Overview

Private Duty Nursing Home Care is skilled care provided one-on-one by a Private Duty Nurse (RN or LPN) to medically fragile adult and pediatric patients in the comfort of their homes. A patient's unique and complex health challenges require personalizing care, tailoring it to the physician-ordered Plan of Care. Private Duty Nursing home care is different from traditional home health as the service is typically provided in longer shifts, anywhere from 8 to 24 hours over a long period.

Unique, complex, and demanding scheduling requirements of Private Duty Nursing pose many challenges to home care agencies providing Private Duty Nursing Care. Scheduling is the lifeline of a Private Duty Home Care Agency. Effective scheduling maximizes staff utilization, reduces scheduling errors, reduces payroll costs, improves patient and employee satisfaction, and improves the agency's bottom line.

Private Duty Nursing Home Care Agencies should leverage technology and intelligent automation to improve scheduling efficiency. Improving scheduling efficiency will have a positive impact on many aspects of operations. A Home Care Agency Management software platform with efficient scheduling tools will improve the operational efficiency of Private Duty Nursing Home Care Agencies.

This blog will discuss some of the vital scheduling features required in the software to improve the scheduling efficiency of Private Duty Nursing Home Care Agencies.

Improve Scheduling Efficiency for Private Duty Nursing Home Care Agencies

Key Features to Improve Scheduling Efficiency

Private Duty Nursing Home Care Agencies face unique challenges in meeting complex, demanding, and constantly changing scheduling requirements. The following are key scheduling software features that will help PDN agencies.

Ease of use

Ease of use is essential for effective schedule management for Private Duty Nursing. Different scheduling views for employees, patients, and schedulers will improve ease of use. Schedulers’ ability to view all open shifts in one screen, match available employees with patients and schedule the employee on the same screen will improve the productivity of schedulers.

Switching from one view to another with ease will also help. Access to all the information the scheduler needs will enhance the efficiency of the scheduler.

Intelligent Matching

One of the challenges Private Duty Nursing scheduler faces is quickly identifying a group of available matching employees for a patient with an open shift. Scheduling software should match patient preferences with employee skills, availability, distance, etc., and provide a list of matching employees. Schedulers should be able to select one of the matching employees for the shift with ease.

Publish Shift Offers and Available Shifts

Schedulers should be able to offer an open shift to one or more matching employees right from the scheduling screen. Offering shifts will eliminate the need to contact employees for available shifts. Publishing available shifts to matching employees through the employee portal will be beneficial.

Offering and publishing open shifts will create a pool of employees who can take the shift, improving the efficiency of schedulers. This will reduce uncovered shifts, improve employee productivity, and increase revenue.

Split Shifts

Quite often, Private Duty Nursing services are provided in multiple settings, such as homes, schools, community centers, etc., during one shift. Payers may be different for each split. The ability to accommodate split shifts with one schedule will significantly improve the efficiency of schedulers.

Authorization Integration

Keeping up with authorizations and staying within authorized hours will help Private Duty Nursing Agencies to minimize revenue leakage in the form of unbillable shifts and paying for services provided without authorization. Scheduling tools should proactively notify schedulers when there are not enough hours to cover the schedule or when the schedule is outside the authorization period. Minimizing revenue leakage will improve the agency's bottom line.

Configurable Validations

Proactive alerts and validations, such as duplicate schedules, overtime, missing authorizations, etc., will alert the schedulers about potential issues at the point of scheduling. Home Care Scheduling software should allow the agencies to configure the validations based on their needs. Proactively detecting and resolving problems will improve employee satisfaction and productivity and reduce unnecessary payroll costs.

Billing Integration

Effective schedule management plays a critical role in improving revenue cycle management efficiency. Proactively detecting potential billing issues at the point of scheduling will help the billing team to send out clean claims and improve the reimbursement timeline and cash flow. Scheduling functions should minimize manual efforts by attaching correct payers and authorizations for split shifts and splitting the schedules at midnight.

Scheduling functions should calculate gross margins when scheduling based on actual fee schedules for the payers.

Payroll

Home Health Care Agencies usually spend about 60% of their revenue on employee wages. Timely and accurate payroll is very critical for employee satisfaction. If not managed effectively, overtime and shift differential costs can quickly add up and cut into the agency's bottom line. Considering the complexity of the scheduling requirements for Private Duty Nursing Home Care Agencies, Home Care Software should help payroll staff minimize manual interventions to complete the payroll, thus improving the accuracy and timeliness of payroll.

Effective integration of scheduling software with payroll tools will significantly reduce time spent on payroll and improve accuracy and timeliness.

Communication

Communication plays a crucial role in effectively filling open shifts for patients with matching employees. Schedulers usually spend a lot of time texting or talking with employees before scheduling one or more open shifts. Employee Portals, Family Portals, and integrated messaging applications will help schedulers to communicate effectively with patients and employees. The ability to schedule reminders for employees and patients will significantly reduce missed shifts for patients and employees.

Conclusion

Private Duty Nursing Home Care Agencies should look for a software platform with functions and features to meet the unique scheduling requirements for private duty nursing care. CareVoyant understands the demanding needs to manage Private Duty Home Care Agencies providing skilled care for medically fragile patients while supporting other services like Non-Medical Personal Care, HCBS, and Home Health. CareVoyant Home Care software platform offers the right technology and tools to help a Private Duty Home Care Agency effectively manage the agency and improve operational efficiency and the agency's bottom line.

About CareVoyant:

CareVoyant is a leading provider of cloud-based integrated enterprise-scale home health care software that can support all home-based services under ONE Software, ONE Patient, and ONE Employee, making it a Single System of Record. We support all home based services, including Home Care, Private Duty Nursing, Private Duty Non-Medical, Home and Community Based Services (HCBS), Home Health, Pediatric Home Care, and Outpatient Therapy at Home.

CareVoyant functions – Intake, Authorization Management, Scheduling, Clinical with Mobile options, eMAR/eTAR, Electronic Visit Verification (EVV), Billing/AR, Secure Messaging, Notification, Reporting, and Dashboards – streamline workflow, meet regulatory requirements, improve quality of care, optimize reimbursement, improve operational efficiency and agency bottom line.

For more information, please visit CareVoyant.com or call us at 1-888-463-6797.