By Monica Pasupathy
Discover the essential criteria for selecting the right Pediatric Private Duty Nursing Software. Make informed choices to enhance efficiency and elevate pediatric care.
This blog will discuss how the right software for pediatric private duty nursing agencies can optimize agency management and improve bottom line.
Introduction
An estimated 14 million, or 1 in 5, children in the United States have special healthcare needs. These children require in-home care for chronic physical, developmental, behavioral, or emotional conditions. Most in-home care for individuals aged 0 – 17 will be provided at the patient’s home through Pediatric Private Duty Nursing Home Care agencies.
Providing care for children at home poses unique agency-level challenges. Patient intake and authorizations can be more challenging than when treating an adult. The clinical documentation process can be hampered when more care coordination is needed for pediatric patients. Scheduling becomes an issue when demand for pediatric private duty services is high. Adding to this challenge is the need to recruit, train, and retain qualified pediatric private duty nurses.
The right Pediatric Home Care Software can address the unique challenges that Pediatric Private Duty Nursing poses.
Intake & Authorization
The best Pediatric Private Duty Nursing Software will centralize the intake process by incorporating all authorization, scheduling, clinical, and financial information under one patient record. Pediatric Private Duty Nurses and providing agencies should benefit from having a consolidated view of the patient on one screen.
The right Pediatric Private Duty Nursing Software will use the following features to make the intake process more efficient:
Single Patient Record: Establish a single patient record for one or multiple lines of service.
Consolidated View: Provide a consolidated view of authorization, scheduling, clinical, and financial information under one patient record.
Integrated Authorization Management: Authorization Management functions integrated with scheduling and billing will prevent scheduling outside authorized limits and reduce non-billable shifts.
Default Information: Intake screen should include default information, wherever possible, to minimize data entry errors.
The intake process can be simplified with the right Private Duty Home Care Software. Pediatric private duty nurses can especially benefit from a streamlined intake process so they can access all information before the first visit even begins, improving their ability to administer care for their patients.
Scheduling
Running an efficient home care business often hinges on scheduling. By utilizing clinicians time efficiently, you can improve your financial performance and both patient and employee satisfaction.
Scheduling Pediatric Private Duty Nurses has an added layer of complexity. Pediatric Private Duty Nurses face longer shifts and increased patient preference on account of the relationship the clinician may have with the child. These factors, barring the usual complexities of travel time, costs, and skill, can make scheduling for pediatric in-home care more complex and demanding. The right private duty home care software can be immensely helpful to effectively manage schedules through:
Ease of Use: Manage complex and ever-changing scheduling requirements with integrated and easy to navigate scheduling functions.
Intelligent Matching: Match employees and patients based on skills, travel time, availability, and preferences. This will help schedulers to quickly find the right clinicians to fill shifts.
Publish Shift Offers and Available Shifts: Publish shift offers and available shifts to employees. This will provide a pool of employees willing to take the shift.
Overtime Management: Ability to identify and manage overtime for employees during scheduling. This will help agencies to significantly reduce overtime expenses.
Patient and Employee Satisfaction: Improve patient and employee satisfaction by minimizing duplicate and uncovered shifts.
Improving scheduling efficiency for Pediatric Private Duty Nursing is crucial to running a thriving Private Duty Home Care Agency.
Clinical Documentation & Care Coordination
Pediatric Home Care shifts generally require more from Private Duty Nurses. Just one shift involves clinical documentation at every step, measuring vitals, collecting data, and administering medications throughout. Undoubtedly, care coordination is intertwined just as deeply as documentation. When a patient’s care plan changes, having those alterations on hand at the start of a visit streamlines the documentation process.
In pediatric care, treatment alterations can be more common as a child develops, or their condition changes. Private duty nurses can benefit from an intuitive clinical documentation process, and integrated care coordination tools. The right Home Care Software with the following core features can streamline the nurse’s care flow:
Ease of Use: Clinicians should be able to stay on one screen and complete several aspects of care during the shift – Vitals, Measurements, eMAR, eTAR etc.
Electronic Care Flow Sheet: Ability to personalize and capture care flow sheet – Vent, Seizure Log, Cough Log etc.
Electronic Medication and Treatment Administration (eMAR, eTAR): Ability to document Medication Administration and Treatment Administration during the shift.
Real Time Updates to POC: Availability of medication, treatment, and care plan changes at Point of Care in real time.
Real Time Alerts: Provide real time alerts during the shift for missed medications, treatments, vitals, or measurements.
