Overview

Private Duty Nursing Home Care is skilled care provided one-on-one by a Private Duty Nurse (RN or LPN) to medically fragile adult and pediatric patients in the comfort of their homes. A patient's unique and complex health challenges require personalizing care, tailoring it to the physician-ordered Plan of Care. Private Duty Nursing home care is different from traditional home health as the service is typically provided in longer shifts, anywhere from 8 to 24 hours over a long period.

Unique, complex, and demanding requirements of Private Duty Nursing pose many challenges to home care agencies providing Private Duty Nursing Care. Shift-based hourly scheduling and finding nurses with matching skills and availability can be difficult for agencies. Clinical documentation requirements, such as dynamic Medication Administration, Treatment Administration, and continuous care documentation, are unique and challenging. Changes in medications, treatments, and care plans not communicated in real-time may lead to a decline in the quality of care and patient safety. Meeting complex billing requirements for Private Duty Nursing Care to Medicaid and other payers will pose many challenges.

Many Private Duty Nursing Home Care agencies use home care software platforms designed for visit-based home health agencies for Private Duty Nursing services. This approach leads to many operational inefficiencies for Private Duty Nursing agencies. Home Care Agencies providing Private Duty Nursing services should adopt software that will meet complex and demanding requirements.

This blog will discuss some of the critical features required in the software to manage Private Duty Nursing Home Care Agencies efficiently.

Scheduling

Shift-based hourly scheduling and finding matching employees pose many challenges to scheduling for Private Duty Nursing, especially with labor shortages for nurses. The following are some of the key features that will help PDN agencies.

Ease of use and Intelligent Matching: Ease of use is the key to effective schedule management. The ability to view all open shifts in one screen, match available employees based on employee availability, skills, and patient preferences, and schedule the employee on the same screen will be critical. Access to all the information the scheduler needs will improve the efficiency of the scheduler.

Offer Shifts and Publish Shifts: Schedulers should be able to offer an open shift to one or more matching employees right from the scheduling screen. Offering shifts will eliminate the need to contact employees for available shifts. The ability to publish available shifts to matching employees through the employee portal will be beneficial. Offering and publishing open shifts will create a readily available pool of employees for a shift and improve the efficiency of schedulers. This will reduce uncovered shifts, improve employee productivity, and increase revenue.

Split Shifts: Quite often, Private Duty Nursing services are provided in multiple settings, such as schools and community centers. etc., during one shift. Payers may be different for each split shift. The ability to accommodate split shifts with one set of clinical documents will significantly improve the efficiency of schedulers, clinicians, and billers.

Overtime and Shift Differentials: Home Health Care Agencies usually spend about 60% of their revenue on employee wages. With hourly and shift schedules, overtime and shift differential costs can quickly cut into the agency's bottom line if not managed effectively. Home Care Software should proactively notify employees employee overtime and shift differential costs and their impact on margins.

Configurable Validations: Proactive alerts and validations, such as duplicate schedules, overtime, etc., will alert the schedulers about potential issues at the point of scheduling. Home Care Scheduling software should allow the agencies to configure the validations based on their needs. Proactively detecting and resolving problems will improve employee satisfaction and productivity.

Clinical Documentation

Caring for patients with complex medical conditions is challenging in itself. Documenting while providing care adds another difficulty for the nurse providing skilled care at home. The right technology and software platform can ease the burden on nurses providing care.

Continuous Care Documentation: For patients with complex medical conditions, nurses will provide multiple types of care, such as vitals, measurements, medication administration, treatment administration, vent settings, etc., during a shift. Software platforms should make it easy for nurses to document care on one screen during the shift without jumping to different screens.

Dynamic eMAR/eTAR: Private Duty Nursing patients usually have many medications and treatments to be administered during a shift. Software should make it easier for nurses to quickly identify the medications and treatments due and document them during administration. Proactive alerts notifying nurses of missed medications and treatment will improve patient safety.

Personalization: Unique and complex medical conditions of Private Duty Nursing patients require personalization of care plans based on the orders from the physician. Personalizing care plans and care flow sheets for each patient will improve clinical outcomes, satisfaction, and employee productivity.

Alerts and Validations: Proactive alerts for missed medications, treatments, and interventions will help nurses to keep up with care and documentation during the shift and improve the quality of care. Configurable validations for the clinical note will enable agencies to improve the completeness and quality of documentation at the point of care.

Learn more on Clinical and POC feature for private duty nursing home care software

Communication

Communication is critical in improving collaboration, quality of care, and compliance for Private Duty Home Care agencies. PDN Agencies need the ability to communicate securely, effectively, and efficiently to ensure the highest quality and level of service.

Secure Messaging: An integrated, HIPAA Compliant, and internal messaging application are essential to improve communication within the agency that is effective. With an internal application, the messages are only for users, employees, and patients. The message's contents stay within the application and are saved in the database. Nurses should be able to access and initiate messages from key data entry screens.

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. It will be essential to record some of these conversations, attach them to patients and employees, and make them available to clinicians at the point of care.

Patient Care Changes: During patient care, there will be changes to the care based on how the treatments are working. The physician may prescribe new medications, while current medications may be changed or discontinued. When the patient's condition improves or changes, appropriate changes will be made to the care plan and treatments. These changes should reflect at the point of care in real-time. A software platform should push these changes to the point of care in real-time.

Wholistic View of the patient: Clinicians need to have a holistic view of the patient at the point of care. They should be able to access patient information, schedules, medications, care plan, and past clinical notes without jumping through many screens. This information should be available before starting the shift or during the shift. A software platform should provide easy access to patient clinical information.

Portals: Integrated Family and Employee Portals will be beneficial for communicating with the patient, the patient's family, and employees. These portals will provide access to schedules and other information for patients, patient's families, and employees. A software platform should have integrated portal options, not third-party options.

Care Coordination and Communication Features of private duty Home care software

Billing and Authorization

Private Duty Nursing Home Care Agencies work with multiple payers – Medicaid, Managed Care Plans, Commercial Insurance, and Private Pay. Agencies will need flexible and configurable software to meet the disparate requirements of payers.

Claim Scrubber: Configurable claim scrubber will be essential to validate claims based on the requirements of individual payers before submitting the claims. Sending clean claims will significantly improve reimbursement time and cash flow.

Configurable Formats: Software should be able to configure the claims formats to meet payer individual data requirements. This will significantly reduce manual efforts to prepare and submit claims for payers.

Conclusion

Private Duty Nursing Home Care Agencies should look for software with functions and features that will meet the unique requirements of private duty nursing care. CareVoyant understands the demanding needs to manage Private Duty Home Care Agencies providing skilled care for medically fragile patients while supporting other services like Non-Medical Personal Care, HCBS, and Home Health. CareVoyant Home Care software platform offers the right technology and tools to help a Private Duty Home Care Agency effectively manage the agency and improve operational efficiency and the agency's bottom line.

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.