Most home care agencies understand the value of a customer, but they should also understand the value of time spent on day-to-day operations. Time is a commodity, just like a home care service. So if an agency is spending time doing manual processes that could be automated and streamlined, they are wasting one of their most valuable resources.

Your time is valuable, and so is the time of your office staff. Let’s dive deeper into this conversation and discuss some strategies and solutions that might help you change your thinking on time management.

Stop Doing Things Manually Because You Think It’s Cheaper

Because the monetary value of time is invisible, it can be easy to automatically assume time is free. But it’s not!

Let’s look at an everyday life example: Say your dryer suddenly stops working. Are you an expert on fixing clothes dryers? Probably not.

You could easily spend hours on the internet researching common dryer problems and how to fix them. Then you could go to the store to buy all the equipment you need to fix the part of the dryer you suspect may be broken.

Five or six hours later, you might find yourself in the same place: with a broken dryer. Only now, everything is worse and an entire day is gone. As your frustration grows, you finally pick up the phone and call an expert who gets everything back up and running in 30 minutes.

Now, let’s look at this from the perspective of your home care agency. Your office staff should not be spending valuable time on things that can be automated.

As a business owner, you might think you’re saving money by running your business through manual processes like:

• Hand-written timesheets that have to be entered manually into your billing and payroll system.
• Keeping file folders of records for clients that have to be stored on-site and take up space
• Tracking client leads through a spreadsheet that has to be constantly updated and checked for accuracy

If all you’re concerned about is cutting costs, then you’re not properly investing in your business. Running a successful business takes investment.

A home care management software that provides electronic visit verification (EVV) functionality pays for itself right out of the gate.

You’ll save so much time and energy by implementing a software that can:

• Provide caregiver accountability and make sure your caregivers showed up on time for their shift and perform their required tasks
• Automate your invoicing process so you don’t have to stuff envelopes and waste stamps
• Add a link to your invoices so your clients can easily click to pay their bills

There Are Better Ways to Spend Your Time

Once you put a stop to the manual processes by implementing a home care software, you’ll be amazed at how much more efficiently your office runs.

The amount of time that will be added back to your day will improve your productivity, enhance your work/life balance, and help you build a stronger business foundation because you’ve clicked the efficiency button.

What can you do with all that extra time? The short answer is this: do things that will continue to improve your business.

Here are a few examples:

• Build stronger relationships with your customers, community partners, and your own staff. Taking the time to talk and listen to the people who are integral to your business will help you perform better, manage better, and become a resonant voice in the community, so your agency is seen as the go-to solution for home care when needs arise.
• Start thinking strategically about your business. If you haven’t had time previously to focus on branding, marketing, partnerships, etc., you just freed up a ton of time to do just that. Do you have a 5-year plan or a 10-year plan? Now you have time to create those important goal-setting documents.
• Focus on the human parts of your business. If you want to expand your footprint in the community, use that extra time to make hospital visits, attend networking functions, and be more available to your staff if they need your assistance.
• Show your customers you care by using your extra time to send birthday cards. Check in more frequently on your caregivers. Provide additional training for caregivers to show you’re paying attention to their needs.

Invest your extra time in yourself, your staff, and your clients.

Lean on Your Software for Reporting and KPIs

If your home care agency is spending a lot of time making spreadsheets to keep track of things like caregiver time worked, how many clients you served this month versus last month, and where your best leads are coming from, there’s a better way.

Most (if not all) home care software includes reporting functionality that will help your agency measure key performance indicators (KPIs). Instead of manually tracking every little thing and using a calculator to make sure your math is correct, let your software do the heavy lifting for you. That’s what it was designed to do.

• Are you billing the full amount of your authorized hours?
• Did you add a service you didn’t provide last year that you can now match to a prospect who inquired about that service?
• Do you remember when your caregivers need their next TB test?

If your time is spent digging through papers or sorting through files on your computer to find where you put that key information, now is the time to consider moving to a home care software that keeps everything in one place.

Time is your most valuable asset. You can always recoup money if you have a down month. You can never get time back. That’s why it’s important to use automated systems like home care software to free up time that you can reinvest in your business in more meaningful ways.

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About Robin Tuck
Senior Product Owner and Project Manager
Rosemark

Guest blog for corecubed

Robin Tuck is the Senior Product Owner and Projct Manager at Rosemark, a home care management software provider. A seasoned veteran in the home care technology space, Robin is passionate about finding creative solutions to help her customers get the most out of their software, so they can focus more on their caregivers and clients. When she’s not working, she’s probably writing, taking walks, or stripping 800 layers of paint off every inch of her 140-year-old house.