ConnectAide Features Q&A PDF

Problem Software ConnectAide, made for home care agencies to improve and streamline the coordination process Regularly coordinators spend a chunk part and in many cases, most part of their day to find caregivers for patients that still don't have a caregiver on their case and this process involves...

Problem Software ConnectAide, made for home care agencies to improve and streamline the coordination process Regularly coordinators spend a chunk part and in many cases, most part of their day to find caregivers for patients that still don't have a caregiver on their case and this process involves firstly by knowing which cases are still open, then searching from the huge pool of caregivers and their system and find which caregiver would be good for that patient and then hope to be lucky that the aid will accept it, which otherwise it would need to look around again and search for other options. And finally there is the challenge of having both the caregiver and the patient happy with each other so it could be a stable match, satisfying job, and the proper care. And that is all without mentioning the hours of work that goes into keeping track on their responses, coordinating, communicating, chatting and following up with the caregiver, reaching him, asking him, giving him the details, answering his questions, and in some cases only to find out that he's not suitable for the case. This issue does not only result in a real-time waste situation but also results and coordination not able to really satisfy their patients, and then also the caregivers will be upset, and could then lead to the next problem that the case should need to be restaffed again shortly after. Additionally, this results in enormous amount of heart caring hours that could have been provided to the patient by dedicated caregivers and is only being prevented because of the gap in better tools to find the right caregiver that would have the passion needed in the specific circumstances, and results in a three-way loss situation where the agency are not able to bill for those important hours, caregiver is not able to earn his living, and ultimately, the patient in need for care will not get it. In HHAX (the current software they’re using), it doesn’t give efficient available candidates, - Location distance is air based (nautical miles) and therefore is inaccurate for travel time, - The match is very basic and non smart, it flatly checks if it overlaps a single minute of non-available window, or if within 30 minutes of another visit then it won’t consider it available, so won’t even show up for a possible match, while in so many cases it’s either not a problem, or you might would’ve moved some hours, perhaps even swapping with another patient, or perhaps would just be off another visit which makes the 30 minute not even enough to begin with. - But even more so, caregiver and patient information are many times not up to date, especially preferences and availability which would make a huge difference in selecting the right candidate for a case. Solution Here comes in ConnectAide to the picture, the coordinator could start their day, staff cases seamlessly by simply filtering the visits by 'unstaffed' or 'open', selecting a visit in the list of those open cases and they'll get a list of best options where they could click to invite the caregiver via text message, The caregiver will get a link where it could go and respond, accept, decline , or ask for more information , where the coordinator will reach out fill in the details, the caregiver also have the option to reply directly to the text message and the coordinators will be notified about incoming messages and reply through our nice chatting tool built into our software application ConnectAide. The coordinators will be able to monitor all invites, see their statuses, send reminders, and assign the case to the caregiver once accepted and determined as the right fit for the job. Once assigned, we will update HHA exchange with the newly assigned caregiver to the visit, so it keeps synced and ready for additional tasks needed to be done by the billing department. We have a module in place to keep patient and caregiver data up to date. HHA Exchange Integration Question: What happens in the case where a visit is being updated or staffed directly in HHA exchange, will ConnectAide be updated about it, that the visit is no longer open and that the caregiver is no longer available on the scheduled timing? Answer: Yes, we have a seamless integration with HHA exchange, as well as other management systems that we're currently working to integrate with such as Sandata and HCM, where ConnectAide will know about any important change in almost real time, so there should be no gap in ongoing work of dedicated coordinators. - Question: How does all my data get in from my home care management system, will we need to insert all the data into ConnectAide? Answer: We have integrations with big home care management systems and constantly working on integrating with additional management systems to minimize and completely avoid any work when it comes to setting up with ConnectAide. Searching Caregivers Question: So what is the process of a coordinator after they reach office and have 50 cases they need to staff for the upcoming week. Answer: They go to the Visits page, and by default it is gonna filter to see ‘Unstaffed Visits’, they can see the details of the case shifts, and get the best matches for the case, with a detailed window of information about each caregiver’s ability and qualification to fill the case, all PROs & CONs of each match, and the tools to send an invite to the caregiver to fill some or all of the shifts in the case - which you will select from the list of shifts available in the case, see the recent communication and