Introduction
Adult day care centers provide an environment where older and disabled individuals can spend their day and participate in activities intended to help maintain physical and mental fitness, plus participants receive meals (usually lunch and a snack). In addition to assisting with these essential needs, adult day care centers also provide safety and help their participants combat social isolation.
My own mother wanted to live independently as long as she could. She didn't want to give up her home and she was resistant to the idea of having caregivers come to her home. We enrolled her in an Adult Day Services program, and she loved it. She made friends and looked forward to going. She described it as "going to camp."
To manage these centers efficiently, adult day care software is an important tool. This software tracks participant attendance, activities and meals, as well as staff shifts, and transportation. Perhaps most
importantly, it keeps family members connected to their loved one's care and keeps centers compliant.
What's the difference between Adult Day Care and Adult Day Services?
Before diving deeper, there's some terminology to clarify. The "industry" generally refers to itself as Adult Day Services instead of Adult Day Care. The reason is that in general the first mental picture that people conjure up when thinking of "Day Care" is child day care for toddlers. Instead of saying that an older person is going to day care, it is considered to be more dignified to to say that the person is participating in Adult Day Services.
What's the difference between Adult Day Care and Day Habilitation (aka DayHab)?
Another term that you may hear is DayHab or Day Habilitation. The difference between DayHab and Adult Day Care is that Day Habilitation is the term generally used for providing services to people experiencing intellectual or developmental disabilities. The more important distinction is that disability services are aimed to assist people with disabilities to lead their best life despite their limitations. Thus, DayHab generally requires the creation of independent living plans, setting goals or desired outcomes, and designing and executing activities and strategies to help participants achieve their goals. The software for DayHab needs to assist the center in documenting the services that they're providing.
Core Features of Adult Day Care Software
Adult day care software should provide the following capabilities:
- Maintenance of Participant Profiles: This includes basic demographics, scheduling and payment information.
- Activities and Participation Documentation: A center's activities are what differentiates them from competition. By planning and tracking, the software also is able to keep family members in the loop on their loved-one's care
- Billing and Invoicing: Automate billing processes and generate invoices. Advanced Adult Day Care software will also have the ability to send bills, send claims to payers like Medicaid, collect payments via credit cards or bank transfers (ACH payments) from consumers, and when there are government payers, to process the remittance.
- In-Center Communication: By having a centralized system, staff members can look up information about participants, schedules, transportation, staff shifts, billing, payroll and more.
- Family Communication: Being able to keep family members connected to their loved-ones day care participation is a strong way to differentiate
- Nutrition and Meal Planning: As mentioned, providing meals is an important component of a day program and it ensures that participants are eating well. There are also programs that subsidize meals and this documentation is critical for participation.
- Compliance: Sadly, there is a history of fraud in adult day services. Although this doesn't yet apply to day care services, there was legislation passed for the "near neighbor" industry of home care that requires electronic proof of care delivery. This will likely be required for day services soon.
Benefits of Implementing Adult Day Care Software
A researcher who I met at the National Adult Day Services Association (NADSA) conference told me that fewer than 40% of the day service centers in the US have Adult Day Care Software and instead they track things manually on paper or in Excel. Benefits of implementing Adult Day Care Software are as follows:
- Electronic Billing and Payroll: Adult Day Services staff wants to focus their energy on activity programming, recruiting and retaining great staff, and marketing their center. Having software that tracks attendance, and staff shifts automates billing and payroll so staff can save time here.
- Proof of Service Delivery / Compliance: As mentioned above, having electronic records removes doubt of fraud, which is very important in the delivery of services for seniors and disabled people. Also, I truly believe that in a short time the Adult Day Services industry will be required to follow standards of proving compliance (like EVV in Home Care).
- Family Communications: When potential participants (or more likely, their daughters) ask you what makes your center different, having software lets you keep the family connected. Knowing that they have visibility is a strong reason for them to choose you.
