Donald McCormack
Jun 2 2022
Reading Time: 3 minutes
By: Donald McCormack, Technical Product Manager, CitusHealth
With so many care providers out in the field coordinating their schedules with current and new patients, along with the back office processing new intakes and coordinating home visits, having a strategy to streamline scheduling can be a challenge for home-based care organizations.
Scheduling in home-based care is no easy task. This role acts as a centralized system, where intake patients come in, get processed, and align with nurse schedules for care to begin. Visits that get scheduled can be anything from wellness checks to helping with a device or getting a quick patient survey to anything the patient may need. But scheduling is much more than just aligning availability on all sides. CitusHealth has a unique approach to coordinating in-home visits and patient care needs—here are four key scheduling capabilities that can set you apart from the rest.
Navigating the platform makes scheduling easy.
The CitusHealth platform has different areas including the Message Center, Document Center, Forms Center, etc.—the Scheduling Center is just one more area within the application. How users view the app is completely up to them. It can be a monthly calendar view, a week, the next three days, or even just tasks for the day.
All scheduling changes and updates can be seen in real time by the entire team, eliminating the need for phone calls to confirm visits with staff.
Nurses can reassign visits to other staff.
With the ability to reassign visit schedules to other nurses, without having to go through the back office, staff can easily manage their daily tasks without playing phone tag. Schedulers can then assign a new nurse within the platform or the nurse on the original schedule can choose a specific staff member on their own to transfer and reassign the visit.
Nurses can set their own schedule.
Nurses can also reschedule visits with their patients as needed. Maybe a prescription hasn’t arrived when expected or a patient needs to change visit details. Whatever the reason, nurses no longer must go through the back office to change days and times of visits. They can make their own schedules and the platform updates for the entire team to see.
Notifications and reminders can be automated.
API services allow our Schedule Center to integrate directly into different healthcare tools, whether it’s an intake system or billing system, allowing notifications to be sent to patients. This can be used for anything from notifying patients about schedule changes to letting them know that a payment has processed.
Automated reminders are also useful for checking in on patients monthly, weekly, or whatever timeframe is needed. Nurses can check to see if refills are needed periodically and to remind patients about scheduled visits.
In our post-pandemic “new normal,” virtual scheduling capabilities are more important than ever. You don’t want to just show up to a patient’s home—you want to give them the opportunity to plan for your visit, whatever that means to them. And that’s now easier than it’s ever been with remote scheduling that reduces the need for phone calls back and forth (a significant pain point for home-based care organizations).
Does your field staff have scheduling freedom? Request a demo to see for yourself how we can help home-based care providers make scheduling more efficient, allowing more time to be focused on patient care.
Schedule a demo today to learn more about how CitusHealth can help you achieve patient engagement success.
