Let’s start the blog with surprising numbers.

In 2014, over 6 million Canadians were aged 65 or older and by 2030, this number is anticipated to reach over 9.5 million. 

With the rising population of elderly people in Canada, the long-term care system is confronting some serious issues. 

According to reports the average wait time to get a bed in long-term care facilities in Canada is at least 1 year. 

In some regions such as Waterloo and Wellington, it is more than 5 years! 

Not adding up more beds is the major reason for the long wait time.  

The rise of home health care agencies!

Due to long wait times and long-term care crises during the pandemic, most seniors now prefer to stay at their homes and seek home Health care services. 

As a result, home health care agencies have witnessed a steady rise in the number of inquiries they receive in the last few months. 

However, it’s not a straightforward process to fulfill the modern needs of elderly people.

Means, it’s essential to optimize and scale up the daily senior care operations in order to stay ahead in this lucrative market.

Thus, many agencies have adopted technology in terms of home health care Management software. 

However, many still manage senior care with paper-based processes. 

So, today in this blog, let’s discuss why home health care providers should invest in elderly care management platforms or software. 

What is home health care software and how does it work? 

The elderly care platform or home health care management software aims to streamline every administrative as well as senior care operation performed by the staff of elderly home care providing agencies. 

It establishes a clear communication link between caregivers, clinicians, seniors, their family members and a back-office team of home health care providers. 

It is useful,

• To assign daily tasks for the caregivers
• To record and track the medical condition of seniors
• To know the medication of seniors
• To remotely monitor the seniors
• To offer virtual care

The elderly care platform can be a mobile app or web-based software or both. 

Caregivers, clinicians, back-office team, seniors, and seniors’ family members have role-based access to the home health care software. It allows them to perform and record their part of tasks without any hassle. 

Birdie is one such very popular home health care management platform – recently raised $30M (Updated August 2022)

UK-based elderly care tech startup named Birdie has recently raised $30.5 million to drive efficiencies and transform the senior home care sector. 

It offers a SaaS-based eldercare platform to home health care agencies. 

With its platform, Birdie eliminates the need for paper-based records and enables real-time visibility of the type of senior care being provided. 

It has the vision to support home health care providers with its platform for more coordinated and personalized senior care services to seniors and help them to live longer in their homes. 

Birdie platform streamlines the major three operations of senior care – wellbeing tracker, care delivery, and advanced data management. 

In 2021, another home health care startup named Alayacare which is Montreal, Canada-based raised a whopping $225 million CAD in its series D funding round to expand in the US healthcare market.

Why should home health care agencies invest in developing home health care management software? 

Senior care in 2022 requires more than just a care solution.

Means, streamlined operations, efficient communication and coordination, faster tracking, precise reporting, and hassle-free data management hold the potential to help you appropriately and effectively.

You can achieve this only with elderly care management software. 

The following is the confirmed ROI of your investment in developing a home health care management software or elderly care management software. 

• Smarter and efficient care team management

Ideal care team management is the perfect mantra to improve the quality of care for elderly people.

What’s more, it opens a wide range of doors for home care agencies to thrive with ease.

• Easy job assigning to caregivers 

You can automate the job assigning workflow in order to distribute the in-home care job to caregivers in a faster, effective, and efficient manner. 

Caregivers can also see all their upcoming jobs with all details in their profiles using home health care management software.

• GPS-based check-in 

When the caregiver reaches a senior’s place, the elderly care platform automatically checks in caregivers based on their GPS data. 

• Senior care tasks details in one place

A caregiver can easily know the senior care tasks she/he is supposed to perform as his profile has the complete list of activities that are updated by the back-office team.

After completing each task, the caregiver marks that task as completed and sends the automatic report to the senior’s family members and back-office team. 

•   Easy access to medication details 

Caregivers can also have direct access to medication she/he is supposed to give to seniors. 

• Video conferencing with clinicians 

From their profile itself, the caregivers can schedule virtual appointments with clinicians on behalf of seniors. 

As a result, it improves the quality of care delivery.

• Access to the clinical information of seniors 

Thanks to EMR integration or EHR integration with the elderly care platform, it enables clinicians to access all health or medical information of seniors.

Clinical information includes allergies, lab reports, previous prescriptions, medical notes, vital body signs, etc. 