activity of this caregiver. You can view the matching results in either a map view or list view. The invite will be sent via SMS text message as an invite link, or through a push notification via our mobile app if the caregiver had installed it on their device, which is optional, where they see basic case details and requirements, the coordinator’s phone & extension number, respond and select which of the shifts they accept or decline, select reasons for their decline, and an option to request more info from the coordinator. The caregiver will have the ability to chat with the coordinator via text or mobile app, on the other side, the coordinators will communicate via the web app, as well as track all pending invites, and assign accepted invites to a case to the best fit. Algorithms & AI - Question: How does ConnectAide determine what would be a good match between the caregiver and a patient? Answer: We have an advanced matching algorithm that will take into consideration any informative data that could determine whether it's a good match or not, including factors like their availability, preferences, schedules, distance and travel time, and more. ConnectAide will not only show you the potential matches but will also give you a great and transparent understanding of the full picture on why and how we got to that conclusion, so you could see and make the decision what is best, for example, we tell you the percentage of availability time the caregiver has towards this shift in question, so let's say you see that the aide is available for most of the time, you might want to look into the option of switching this caregiver's current shift with a different caregiver and provide that shift, or in some cases you would want to forgive on the availability factor and rather assign this caregiver regardless, but you need to have the full picture in order to be able to make the right decisions. We also offer algorithm customization where you will be able to modify the algorithmic model to reflect any use case or circumstances, for example, you want the algorithm to work a little bit different, focus more on the distance instead of the availability, or to focus more on specific preferences, and you could even switch around between the models, you'll be able to have multiple saved models for future use. - Question: How does ConnectAide know the full availability, schedule, and preferences of all caregivers, especially if this data is not even always available for the home care itself and is not up to date. Answer: We have built-in monitoring modules that keep track of the caregivers whose data is not up to date, and will automatically send them a text message or notification to their phone if they have our mobile app installed, and ask them to come and update their availability and preferences. Patients and caregivers can update their preferences & availability, a coordinator or assigned user will be able to view and approve the updated change to the caregiver's or patient’s profile page. Until then, while the caregiver for some reason hasn't yet done so, we use AI algorithms to predict their availability and preferences based on schedule & communication history data. The caregiver will also have the option to specify which preferences makes a more significant factor or which it does less strongly prefer, which would help to match them even better and result in a higher acceptance rate. - Question: Is there a way to prevent the matching of caregivers to cases when they already have the full week work time and would result in an overtime situation if they would work that additional visit? Answer: Yes, we will prioritize caregivers that do not have a filled up week schedule of 40 hours, but, as for all factors, in the case where there are not enough caregivers for the case in question, it will bring up more non preferable but still possible options, however, we will always inform you of any flags, including this overtime flag, so you can conclude and make your precious decisions. Additionally, for a case that has more open visits throughout the week unstaffed, even if that visit doesn’t fall into the date range you selected for searching staff, we will prompt you about it as you might want to staff the same caregiver on those shifts as well, we will even check also and let you know if in combination with those cases it could result in a potential overtime and warn you about it. - Question: What more information are you providing to the coordinators when looking at the list of potential matches? Answer: We give them a full list of pros and cons for each match, explaining it in a detailed breakdown, why it might be good or not, as well as showing you the full schedule of both the patient and the caregiver, their preferences, and more. - Question: With many scheduling tools, it calculates the distance based on air miles, not considering road miles, street conditions, speed limits, and traffic, therefore sometimes it seems like a close short when in proximity it might be true but then travel time could be totally off, does ConnectAide solve this problem too? And if yes, is it based on driving, transit, walking distance, or what? Answer: That's correct, we calculate for you the actual timing that it takes to travel from its location to the other, based on public transit if available in the area, otherwise, it will calculate by driving mode or any other best travel method available in that area, so you get a picture of how far distant those locations are from each other and help you make the right decision. - Question: How does ConnectAide handle in the case where the aide is working at one patient in the morning, and then at the end of that visit there's another visit that could be a good for that aide as well, how will it handle it's availability and travel time, being that