Home Care Services include a wide range of skilled and non-medical services provided at patients' homes or where the patient is living. Home Care Services enable patients to live independently and safely at home instead of in a Skilled Nursing Facility or a Group Home. Providing care at home reduces the overall cost of care while improving patient satisfaction and outcomes. Home Care Services can help patients who:

need long-term assistance with Activities of Daily Living,
are recovering from short hospitalization, and
have special needs and ongoing disabilities

Nurses, Therapists, Medical Social Workers, Home Health Aides, and Personal Care Workers provide long-term or short-term care for patients based on their needs.

Millions of patients receive home care every year. Providing quality patient care is critical for home care agencies for patient satisfaction and growth while complying with regulatory requirements. Improving the quality and effectiveness of patient care is a collaborative effort of the entire organization - requiring both caregivers and administrative personnel to collaborate.

Importance of Care Coordination tools in Home Health Care Software

What is Care Coordination?

Care Coordination is the deliberate organization of patient care activities among all participants (including the patient and the patient's family) involved in a patient's care to facilitate the appropriate delivery of home healthcare services. Organizing care involves marshaling personnel and other resources to carry out all required patient care activities. It is often more effective to exchange information among participants responsible for different aspects of care.

The perspective of care coordination might vary based on the participant involved in a patient's care.

Patient/Family Perspective

Patients, their families, and other caregivers experience failures in care coordination, particularly at transition points. For patients receiving home health care services, transition usually occurs between shifts or when the patient goes to a hospital or a physician for additional care. Effective care coordination will significantly reduce the effort required for the patient, the patient's family, or caregivers to continue delivering care for the patient.

Home Care Clinicians' Perspective

Clinicians or health care professionals notice failures in care coordination when they need access to all the information necessary to continue patient care leading to poor quality of care and poor health outcomes. Effective care coordination will significantly reduce the effort required by clinicians to continue providing quality care for the patient.

Administration Perspective

Administrators notice failure in care coordination at the points of timely authorization, effective use of limited clinical resources, increased cost, and decline in patient satisfaction. Effective care coordination will improve operational efficiency by minimizing non-billable time, reducing care costs, and improving patient and employee satisfaction.

Home Health Care Agencies should develop effective processes and select the right home healthcare software tools for care coordination to improve the quality of care, patient satisfaction, employee satisfaction, operational efficiency, and the agency's bottom line.

Care Coordination Tools for Home Health Care Agencies

Care coordination can take many forms for Home Health Care Agencies. These care coordination activities include communicating the late arrival of the caregiver, exchanging relevant information between shifts, providing information to patients or families for continuing care, communicating medication and treatment changes in real time, etc. Communication among participants in delivering and managing care for a patient is the most critical component of care coordination.

Home Health Care Agencies should develop processes and use a software platform that provides multiple care coordination tools that are easy to use to improve quality of care, patient satisfaction, operational efficiency, and compliance. Home Health Care Agencies should take a holistic view of the care coordination needs of the agency before settling on the processes and the technology platform.

Care Coordination Tools for Home Health Care Agencies

The following are some care coordination tools to help home care agencies develop an effective care coordination process.

eFax and Direct Messages

Home care agencies face challenges in their day-to-day operations: Sending a plan of care and change orders and receiving signed documents back. Integrated eFax functions to send and receive the plan of care, change orders, and clinical notes will significantly improve this process's efficiency, compliance, and timely claims billing.

Direct Messages will enable home care agencies to communicate with physicians, healthcare professionals, and organizations by sending and receiving discharge summaries, clinical summaries, and clinical notes with other healthcare professionals.

eFax and Direct Messages will facilitate the exchange of patient information and significantly improve Care Coordination activities for home health care agencies.

Secure Messaging

An integrated, HIPAA Compliant, and internal messaging application is essential to improve care coordination within the agency. The messages are only for users, employees, patients, and families with an internal application. This communication tool will help agencies securely communicate with all participants of patient care while adhering to HIPAA regulations.

Communication Logs

During an episode of care, it is normal to have conversations with patients, employees, the care team, and external healthcare professionals regarding patient care, scheduling preferences, and billing options. Recording these conversations and attaching them to patients and employees will be essential. Communication Logs should be available at the point of care. These communication logs will help improve the quality of care for a patient.

Some of these conversations may have confidential information. A software platform should create a log and provide a unified view of all communications in one place. It should also include an option to limit access to these logs based on employees' roles in maintaining the patient's privacy.

Schedule Reminders

Options to send schedule reminders to patients and employees the day before the visit or shift will reduce the potential for missed visits or shifts. Schedule reminders are essential for Private Duty Home Care, Private Duty Nursing, and Non-Medical Home Care Agencies with high volumes of patients and shifts. Reducing missing visits and rescheduling missed visits are critical components of care coordination activities.

Patient Care Changes

During patient care, care plans can change based on how the treatment works. Clinicians may prescribe new medications or modify/discontinue the current medications. When the patient's condition improves or changes, clinicians can and will make appropriate changes to the care plan and treatments. These care plan changes should reflect the point of care in real-time.

Communicating treatment changes to the point of care in real-time is a critical care coordination activity. Real-time communication improves patient safety, health outcome, and satisfaction.

Holistic View of the patient

Clinicians need a holistic view of the patient at the point of care. They should be able to access patient information, schedules, medications, care plans, and past clinical notes without navigating multiple screens or calling the office. This information should be available before starting the visit/shift or during the visit/shift. Having access to all a patient's clinical information will help a clinician provide quality care and improve care coordination. Home Health Care software platforms should provide easy access to patient clinical information at the point of care.

Portals

Integrated Family and Employee Portals will be beneficial in communicating with the patient, the patient's family, and employees. These portals will provide patients, families, and employees access to schedules and other information. Portals for families, employees, and patients will help agencies communicate care activities to the care team and the family. Home Care Agencies must choose a software platform with integrated portal options, not third-party options.

Schedule Monitor

Monitoring schedules in real-time will be essential to ensure visits/shifts start on time, all the assigned tasks are completed, and end on time. Discrepancies can be detected and communicated proactively to the care team, patient, and family. Schedule Monitor will benefit Private Duty Home Care, Private Duty Nursing, and Non-Medical agencies with a high volume of visits/shifts. Monitoring shifts/visits in real-time will significantly improve the quality of care, patient safety, and satisfaction.

Conclusion

Home Health Care software platforms should provide the necessary care coordination tools to improve the quality of care, patient satisfaction, compliance, and employee satisfaction.

CareVoyant for Home Care is an integrated, cloud-based software platform with easy-to-use care coordination tools for Home Health Care Agencies offering multiple services – Private Duty Home Care, Private Duty Nursing, Non-Medical, Personal Care, HCBS, Pediatric Home Care, and Home Health - under ONE Patient and ONE Employee making it a Single System of Record.

About CareVoyant:

CareVoyant is a leading provider of cloud-based integrated enterprise-scale home health care software that can support all home-based services under ONE Software, ONE Patient, and ONE Employee, making it a Single System of Record. We support all home based services, including Home Care, Private Duty Nursing, Private Duty Non-Medical, Home and Community Based Services (HCBS), Home Health, Pediatric Home Care, and Outpatient Therapy at Home.

CareVoyant functions – Intake, Authorization Management, Scheduling, Clinical with Mobile options, eMAR/eTAR, Electronic Visit Verification (EVV), Billing/AR, Secure Messaging, Notification, Reporting, and Dashboards – streamline workflow, meet regulatory requirements, improve quality of care, optimize reimbursement, improve operational efficiency and agency bottom line.

For more information, please visit CareVoyant.com or call us at 1-888-463-6797.