Posted by Will Hicklen on Wed, Sep 01, 2010 @ 12:55 PM
I usually leave this type of information to the Home Care Software Geek to report on, but some news is just too good not to pass along right away.
You can now get Blackberry Enterprise Server Express for free.
So what? Well, let me first say that we are not taking a position on one mobile device vs another. We at Ankota like to profess that we are device agnostic, choosing instead to make even our most advanced technology available via web browsers and common mobile devices that our customers have readily available. Frankly, we don’t want to force new infrastructure or hardware requirements on our customers. That just wouldn’t be efficient...and those of you who know Ankota know that we are efficiency zealots.
A more pragmatic description of our position is that we are in favor of anything that helps mobilize technology for our customers and does so securely, productively, and affordably. Blackberries have proven to be excellent mobile devices for many of our customers. Our customers include Home Health, DME, Private Duty, Infusion, Respiratory Therapy and other companies that we say make up the “Homecare Ecosystem.” In the past, the cost of purchasing mobile devices like this (& their service plans) has been a deterrent to many. As devices and plans continue to get cheaper, more and more of our customers will buy them. This announcement helps make it cheaper and easier for our customers to manage their mobile staff and their Blackberries.
Blackberry Enterprise Server Express synchronizes wirelessly with Microsoft Exchange, calendars, contacts, and provides remote file access & access to your intranet. It will run on your existing mail server whether you run that yourself or have that managed for you by another company.
Of course, schedules, calendars, POC forms, and even optimized route plans created in Ankota HDM can be pushed to Blackberry devices in real time. You can still utilize Ankota's telephony interface as you would with any other mobile phone.
Click on this image to view key features:
Ankota provides software to improve the delivery of care outside of the hospital. Today Ankota services home health, private duty care, DME Delivery, RT, Physical Therapy and Home Infusion organizations, and is interested in helping to efficiently manage other forms of care. To learn more, please visit www.ankota.com or contact Ankota.
Posted by Will Hicklen on Wed, Aug 18, 2010 @ 12:01 PM
Let's think about PRODUCTIVITY – arguably the single greatest opportunity for your business today.
Ankota is first and foremost a process management company. We develop technology that helps organizations run their Home Health Care and related businesses more efficiently. More profitably. More productively.
What we do is revolutionary because we're the only company that has organized health care into a delivery model and optimized it for performance. That takes some high-powered technology, but all you really need to know at the moment is that it helps you run your business better and achieve immediate results.
Our customers include home health care agencies, HME and DME companies, Private Duty care agencies, and "the therapies" - infusion therapy, physical therapy, occupational therapy, respiratory therapy, and more. If you need to mobilize staff, equipment, medications, and supplies for health care, we’re the experts you trust to help optimize your business.
I would argue that the single greatest business opportunity before these companies--companies like yours--lies with improving productivity. The greatest opportunity to improve profitability lies with better utilizing staff and resources. Relative to other markets, this business has traditionally lacked a performance culture. The market has not demanded it until now, with new pressures on revenues, limited staff, and the ever increasing costs of doing business. The most immediate option is to improve productivity. That is, generate more output with the same or fewer resources. The good news is that there are many opportunities for immediate improvement, spanning from reduction in miles driven to increased utilization of staff and equipment. Downstream benefits abound, such as reduced paperwork, improved record keeping and accountability, happier staff, and so on.
We’ll discuss several of those in subsequent articles here. However, for now, your homework is simple. I’d like to encourage you to think of your Home Health Care, DME, Private Duty or rehab business in terms of productivity. Take a look at the following definition of PRODUCTIVITY and begin to consider it in the context of your business. When you examine your operations or consider new initiatives, consider also how it will impact productivity.
Note that I am not suggesting that quality of care be compromised at all! In fact, quality of care should improve or remain constant to make productivity improvements measurable and valuable. A business with a performance minded culture is one focused on constant improvement. So, while you think about PRODUCTIVITY and your business, think of it in the context of questions like
“How can we improve the consistency of care?”
“Will clients/patients and their families be better off?”
Wikipedia has a clear definition of the word PRODUCTIVITY and includes some great supporting data. Take a look and start to think about productivity in your business.