the aide should be at the patient's home at the time prior to the starting of the second visit. Answer: ConnectAide covers that too, it knows the caregiver's schedule and surroundings, it will know its travel time based on the first patient's location, and similarly in the opposite case where it has a case later in the day and you try to staff a visit scheduled for earlier in the day, it will take that into consideration and use this to know its travel time, and availability as well, in case it determines that the travel time will not allow to make it on time. - Question: Sometimes schedules could be swapped around with a little thinking, a software doesn’t always take those points into consideration, as it is a human manual task. Answer: ConnectAide gives the full picture, availability, and current schedule of the caregiver and patient, and gives you best suggestions on what you could possibly do in order to fill both cases as much as possible and take the max out of your authorized hours and staff. - Question: What if I have a case of a patient that is not yet in the system, but rather I just have a referral and Intake wants to see the odds if we can staff it and therefore be able to accept the case into our agency, whether we do or we don’t have yet the patient’s preferences. Answer: Then there's a Browse page, allowing you as administrator, or coordinator, to search patients and caregivers around your agency, being able to see how many patients or aides you have in a certain criteria, which is especially useful when you’re looking to see if you can accept a referral, you can search by location area, discipline qualifications, search only who are 'on-a-schedule' or are 'not-on-a-schedule', with nice filtering tools, summary result details, and more. You'll be able to see full details about the patients or caregivers, their schedules, preferences, and other info in regards to the searched criteria. You will be able to view the results in either a list view, and a map view, for better clarity, based on your convenience or situation needed. On each caregiver result, you’ll see the full picture just like when searching to fill an existing open case, see their availability and preferences match rate towards the criteria you’re searching for. - Question: How does ConnectAide handle the fact that aides may be working with multiple agencies, and the availability information might not be up to date as it depends muchly on their scheduled visits, but since it is not in our system as it comes from a different home care agency, we might not know about that, which if we would, it could help reduce the amount of extra calls, invites, or time waste of waiting for the caregiver's response, while they're long not available on the needed timing. Answer: To help with this problem, we try to encourage coordinators to keep information up to date, we generate tasks for coordinators to check in with the aide once every 60 to 90 days and getting the most updated schedule availability the aide has to work with the current agency. As described already earlier, we also have an automated module which would send out a link to all caregivers that have outdated availability or preferences information and encourage them to go to the link and update their information accordingly, however, the coordinators could also manually click a button to send such a link and invite the caregiver to do so. - Question: Seeing all amazing tools and solutions ConnectAide provides, it is so amazing to see where they don't seem to miss a thing, or at least it is in development, or on the Agenda, but my question is, how, why are you so dedicated in helping home care and how do you always get the right solution for the problem? Answer: You got it, that's one of the reasons why ConnectAide is the leading coordination software tool in the market, most tools are focused on scheduling, we’re focused on coordination, never getting away with basic solution as long it is not truly resolved, we build based on what coordinators and managers have asked us to, we get their feedback and improvement requests, that's our model, it is one of our core values to make sure things work 100%, not 90 and not 99%, and it works for any type of coordination setup or system. More: Automated invites every morning, or when cases are newly opened, as well as if the already sent invites were declined, so new invites will be sent out, where text messages & notifications will go out to applicable caregivers for their response of case acceptance. Task Management & Updates: We have a beautiful system to update you about important updates going on in real time, to alert the coordinators about potential required action that might come up, such as when a visit get interrupted when an aide clocks out earlier than expected, forgetting to clock-in, or to clock-out, etc. Dashboard, You'll have a dashboard showing you basic information and summaries of things like "how many patients/caregivers are or aren't yet on a schedule", "how many visits were missed today/week or another day/week", "all visits broken down by their invite status, like open, invited, declined, waiting-for-more-info", etc. Support, we're here to help you with anything needed, our support team are eagerly waiting to get your call and help you find what you need, get what you deserve, they love making other people's lives easier. Request features based on your needs, we'll discuss them in detail and try to get it done for you as much as possible. Reports and Analytics are in development, any reports needed, custom and dynamic based on your needs, we try to accommodate any type of report as requested. Other services such as helping get all caregivers on board, and having them respond to case invites, or to update their preferences and availability so your data is up to date.