Simplifying private duty nurses’ clinical documentation and care coordination process allows the nurse to spend more time actively caring for their patients and less time collecting data, improving both patient and agency outcomes.
Billing
Funding for Pediatric Home Care can come from Medicaid, Medicaid Managed Care, Private Insurance and Private Pay. These funding sources have disparate authorization, reimbursement rates and documentation requirements. Managing revenue for Pediatric Home Care agencies is like navigating a complex maze.
The right Private Duty Home Care Software will use these features to refine revenue cycle management:
Medicaid and Medicaid Managed Care: Understanding and having the ability to manage states’ Medicaid programs, compliance requirements, authorization processes, and reimbursement rates.
Private Insurance: Options to meet various formatting and documentation requirements for commercial insurances.
Prior authorization: Ability to manage authorization processes and integrate authorizations with scheduling. This will significantly reduce missed authorizations and unbillable shifts.
Fee Schedules: Ability to maintain fee schedules for the funding sources. This will help agencies to know and manage true accounts receivable from payers.
Collection Tools: The ability to set up collection rules by payers will help agencies to manage and follow through unpaid claims for various payers.
An integrated and refined billing process will help agencies meet surveyor requirements, remain compliant, and create a visible path to revenue growth by highlighting both efficiencies and inefficiencies.
EVV
State-selected EVV aggregators often do not have the breadth to support skilled services like Private Duty Nursing. Agencies operating in multiple states will especially be troubled by inefficiencies and increased costs, as they would have to use different EVV solutions in each state. This could lead to silos of clinical and financial information to sift through.
The right Private Duty Home Care Software will provide one EVV solution that should:
Be Integrated: An integrated Home Care Software for agency management will keep all clinical, financial, scheduling, and EVV information in one place, making managing payers or any other changes efficient, and improving the cash flow for the agency.
Consider Workflow: An integrated software platform that makes EVV part of the regular workflow will be the most efficient way to implement EVV in a home care agency.
Interface with Aggregators: Using software that interfaces with all aggregators or managed care payers will help maintain the continuity of operations.
Support Multiple Options: An effective home care software solution should be able to support multiple options to collect EVV data, such as smart phone GPS, telephony, or fixed visit verification.
Pediatric private duty nurses would appreciate a quick, efficient way to collect EVV data during the visit so they can spend more time caring for their patients, and less time logging location data. Private duty home care agencies will appreciate the simplicity of data collection that an integrated home care software can bring to the table.
Training
The requirements of pediatric home care are quite different from visit-based home health care. Finding qualified Private Duty Nurses, training, and retaining poses an ongoing challenge to Private Duty Home Care Agencies. Providing the right tools for private duty nurses will help reduce overall training time and improve employee satisfaction.
The right Private Duty Home Care Software should flow with the clinician’s training and assist with shift-based, skilled documentation using these features:
Ease of Use: Simple and easy to use communication and documentation tools will be essential to improve employee satisfaction.
Communication: Messaging function within the software that is easily accessible from the documentation screen will improve inter-office communication.
Alerts: Alerts for new messages and upcoming clinical tasks during the shift will assist clinicians with their care for the patient.
All-in-One Software: Integrated from start to finish to improve workflow before, during, and after the visit.
Reducing the time spent on onboarding by using all-in-one, integrated software that is easy to navigate can improve clinician satisfaction and help private duty home care agencies retain valuable pediatric private duty nurses.
Conclusion
The challenges faced by Pediatric Private Duty Nursing agencies are multifaceted and demand tailored software solutions to ensure top-quality patient care, agency efficiency, and financial sustainability. The right Home Care Software for private duty nursing agencies will streamline the intake process by consolidating authorizations, scheduling, clinical, and financial information into one patient record. Private duty nurses can benefit from Home Care Software that makes care coordination, ease of use, real-time updates, and personalized electronic care flow sheets central to the clinical documentation process. Efficient scheduling that addresses the complexities of longer shifts, patient preferences, and skill matching optimizes the private duty nurse’s time, reduces costs, and enhances patient and employee satisfaction.
The right software for pediatric private duty nursing should navigate billing complexities seamlessly with an integrated platform, thus paving the way for revenue growth. An integrated EVV process should consider workflow, interfacing with aggregators, and supporting multiple options for data collection. Finally, employee training and onboarding challenges should effectively be addressed through Home Care Software that is easy to use because it integrates communication, alerts, and clinical documentation tools. By minimizing training time and enhancing workflow, the right software will increase employee satisfaction and aid in the retention of qualified pediatric private duty nurses.
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.
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