Productivity is a measure of output from a production process, per unit of input. For example, labor productivity is typically measured as a ratio of output per labor-hour, an input. Productivity may be conceived of as a metric of the technical or engineering efficiency of production. As such, the emphasis is on quantitative metrics of input, and sometimes output. Productivity is distinct from metrics of allocative efficiency, which take into account both the monetary value (price) of what is produced and the cost of inputs used, and also distinct from metrics of profitability, which address the difference between the revenues obtained from output and the expense associated with consumption of inputs.[1] click here for full article in Wikipedia
Another way to look at it... Borrowed from Accel, experts in team productivity, The Productivity Conceptual Modelbelow, takes the form of a 'productivity tree'. The roots denote the inputs to the system, the trunk the conversion process and the foliage and fruits the systems outputs. click on graphic to go to Accel's web site
Posted by Will Hicklen on Wed, Aug 11, 2010 @ 05:14 PM
Brightree’s acquisition of CAU should surprise no one. See full HME News story here
CEO Dave Cormack said it clearly, “Their customer base is right in the sweet spot of our customer base.” Cormack wants to grow by acquisition, consolidate his customer base with others, and expand his services. It is a wise strategy. Other industries have followed this path, and quite frankly, it’s about time that DME & other businesses in the home health care ecosystem do the same.
Consolidation among DME providers will drive a similar consolidation among the companies that develop technology for them. Simply put, there will be fewer deals for the software companies to win. The ones that win will be those that provide the highest business value at the most compelling price, and deliver it in a model that is easy to implement & use. Even so, compared to other industries, DME is still highly fragmented. Just as there are many DME providers, so too are there many software companies selling to them, and none with a dominant market position. That is the definition of a market ripe for consolidation and it is still anyone’s market to win in DME. It will likely take a few years to settle.
So how will this go? The industry has focused long and hard on improving billing practices and decreasing the time it takes to get reimbursed. Companies like Brightree and Care Centric have built businesses that include both billing-related software and actual billing services. The next great opportunity is in using technology to increase business productivity. DME has seen little in the way of productivity improvement in recent years and has suffered through decreasing reimbursements while energy and labor costs continue to rise.
Resource and staff utilization is inefficient in DME, relative to other industries. For example, research conducted by Ankota, Inc. indicates that DME providers can cut operating costs such as mileage and fuel expenses by 25-35% immediately, simply through better scheduling and route planning. The same applies to home health care, respiratory therapy, rehab, and others that depend on home delivery and mobile workforces. Further, the addition of real time, mobile technologies and practices known in other industries as business performance management (BPM) will allow them to better model capacity and use it more efficiently. Technology can improve tracking and accountability, reduce mileage, eliminate paperwork, and improve quality.
The immediate business benefits include more deliveries in less time and at lower costs. Higher revenue. Lower marginal costs. That sounds simple, right?
The software companies that help DME companies actually run their businesses better and more profitably will be the ones that win. If you are a DME company, make software companies prove that they can reduce your operating costs and improve productivity. You should be able to tell whether they have expertise in business performance management and they should be able to prove it.
Those are the ones you can bet on.
Posted by Marc Ottinger on Wed, Jul 14, 2010 @ 09:35 PM
Question -
What journey have you chosen to achieve Operational Excellence in your Home Care Agency?
Preface
This fifth characteristic may be the most difficult, because it is about leadership. Why? Without leadership the competitive advantage goes away and the associated cash benefits do as well. Without leadership operational excellence and the opportunity to increase quality, reliability, flexibility, speed, and customer value tend to flash away. This is the fifth of six blog posts hiliting the five characteristics that facilitate operational excellence.
Creating Operational Excellence
Remember the big picture of operational excellence: Is the business set up to achieve established goals and is the work organized and executed. This is the fifth and final characteristic that facilitates this operational excellence -
5. Choose the right journey; meaning know were you plan on taking your company. How you choose will have significant bearing on your companies future positioning. In theory one journey will be most appropriate for your company’s culture; however, in practice market complexities, customers, etc, mean there could be different approaches.
The focus of this series is that high performance businesses put a premium on operational excellence. The installments have been –
1st – Identifying the “Dominant Vector.”
2nd – Establishing a structure to that creates an advantage.
3rd – Out-Executing other Home Care Providers.
4th – Maintaining the Balancing Act for success.
This fifth installment addresses the journey to ensure success of your Home Care Agency. To learn about this Characteristics of Operational Excellence click here.
