Tracking caregivers and home healthcare workers can be challenging when assignments are made at all hours and at individual patient sites. Delivering a better customer experience requires effective workforce management software systems that allow you to address the complexity of assigning and scheduling jobs while processing accounts payable accurately.
When patients are forced to keep track of the comings and goings of their own healthcare workers, it can add stress to their lives. This can interfere with the patient service you provide. Your unique healthcare challenges can easily be addressed with a customized workforce management solution that hits all the pain points your management team, healthcare workers and clients experience.
Common Pain Points of Patients
Patients and their loved ones are often faced with unnecessary issues caused by poor caregiver management. These issues can include:
- Late arrival or early departure of caregivers who lack accountability due to poor tracking.
- Poor tracking of value-added offers such as discounted rates for longer, regular shifts.
- Weekly home healthcare timesheets and forms that must be completed by the patient as well as the caregiver.
- Being charged incorrectly for things such as overtime or for workers who fail to show up on time, or even at all.
By introducing a time management system, you can not only provide more dependable services, but also advertise your efficiency efforts as a selling point. Both patients and caregivers will benefit from the system as it makes tracking hours easier and more accurate.
Benefits of Time Management Systems for Healthcare
Systems customized for the specific services and hours provided by home healthcare companies allow you to remain on top of scheduled workers and ensure smoother operations for your management, workers, and clients. Inaccuracies in billing not only make you look bad, but also involve additional HR/payroll or accounting hours to track errors, adjust and inform clients and workers of the issues.
Your goal is to optimize efficiencies, so your team spends less time checking for errors and more time ensuring your patients are safe and happy. Benefits of using a time management system for your home caregivers include:
- Everything is managed in real-time, so you always know where your caregivers are
- Data is provided for all hours for all workers
- Patients can have quick access to their caregiver’s schedules and chargeable hours
- Consistency between management, clients, and caregiver timesheets
- A centralized, single-point solution for all caregivers including access to their payroll, timesheets, and benefits
- Controlled labor costs with a more efficient approach to scheduling
- Tracking caregiver performance regarding punctuality, arrival, and departure times to ensure patients are cared for based on the services requested
- Ensuring proper compensation for caregivers
- Complete I-9s, W-4s and other tax documents
- Multi-factor authentication and data encryption to keep employee/patient information safe
All hours are accounted for, all assignments are performed to meet the expectations of the patient and each caregiver is paid correctly for their time.
Ideal Remote Solution
Today’s home healthcare businesses require cost efficiencies of home offices for managers and owners. With a mobile tracking system, you can use reporting features that make it possible to check on information such as payroll, schedules, location of caregivers and more.
If you are on the road selling and run into a scheduling challenge due to a sick caregiver, you can access the schedule and find a replacement from your team of healthcare workers. A centralized dashboard provides the tools you need whether you are at your office, assisting a patient at their home or driving in your car.
Cost Savings
Operating costs can be greatly reduced when you can improve workforce management. Reduction of human error alone can reduce manually tracking timesheets to look for discrepancies. Time-off requests are integrated into scheduling, so you always know who is available reducing the need to rework schedules. Work hours are billed correctly so you reduce the odds of paying out more than is required, while also tracking overtime claims accurately.
Improved Scheduling Means Happier Caregivers
When caregivers have a say in their schedule, they are happier which reduces costs in recruiting talent. You can plug everyone’s hours into your system so you can easily prepare schedules to suit everyone’s needs. You can make a list of caregivers willing to be on call for emergencies such as someone calling in sick. This, in turn, improves your ability to remain responsive to both caregiver and patient needs. It’s a win-win situation that helps keep your business operating successfully improving patient outcomes and caregiver satisfaction.
About The Author
Ingrid is the Content Marketing Manager at Paypro, managing both inbound and outbound marketing initiatives for the company. She has 15+ years’ of extensive marketing communications experience, leveraging brand awareness and strategic partnerships to increase sales revenue for a diverse group of B2B brands.