Ankota enables certified nursing teams to focus more on patients and less on overhead tasks. Rather than creating yet another billing system or OASIS form, Ankota specializes in the efficiency and coordination of care.

Here's How Ankota Helps:

Wasted time is nursing time spent coordinating schedules, mapping routes, and driving extra miles. Ankota frees nurses and other staff to do what they're trained to do by automating schedules and optimizing routes. Here's how Ankota enables your nurses to Care more and Coordinate less:

• Ankota matches the right nurse to the right appointment by using a sophisticated algorithm to account for all planned work and all available nurses. It's not just a process of assigning visits based on zip code. Not only will Ankota organize work to maximize efficiency, Ankota will also match nurses with patients based on skill sets, continuity of care, or other factors you value.
• Once scheduled, nurses are guided by sophisticated routing and GPS turn-by-turn directions reducing time on the road and miles driven by 15% or more.
• Ankota calculates mileage and expected driving time. Therefore, excessive mileage or drive times are flagged to supervisors for review. Overcharging will be eliminated.
• Nurses can get their route information via the web, email or their mobile phone.
• Nurses using Ankota will generally make 3 or 4 more visits per week, increasing margins and spending more of their time caring for patients.

Nurse Friendly Scheduling

Home health nurses value their autonomy. This autonomous spirit attracted many nurses to home health in the first place. We embrace and support this spirit and believe that the same gumption that motivates a nurse's desire for autonomy maximizes a nurse's effectiveness with patients as well.. As Ankota designed the solution, we got the message loud and clear.... nurses didn't want their schedules made for them; they simply were sure we couldn't get it right. We listened, took notes, and designed a system responsive to their needs. We have incorporated five things we learned into the software, as follows:

• Continuity of Care is Paramount: Ankota ensures continuity of care when you think it's important. If the primary care giver is away, then Ankota will choose a qualified substitute. When continuity of care is not mission-critical, such as with deliveries or blood draws, Ankota will match worker to patient to maximize efficiency.
• Some Procedures have Time of Day Constraints: If a patient has to fast for a blood test, they certainly don't want to wait until late in the afternoon. This is no problem for Ankota. You can specify that Blood Draws need to be scheduled before 10AM and the scheduling will be done automatically. You can apply similar constraints to any service, not just blood draws, any time of the day, any day of the week.
• All Procedures are NOT Created Equal: Some services are more important that others due to both clinical and business concerns. For example, flexibility in scheduling a first appointment with a patient can often determine whether you win this patient's business. For this reason, Ankota let's you adjust appointment windows by service type (so you can beat your competition by offering one-hour windows for start-of-care or equipment fittings). You can also set priorities among tasks to ensure that the critical work gets done even if you're over capacity.
• Patients, even those who are Home Bound, want to live their lives: Nurses pride themselves on knowing when their patients prefer not to be visited and will schedule around those constraints. This is no problem for Ankota. These constraints may be entered into the system, as they are learned, and will be reflected in all of the automated scheduling.
• Nurses have lives, too: Many choose Home Health so they can work around their children's schedules, account for non-work appointments or rearrange work to accommodate events.  Ankota accounts for a nurse's schedule and can accommodate changes in plans. In fact, Ankota maximizes the time a nurse spends attending to what's important, both at home and at work, by accounting for schedules, eliminating needless miles, and minimizing time devoted to coordinating schedules.

How Does Ankota Work with the Scheduling in my Billing and Clinical System?

Integration is critical and is one of Ankota's strengths. First, Ankota provides a real time interface with your billing vendor by integrating appointment selections into your existing screens or through a pop-up screen offering the best scheduling choices. The remaining integration is easier and involves a strong understanding of the timing for committing visits to nurses.

The Bottom Line:

Ankota works for you, your nurses, and your patients... maximizing care and minimizing waste. If you're goal is to provide the best possible care in the most efficient way possible, then you should consider Ankota.