Finding the Best: How to Choose the Right Home Care Staffing Software

Finding the Best: How to Choose the Right Home Care Staffing Software

Are you looking to purchase home care staffing software? If so, check out this guide to learn how to choose the right software.

There are over 12,400 home health agencies in the United States. To help your agency stay competitive, you need the right home care staffing software.

This will help you streamline processes by reducing the hours it takes to accomplish tasks. The software industry is enormous though, and it can get overwhelming trying to find the right fit for your business.

Use this guide to help you find the right software for your staffing business.

What Are Your Current Needs?

Before you start looking at staffing software, you need to evaluate the needs of your business. What are the most important features for your employees?

Create two lists; one is the features you’re not willing to compromise on. The other is your “nice to have” features.

Maybe you need software that saves you several hours a month managing billing and scheduling. Or perhaps you need software that has a strong point-of-care solution that saves your 100 nurses 30 minutes every day.

Do You Need Software?

Do you find yourself or your employees struggling to keep up with demand? Or maybe you spending hours doing menial and repetitive tasks.

For example, managing your schedule: you spend hours calling everyone, writing down availability, and trying to fill shifts. Or maybe you’re struggling to maintain territories for types of care, geographical, or branch offices.

These struggles are all signs that you need staffing software.

Where Will Your Agency Be in a Few Years?

Look for software that will work for you today and scale up with you as your staffing service grows. One way to grow is by adding complimentary service lines.

Look for software that can grow with you by handling these different service options. This could be adding hospice, pediatrics, transitional care, or adult day care.

Some services are trying Medicaid or community-based programs. Each of these types of programs has unique requirements that your software will need to adapt to.

Choose software that can’t grow and evolve with you, and you’ll find it obsolete.

What’s Missing from Your Current Software?

Talk to your current staff and find out what they do and don’t like about your current software solution. This way you get an accurate view of what will work for everyone.

Find out what is missing from the functionality of your current software. You can add these points to your list of needs during your software search.

While you evaluate your current software, don’t get hung up on loving other features. The new software will be a significant change, and while it will be different, that doesn’t mean it isn’t as good as your old software.

Do a Demo or Free Trial

When you think you have found the best software for your business, your next step is to give it a test run. It’s one thing to read the features and think a software sounds good.

It’s an entirely different experience to use the software. Work through your everyday tasks and see how streamlined they are.

Check out the intuitive nature of the software. You want something user-friendly, so your staff will have no trouble learning the new system.

Hard-to-use software may require training. You will need to add this to the expense of the software.

Software that is difficult to use won’t get used. This will put you in a worse position than the obsolete software you have now.

Do You Need Customization?

How much customization do you need for your software? If you don’t need a lot of custom features, then standard out-of-the-box software will work for your business.

Be aware that the more custom features you need, the more expensive your software will be. The extra money might be worth it though for software that meets all of your needs.

Reporting Features

Look into the reporting features of potential software solutions. The most useful software will be able to show you a full view of the status of your company.

If you have other software that you use, then you’ll want to make sure that your different software integrates. This will save you hours in manually updating everything.

It will also let you get the most comprehensive reporting possible. That way you can identify areas where you can cut expenses and create additional revenue.

Look at the Reviews

Every business is a little different, so you can’t make your decision based on the reviews of others. What you can do is read the reviews for other points of view that you may have not considered.

The reviews are also an excellent place to find out about the customer service of the software provider. When your business depends on your software working correctly, you don’t have time to sit around and wait for slow customer service.

Another thing to keep in mind is that people are more likely to voice their opinion when they are unhappy. Pay attention to whether or not these complaints go ignored. If the company doesn’t acknowledge these complaints that isn’t a good sign.

Innovation

Technology is continually changing, so you’ll want an innovative company. Get a feel for the company and how they operate. Look at the options they provide for updating your software.

One significant trend in software is going cloud-based. This lets users access the software suite across all devices. This makes your business more agile and adaptable to your employee’s needs.

Try out Home Care Staffing Software

When it comes to home care staffing software, you need to start with your needs. Look at what you like and don’t like with your current processes.

To narrow down your options, compare your software options by looking at usability, innovation, features, and customer service.