Home Care Software (from Ankota)

Most home care agencies refer to the people they care for as "clients," but other terms such as participants, consumers, members, patients and even "friends" are used. 

Similarly, most homecare agencies refer to their workers as "caregivers." but other terms include attendants, home health aides (HHAs), Certified Nursing Assistants (CNAs), clinicians, and even "workers." 

The key features of home healthcare client and caregiver management are as follows:

• Home Care Client Demographics and contact management

  • Most home care agencies refer to the people they care for as clients (as opposed to patients), but other terms are used as well such as consumers, participants and members. The basic information you need is name, date of birth, address, phone number and other basic information which might vary based on your services. Your software should use your terminology and enable the “user defined fields” that you need.
  • Home Care Consumer Documentation: Next you will want an electronic document vault for agreements, consents and any other documentation that you receive or track based on your home care policies and procedures.
  • Client Contact Information: In many cases, you work with other family members, neighbors and other individuals in the support circle of your clients. You’ll want to track these contacts and their communication preferences, plus other information such as when one or more family members receive and pay their bills.
  • Referral information: Another great practice is to keep track of how the client learned about your agency and/or who referred them to you.
  • Lastly, you will want to associate members of your team with the client such as their care coordinator, sales rep and their regular group of caregivers

• Care Plan Software for managing Individualized plans of care:

  • The care plan (sometimes called plan of care, or task list) is a task based list of activities, is at the heart of care management. In addition to companionship and respite for family members, usually there are specific Activities of Daily Living (ADLs) that the person needs management with. You should list specific tasks but also be able to specify how the client likes the task to be done and how often (when do they like their bath, how do they get in and out, do they need a chair in the shower, etc.). You should also be able to specify the specific days or frequencies of the tasks.
  • Advanced uses of care plans: Some agencies use tasks to identify changes in client condition that can lead to a hospitalization or they use plans of care to get an assessment that can be shared with family members.

• Caregiver Management Software:

  • Caregiver is the most common term used to refer to home care workers, but plenty of other names might be used like CNAs, HHAs, clinicians, nurses, etc. You’ll want software that uses your terminology.
  • Most agencies count on their home care software to also be their HR system. Here you’ll track caregiver demographics, contact information, hiring information like when they applied, documents they submitted like resumes or job applications, when they were hired and their pay rate(s).
  • Caregiver compliance: You may be required to have information on file (especially for credentialed workers) like Covid vaccine records, CPR training date, license and more. This should include both documentation and expiration dates (and the system should remind you and the caregivers well in advance of expiration)

• Caregiver Mobile App

  • Your caregiver mobile app, that should run on any recent iPhone or Android phone will be your caregiver’s hub for clocking-in and clocking out, but it can also provide much more functionality like a calendar of open and completed shifts, an ability to scan or upload HR documents, and in an advanced system like Ankota it will also have a way where caregivers can chat with the office and can review and request open shifts.
  • While most care providers use a mobile app, alternatives should be offered such as a dial-in “telephony” system for clocking-in and clocking-out, or an alternative way of reporting their shifts.

• Home Care Billing Software (also known as Homecare Software for Billing, Home health billing software, eBilling software)

  • Home Care Billing software, also known as Homecare Software for Billing, Home health billing software, eBilling software,
  • Billing is the critical function that results in your business’ revenue generation. You should be able to produce a beautiful and accurate invoice that reflects your branding.
  • Clear Bills: Your software should alert you if there are problems with completed shifts (too short, too long, wrong location, forgot to clock out, etc.). Further, your software should make the caregivers fix their errors and gather a client signature when they forget to clock out or make a mistake.
  • While many home care agencies have straightforward billing (hours times an agreed upon rate), there may be special needs (different rates per caregiver or role, overtime, reimbursement for miles driven to run errands or take the client to appointments, overtime, holiday pay and more.
  • Bill transmission: You should be able to send bills automatically (such as via email) or some home care businesses like to push their invoices into quickbooks. But you should also make sure that you can send bills to the family members who pay or to long-term-care-insurance.
  • eBilling: Also called electronic billing, is a great way to bill and collect payments. A pro-tip is to accept bank-transfers for payment, because credit card companies charge fees that average 3% of your revenue. If you must take credit card payments, your system should be able to change a service fee.
  • Receivable tracking: Sending the bill is great, but unless you do it elsewhere such as in Quickbooks, you should also have a way to track your incoming payments.

• Home Care Payroll Software (also known as home healthcare payroll software, caregiver payroll software, and homecare payroll software):

  • Your billing and payroll should both be automatically generated based on the completion of home care visits, and should handle the case described next:
  • Regular and overtime pay: Pro-tip is that most agencies try to avoid paying overtime unless they’re also able to charge for it, but nonetheless, your software needs to be able to calculate it.
  • Travel pay: Most agencies, based on labor laws, pay for travel between home care visits, but they consider their initial drive and their final drive home to be a commute and they don’t pay for it.
  • Errand miles and other reimbursement: Some home care businesses allow their caregivers to run errands such as getting groceries, picking up prescriptions or driving the client to appointments. And then they reimburse the caregiver for their mileage.
  • Important: Ankota’s home care software calculates the pay amounts for your care staff, but most companies contract with another payroll software to extract the money from your bank account, send checks and file/pay city, state and federal taxes.