurricane Matthew but contaminated water in Michigan and severe storms in both Missouri and Louisiana.
A Window on the Future of Home Care Market: Implications for the Mandatory use of Electronic Visit Verification (EVV)
A window of opportunity has arrived. Section 12006 of the Obama administration’s 21st Century CURES Act ushered in what most in the home care services industry expected: measures to corral unchecked and sometimes fraudulent billing practices to Medicaid. That came largely in the form of one newly mandatory requirement: Electronic Visit Verification (EVV), which allows…
The Benefits of Electronic Point of Care Documentation in Home Care
Due to growing pains of the industry and the subsequent nursing shortage, home care providers are placing more emphasis on ensuring appropriate visit documentation is completed rather than ensuring the information is documented thoroughly and accurately. Specifically, agencies operating on paper processes see more physically damaged or lost documentation, increased caregiver error at the point…
The Impact of Home Care Technology on ADL Tracking and Clinical Documentation
To accurately document the completion of ADLs for a client, there needs to be an effective system. Some home care agencies rely on paper documentation; the clerk/coordinator physically goes through a large amount of visit notes/flow sheets and enters the data into their homecare software solution. No doubt these paper processes are inefficient, outdated, and…
How Technology Can Improve Hospice Operations and the Overall Quality of Care
Advances in homecare technology have led to exciting possibilities for home health and hospice organizations. By adopting technology solutions, providers are seeing enhancements in their care delivery, and improvements in business results by reducing costs and ensuring accuracy of clinical documentation. Hospice care can be difficult work, and therefore it becomes more important for care…
Top 5 Home Care Agency Processes That Need to Be Paperless
Considering it’s 2017 and we’re well into the digital age, most home healthcare organizations are aware of the benefits of going paperless. The amount of time and money your home care agency can save by implementing paperless clinical documentation, or electronic visit verification (EVV), amongst other paperless processes is substantial. Not only does eliminating paper…
Enhancing Safety in the Home: The Role of Technology
As the senior population continues to grow, so does the need to ensure the delivery of safe care in the home. While people prefer to receive care in the comfort of their own home, this does not always mean their homes are safe spaces. There are a number of distinct characteristics of the home health…
Demographic Shift: How Will It Impact Your Home Healthcare Agency?
The baby boomer generation has been a buzzing topic of conversation in the healthcare industry for some time now. According to the Canadian Medical Association (CMA), seniors will make up 20% of the population by 2024, and 25% by 2036 at which point they will account for 62% of health costs. The same goes for…
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…
4 New Year’s Resolutions for your Home Care Agency
The end of a year is a great time to reflect on your accomplishments and make improvements to your home care agency. It represents an opportunity to look at the bigger picture and strategize how you can improve your bottom line moving forward into the new year. While the quality of your service and client…
Improving Home Care Client Engagement with Technology
The importance of communication for client-provider relationships in home health care can’t be emphasized enough. The more engaged and connected clients and their loved ones are, the more likely they will be to follow care worker advice, and to take an active role in their health during, and after home care visits. With the wide…
Cloud-Based EHRs: A Flexible Approach to Interoperability
As we all know, the home healthcare industry and the delivery of home care are undergoing transformational changes. As an industry that is still widely undigitized, evolving technologies such as electronic health records (EHRs), mobile health (mHealth), virtual health (vHealth), wearables, etc. are rapidly altering home care’s prognosis. These new evolving technologies will give providers…
Native Home Care App vs. Responsive Design Point of Care Documentation
Chances are, right now you’re holding on to the very tool that has the power to improve patient outcomes and refine the home healthcare industry; a mobile device. Mobile health or mHealth, consists of delivering health care services via mobile communication devices such as smartphones, tablets and wearables, and is abruptly changing the way home…
Which cliché best applies to your field staff training –“It’s never too late to learn” or “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks”?
Change is hard. Getting people to alter their routines or to adapt new skills is a challenging task, especially when most people are reluctant to do so. The home healthcare industry, specifically, is quite infamous for pushing off reform in order to avoid the hassles of change. Now that the industry is facing dramatic shifts…
Electronic Visit Verification (EVV): Providing the Proof
The benefits of home-based health care are substantial. From cost savings and patient comfort, to the overall improved outcomes across the health care field, home care is changing the industry dramatically. As beneficial as home care is, many agencies have been hesitant to provide home-based services due to the major challenge of ensuring caregivers adhere to…
Care Worker Mobile App: How to Make BYOD Work in Your Home Care Agency
The “bring your own device” (BYOD) trend is becoming increasingly more mainstream in the business IT world. According to a global survey of CIOs by Gartner, Inc.’s Executive Programs, 38 percent of companies expect to stop providing devices to workers by 2016. Another survey conducted by IDC Canada found that almost 81 percent of Canadians…
Self-Directed Care: Empowering Individuals & Maximizing Efficiencies
Earlier this year a thought provoking government-commissioned report on home care in Ontario was released, highlighting the struggling state of the system and its urgent need for restructuring. Titled “The Care We Need”, the critical report prompted the provincial government to release a new funding program as a direct response, implementing a series of pilot…
4 Technology Initiatives to Make Home Care Easier in Ontario Healthcare System
It’s time for a MASH things up a bit in the Ontario Healthcare system!
4 Reasons Why GPS-Enabled Mobile Care Workers are a Home Care Agency’s Best Friend
Mobility in home healthcare is not new. Agencies have dipped their toes in mobility over the past 10 years with varying degrees of dedication – from automated phone clocking systems to care workers and nurses lugging around laptops to the few agencies who have made the investment in mobile phones or tablets for their team…
Throw Away Your Map and Pushpin There is an Easier Way to Schedule for Home Care Agencies
During a recent deployment, as we typically do, we had a usability session with a home healthcare agency Intake Coordinator who showed us her all too common setup. Pre-AlayaCare she jumps between their current solution and Google Maps, entering the client info into Google Maps. She then compares it with a map she has printed…
Why UX Matters: Navel Gazing and the Dangers of Home Health Care Software Design
Too often companies have succumb to the temptation of mirror based design thinking. This can often result in a solution looking for a problem, a convoluted and meandering path to simple straightforward tasks and worse a capital investment that will require a write off in 1-2 years when the solution is scrapped. Here are some…