Types of Adult Day Care Software
There are really only a few types of Adult Day Care Software. They are tiered by sophistication and specialization as described in the table below:
| Adult Day Care Software Type | Description |
|---|---|
| Home grown systems using Excel, Paper documents, Email and QuickBooks | Many centers have paper sign in logs and no activity tracking, then they do billing and payroll in an Excel spreadsheet and send invoices through QuickBooks. Sadly, as I write this in 2024 this is the primary solution |
| Adult Day Care Compliance Software | There are systems that have a database of participants and capture arrivals and departures so that they can calculate bills electronically |
| Day Habilitation (DayHab) Software | As described above, Day Habilitation (DayHab for short) requires advanced care planning and documentation features. Ankota's software significantly reduces documentation time |
| Adult Day Care Software for the Future | These systems are focusing on complete management of Adult Day Services, including all of the compliance features, plus an excellent family communications app, business intelligence for growth, routing for transportation, and advanced ability to plan and document activities (including complicated DayHab documentation). Ankota is one of the few providers developing Adult Day Software for the Future. |
Selecting the Right Adult Day Care Software for Your Center
When selecting adult day care software, consider the following factors:
- Are you committed? While there are extensive benefits to using Adult Day Care software, there will be some growing pains to move from a manual system to automation. Make sure that your ready. You should also have a team member who is reasonable tech savvy who can be assigned to take this on
- Compatibility with your payers: If you bill Medicaid, Managed Care Organizations (MCOs) or other payers who require claims to be submitted in a specific way, make sure that your software is compatible with those payers. Also, if for example your participants (or their family members) are currently getting bills via QuickBooks or another accounting software, look for software that can integrate with QuickBooks (you don't want to have to "retype")
- Specialization: If you are providing DayHab services for people with Intellectual and/or Developmental Disabilities, look for Adult Day Care Software that is optimized for DayHab. Also, if for example you provide a "medical model" adult day care service and need to document things like medications, make sure that your software has that capability.
- Modern Web-Based Software: You probably use modern software on the web even if it's Gmail, Spotify, or Instagram. Business software might not be as flashy as those, but on the other hand, it shouldn't look like the 1990s. Make sure it's attractive and fast and easy to use
- Partnership: Look for a vendor partner who will help your team get on board with the software and that has a support team who lets you communicate in multiple ways like phone, email and chat. Be aware that some software vendors only accept email or make it complicated to submit a ticket on a portal and then they don't get back to you quickly.
- Value: Cost is always a factor and adult day care software should be a minor expense for your organization, but all of the factors above are more important than just choosing the least expensive alternative
Challenges in Adult Day Care Software
While adult day care software offers many benefits, there are also challenges to consider:
- Change Management: Moving from a manual system that you don't even think about, or moving from a basic system to a system designed for the future will have its ups and downs. There will be times that you may question why you're doing it and thinking that it's getting harder rather than getting easier. This is why the first item I wrote above about choosing the right software is deciding whether you're ready and having a team member who can be the primary liaison to the software vendor.
- User Adoption: This is really an extension of change management, but I'm calling it out separately because even when your team leader is ready to roll the system out to the broader team, they will have resistance. You can mitigate this by sharing the progress (e.g., give little demos during staff meetings) and be sure to allocate time to help the staff adapt
- Integration: Connecting your Adult Day Care software to other systems like accounting or payroll or electronic claims processing can be tough. The key is to start early and make sure everything is connected before it's urgent. For example, don't try it for the first time on the day that bills need to go out or payroll needs to be processed.
Conclusion
From my heart, I truly believe that Adult Day Services will be the savior of elderly care over the next 20 to 30 years. The reasons are that 1) more than anything, older people fear giving up their freedom and don't want to move to a nursing home, and 2) While home care is an option, there's a severe shortage of caregivers and the prices are rising. Adult Day Care centers allow 1 staff member (serving as a caregiver) to support 6 or 7 clients at once, plus participants in Adult Day Care centers make friends, become active, and get a good meal each day that they're at the center. Thank you for what you do by providing Adult Day Services.
I hope that I've created a compelling case that Adult Day Care Software will be highly beneficial and will positively differentiate your center: it will simplify your billing and payroll, it will essentially "automate" your policies and procedures, and it has the potential (with the right software) to give you the business intelligence you need to grow and thrive, and to keep families connected to their loved one's care.
If we can be helpful in any way, please ask! Lastly, we'd be honored to show you the Ankota Adult Day Care Software.
Ankota's mission is to enable the Heroes who keep older and disabled people living at home to focus on care because we take care of the tech. If you need software for home care, EVV, I/DD Services, Adult Day Care centers, or Caregiver Recruiting, please Contact Ankota.
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