How AI and Automation Impact Home Care Agencies

Artificial intelligence (or AI) has taken the world by storm.

Its impact will not only simplify care operations but also enable administrative team members to spend more time with clients, their family members, and referral partners. 

Let’s talk about a few different use cases for AI and automation in your home care agency:

• Making scheduling as easy as it can be
• Making billing tolerable.
• Making payroll simpler.

Make scheduling as easy as it can be.

Scheduling is one of the most critical yet complex parts of a home care agency’s operations. It doesn’t have to be a constant waiting game for the next call-off when you make data-driven decisions about who goes to what shifts.

Scheduling pairs clients and caregivers together, creating the potential for long-lasting relationships that improve the quality of life for a client.

Automation and artificial intelligence can take the guesswork out of scheduling by serving up caregiver recommendations based on a client’s schedule and care needs. And vice versa, matching clients to a caregiver’s availability and skill set. 

Not sure if you’re using the right home care scheduling software? Read our blog: Your Ultimate Guide to Home Care Scheduling Software.

Scheduling is among the top reasons for caregiver turnover. You can make scheduling a perk to caregivers who want to work with your agency—when done correctly. 

With the time back in their day to focus more on relationship building, encourage your schedulers to find unique strategies and ways to connect with caregivers and to keep a pulse on how happy they are with their schedule—and if their availability changes. They can try things like:

• A weekly check-in text message
• A monthly satisfaction call
• Review Activated Insights (formerly Home Care Pulse) survey data and take action
• And more

Help them get creative and think outside of the box to keep caregivers happy with their schedules and clients. 

Download a copy of our free resource: The Magic Behind Caregiver Scheduling.

Make billing tolerable.

Billing is also an important part of home care operations, which can be complex, tedious, and more. To counter that dynamic, you can leverage your technology stack to make it easier on your staff. 

Here are a couple of examples of automation to look out for in your agency management system to make billing easier:

• Automatic Invoicing: You can minimize the burden on your team to get invoices out the door on time for the right service period, etc. With manual invoicing, you run the risk of getting the invoice out later than it should, resulting in potential delays in payment or partial payments.
• Automated Claims Review: With CareTime’s home care agency management software, we’ve implemented a claims pre-scrub feature that automates 70-80% of the workload on behalf of your billing team. You can also set up rules engines for the payers that you work with to make sure that the proper units, billing period, and more are customized to each entity.

Beyond your agency management system, artificial intelligence can also play a role in making billing easier for your team. You can feed de-identified information into a platform like ChatGPT with example clock in and clock out times against the authorized hours, to identify which caregivers should receive additional training for Electronic Visit Verification (EVV) so that your billing processes can go smoother. 

If you want to set up your billing team for success, watch the recording of our recent webinar: Win More Medicaid Clients & Effortlessly Manage Claims. With time back in your day from a billing perspective, this gives your team the bandwidth to review remaining claims in more detail and resolve claims with clarity.

Make payroll easier.

It’s estimated that small business owners can take up to 5 hours per pay period processing payroll. Does that number ring true to you? 

For a weekly pay period, that adds up to 32.5 days a year. If you pay caregivers biweekly, that can add up to 16.25 days. No matter how you dice it, that is a lot of time to spend on any process. 

With CareTime’s payment processing functionality, home care agency owners can:

• Condense platforms
• Store card information for recurring payments
• Offer multiple payment options
• Invite families to make payments in a private portal

By automating and simplifying your technology stack for payroll, your caregivers will run into less issues on payday. And your team won’t have to spend so much time processing and running payroll. 

Automate your agency operations with technology built for tomorrow.

A lot of agency management systems serve their purpose while lagging behind in terms of design and functionality.

Use this opportunity to make sure that you’re getting the most out of your system and using all of the features it has to offer. 

If your agency is ready for a change that consolidates workflows and the need for additional platforms, consider switching to CareTime today for all of the features you’re looking for (and ones you didn’t even know you needed). Schedule your demo today.