Ankota provides software to improve the delivery of care outside the hospital. Today Ankota services home health, private duty care, DME Delivery, RT, Physical Therapy and Home Infusion organizations, and is interested in helping to efficiently manage other forms of care. To learn more, please visit www.ankota.com or contact Ankota.
Posted by Marc Ottinger on Tue, Jul 13, 2010 @ 09:57 PM
Question -
What in the balancing act you need to execute to ensure the success of your Home Care Agency?
Preface
You have your “dominant vector,” the structure to support it, and you are out-executing all your competitors. Now comes, shall we say …, the tight rope of high performance businesses with operational excellence. This needs to be carefully walked to maintain a competitive advantage and generate the associated cash benefits. In today’s difficult economic times operational excellence offers the opportunity to increase quality, reliability, flexibility, speed, and customer value. This is the fourth of six blog posts hiliting the five characteristics that facilitate operational excellence.
Creating Operational Excellence
Looking at the big picture of how the business is set up to achieve the established goals, and how work is organized and executed may have the most impact on this the fourth of the five characteristic focuses. This is the Feng Shui to facilitate operational excellence -
4. Balance structure and execution by identifying and articulating that “dominant vector.” The real challenge comes in determining that balance between structure and execution. Companies need equilibrium. Companies that focus to heavily on execution develop processes that create quality and productivity, but sometimes not customer value. While companies that underplay structural advantage lack agility and resource flexibility to respond to rapidly changing market opportunities.
The focus of this series is that high performance businesses put a premium on operational excellence. The installments have been –
1st - Identifying your "Dominant Vector."
2nd - Points out the need to establish a structure to that creates an advantage.
3rd – Out-Executing other Home Care Providers. The link for this is http://bit.ly/9dFRw8.
This fourth installment addresses the balancing act to ensure success of your Home Care Agency.
Ankota provides software to improve the delivery of care outside the hospital. Today Ankota services home health, private duty care, DME Delivery, RT, Physical Therapy and Home Infusion organizations, and is interested in helping to efficiently manage other forms of care. To learn more, please visit www.ankota.com or contact Ankota.
Posted by Ken Accardi on Mon, Nov 30, 2009 @ 02:50 PM
Frankly, we at Ankota don't love describing our value as being a home care scheduling software company. Yes it's true that we are pioneering the future of scheduling for home care with innovations like the following:
- Planning all known visits ahead of time, so when a new client calls your agency, you can offer them appointments when you're already in the neighborhood
- Routing home care workers from their homes, to cut down on driving
- Providing episode planning with best practice "Protocols of Care"
It's also true that if the industry broadly adopted the products Ankota has today, we can save 1 billion miles of driving per year in the US and enable the existing home care work force to see 20% more patients. This is exciting, but this is just the beginning and not the future of home care scheduling software.
The near future, or at least the next challenge in Home Care Scheduling is to provide better coordination of care across disciplines, and we've expanded our "treatment planning" capabilities to support this. For example, let's think through a typical chemotherapy home infusion application. Generally, home chemotherapy starts at a chemo clinic where a patient meets with doctors and pharmacists to receive their initial dosing while under monitoring. The home infusion nurse needs to meet the patient at the clinic, and either needs to bring (or more likely have dropped off ahead of time) the infusion pump and supplies for home dosing. Then the subsequent visits are at the patient's home, but again require the coordination of supply and pharma delivery before the nurse arrives. Ankota can now handle this scheduling and the gotchas that go with it, like putting the deliveries on hold until the pharmacists get their work done. This is exciting, but still it's not the future...
The future of home care scheduling is patient-centered and in addition to addressing the schedules for home nursing, private duty, DME and pharma delivery, infusion therapy, respiratory therapy, physical therapy, meal delivery, social workers, hospice workers, clergy and everyone else who visits the home, there's more. There are telehealth sessions that need to occur, follow-up phone calls, and other activities that need to be done but don't require a visit. Then there are the visits that the patient does need to make, to their PCP, and specialists, and sometimes to labs or other venues. Then there are the things that need to be scehduled for the patient that don't involve anyone but themselves, such as taking their meds, adhering to their diet and performing the exercises and self-measurements that are needed to keep them on track with all aspects of their health. Bringing all of this together in a way that maximizes the health and happiness of the patient, lowers costs and excercises prudent environmental stewardship - that's the future of home care scheduling - and the name we've given to that future is healthcare delivery management.