• Medical logs and tracking 

The caregivers can add the vital body signs under each senior’s profile.

It includes blood sugar level, heart rate, blood pressure, oxygen level, and much more other data. 

Clinicians and other authorized users can track this medical log and identify suitable and personalized care plans for each senior. 

• Remote patient monitoring 

If your elderly care platform is integrated with any patient monitoring system, caregivers and clinicians can monitor the real-time health status of the seniors without being physically present with them. 

The clinicians and caregivers also receive an urgent alert on their mobile phone when the value of vital body signs of seniors fall below or up a fixed limit. 

• Easy communication and coordination

Be it caregivers, seniors, their family members, clinicians or the back-office team, they all can be on the same page as there is a centralized communication module for chat, voice call, and file sharing. 

It fastens care delivery and offers 360-degree safety to seniors.

Top features you must consider for the elderly care management platform

1. Care management

• Manage caregivers
• Needs and risk assessments
• Clients profile
• Real-time alerts
• Plan and schedule tasks
• Assessment review
• Secure call and monitoring
• Medication management
• Document management

2. Team management

• Automate payroll operation
• Schedule availability and absence
• Certification, skill, and training records

3. Finance

• Invoicing
• Pay, holiday, travel, and invoice rates
• Pay dashboard

4. Analytics tool

• Generate custom reports
• SMS and email notification
• Real-time dashboard
• Audit trail and change logs
• Medication auditing
• Real-time alerts

Why not use a 3rd party home health care management software?: The honest answer 

If you are running your home health care agency on a small scale, we would encourage you to use any 3rd party platform by paying the monthly fee. 

But if you are operating at a medium or large scale, you must consider building a home health care management platform.

Here is why . . . 

• Costing 

3rd party platform providers charge you very smartly. 

First, they charge you on a monthly basis. 

And secondly, they offer several packages with access to only a few features in the basic package. 

Meaning, you leave with no choice rather than buying their most premium or expensive software package. 

And most importantly, they charge based on the number of seniors. 

Means, if you are providing senior care using their software to 50 seniors and if they are charging $50 per senior, you would end up paying $2500 per month. 

• Customization according to your workflow 

Understand the fact here.

They haven’t developed that platform for you only. 

Thus, it is most likely that it does not satisfy all of your home health care needs unless you customize it according to your workflow. 

But when it comes to customization, they either don’t support it or charge a huge amount for it. 

• Ownership 

You are just a user of that 3rd party elderly care platform. You don’t own it. 

And thus, you can’t use it the way you want and you cannot even upgrade it when your needs alter in near future. 

In this sense, even if you are paying huge monthly fees, you are not getting ROI you deserve. 

• Data privacy and security

As a home health care service provider, it’s essential to protect the crucial data of seniors in order to avoid hefty fines.

But the possibilities are high for a data breach in third-party software or platform as their platforms are not completely compliant with the all the data privacy and protection laws such as HIPAA, PHIPA, PIPEDA etc.

Thus, it is advisable to invest in developing your own elderly care platform based on your workflows & needs. 

If budget is your major challenge, the MVP approach can solve it 

MVP is nothing but the approach to developing software with only useful and minimal features. 

Because of fewer features, the development company won’t charge you high and in this way, you can develop a home health care management software within your budget. 

Once you use it and test it in the real world, you can add more features to it and scale up the operations as well as the business.

MVP approach is considered as the risk-free approach as you only invest more after testing and using your basic software in real life. 

Not only the budget, but we solve technical and compliance issues too 

We are an Ontario, Canada-based healthcare-focused IT company. 

With our most resourceful team which includes developers, UI/UX designers, business experts, RPA engineers, and compliance specialists, we can develop the best elderly care mobile and web app Canadians have never used before. 

Yes, being a Canadian company, we understand the gravity of compliance. Thus, we always ensure to develop a home health care platform compliant with all data privacy laws. 

Integrating any EHR/EMR with your elderly care platform is a piece of cake for us as we have been doing this for 8+ years. 

You can check out our case studies to validate what magical things we can do. 

In essence, we have 3E – experts, expertise, and experience! 

And I think these are the only things required to deliver success to our healthcare clients! Agreed? 

The post How Home Health Care Management Software is Lifting the $345B Market? appeared first on SyS Creations - IT Management, Compliance & Consulting Company in Canada.