Donald McCormack
Aug 11 2022
Reading Time: 3 minutes
By: Donald McCormack, Technical Product Manager, CitusHealth
When it comes to providing care in the home, remote scheduling capabilities can make a significant difference in the experiences for the nurses and those they serve. If the patient is not home when a nurse arrives, or if they happen to not want visitors, the nurse’s time is wasted and they still need to be paid (or at least reimbursed for mileage).
In the current market where there’s heavy competition for nurses, with major health systems even offering signing bonuses, it can be difficult for home health organization to operate with less staff than normal. Add on inefficient processes that waste time and cause more work for care teams, and staffing can be even more of a challenge.
An efficient process for scheduling keeps people effective and ultimately helps foster satisfaction among staff, patients, and their family caregivers. So how can your organization achieve this kind of process? Here are three ways the right technology gives home health providers the scheduling tools they need to do more with less.
1. Nurses won’t have to go out unnecessarily
With a digital scheduling tool that can automate reminders and notifications, nurses can check in on patients, confirm visit information, request refill needs, and more. This approach to communication can reduce the need for phone calls and help ensure nurses don’t make unnecessary home visits that waste time and resources.
2. Schedulers always know nurses’ bandwidth
When schedulers know whether a nurse can take on a home visit without having to use manual communication, they can assign it and notify the patient—all in one place. Real-time communication via a digital platform helps ensure schedules are up to date and response times are fast.
3. Nurses can own their schedules (and reassign visits)
With the right technology, nurses should no longer rely on the back office to change visit details. Instead, they should be able to make their own schedules within the platform, which updates the entire team in real time. They should also have the ability to reassign visit schedules to other nurses on their own—allowing them to easily manage daily tasks without playing phone tag.
It’s all about efficiency, coordination, and communication.
In home health, where clinicians experience a higher volume of visits, the ability to reach patients and other staff members in a way that reduces the need for manual communication will help reduce missed visits.
With CitusHealth’s remote scheduling capabilities, scheduling is no longer a labor-intensive process. It’s easy to use, quick to implement, and a cost-effective solution that can ease staffing challenges and bring more efficiency to home health operations.
Schedule a demo to experience how CitusHealth simplifies scheduling to make clinical roles easier and more efficient.
