Staffing and Scheduling Challenges in Home Healthcare

Home healthcare agencies face numerous workforce challenges, from labor shortages to building efficient shifts.

The healthcare industry is feeling the effects of America's staffing shortages. The home health business model, with its reliance on casual labor, is particularly vulnerable to this.

At the same time, an aging population is driving heightened demand for in-home managed care. While this represents an opportunity for home care agencies, it adds additional staffing pressure.

Organizations can try to compete on salary and benefits packages, but the cost of this quickly adds up. Workforce spending already accounts for over 40% of healthcare providers' expenses, and increases in labor costs will eat further into profit margins.

With patients in diverse locations, a poorly designed schedule can also lead to higher transport-related and labor expenses. Building a schedule that works for clients, staff and your organization's bottom line can be tricky.

The Benefits of Improving Staffing and Scheduling for Homecare Agencies

Staffing and scheduling might represent a challenge for agencies, but when you get it right, your organization will reap the benefits.

You'll improve your profit margins by reducing the costs associated with recruiting and retaining staff. This is in addition to the decreased labor costs required to deliver clients’ services.

By keeping your care team happy, you'll also improve motivation levels. In turn, this can reduce turnover rates and lead to a higher quality of care.

Improving your workforce management can create a virtuous HR cycle. Satisfied employees are often the best referral sources for new employees. They also create a positive workplace culture, leading to informal mentorship and better retention.

How a Home Care Software Solution Improves Staffing and Scheduling

The right software can help your agency handle staffing challenges and create better schedules. Here's how home care software can support your company’s workforce management:

Building Schedules Around Caregivers' Availability

Whether you're scheduling private duty, point-of-care testing, or in-home physiotherapy, home care providers should take caregivers' preferred shift times into account. This will help you reduce absenteeism and improve employee retention rates.

Home health software can support you in doing this. Simply invite your team to set their preferred work hours via your software's caregiver app. The software will then enable you to create schedules that help your team achieve their desired work-life balance.

Reducing Time Spent on Scheduling

Home care scheduling software offers significant time savings for your back office staff as well as your caregivers.

Without software, manually building weekly schedules can take hours. User-friendly home care software, however, can help agencies more effectively manage their schedules.

Your team can use the software to set up recurring and team shifts so that schedules can be built in minutes. And with per-patient views of the schedules, you can quickly check that everyone's care needs are being met.

Making Time-Tracking, Billing, and Payroll Easier

Agencies can waste significant labor hours on billing and payroll, especially if you're doing these manually or using multiple software packages with poor integrations.

Home care software provides a solution to this issue. It can auto-generate invoices from electronic time-tracking data and integrate seamlessly with your accounting and payroll software. It also gives you access to accurate financial data for better business decisions.

By simplifying these processes, you'll cut down your labor costs and avoid costly compliance issues. Plus, your caregivers can rest assured that they'll be paid correctly and on time.

Improving Communication

Opting for mobile-ready software will make internal communication easier. Make sure that there's a web-based software interface for administrative tasks and, ideally, a mobile app for your care team.

Combined with a cloud-based software system, this will ensure that your staff can access their schedules and patient documentation via their mobile devices. In turn, you can avoid miscommunication and reduce the likelihood of shift no-shows.

5 Tips for Improving Staffing and Scheduling with Home Care Agency Management Software

1. Make sure your team knows the deadlines for setting their shift availability via your home healthcare software.

2. Create an approved care staff list for each patient in your healthcare software so that it's easy to create shifts and find cover. Base these lists on your workers' locations and qualifications.

3. Set up staff document expiry notifications. By updating documentation ahead of time, you can avoid having to temporarily take a staff member off the schedule.

4. Ask your care team to attach their proof of expenses to the shift record so that your software can auto-generate correct invoices and payroll.

5. Set an acceptable range for automatic verification of GPS logs in your home health software solution. This will remove the likelihood of time tracking and payroll error, in addition to creating electronic visit verifications.

Scheduling Is Simple with the Right Home Health Care Software

Your staff members are essential to the operations of your home care agency. They provide the high-quality, empathetic care that your clients rely on. They are also one of your biggest expenses, which means improved workforce management pays off.

With the right home care software, you'll be able to better support your caregivers while reducing your back office team's workload and scheduling more efficiently.

ShiftCare's HIPAA-compliant home health care software has all the functions you need for better workforce management. It comes with easier scheduling, job bidding, client-carer matching, time-tracking and billing, and cloud-based document storage. An all-in-one software package, it also helps you manage client funds, share updates with patients' loved ones, and more.

Discover how home care software can take the stress out of staffing. Try ShiftCare for free.