How scheduling software makes home care businesses more efficient
Digitising your scheduling and rostering process can help your home care business become more efficient, reduce errors and free up time to provide more focused care for clients.
With the right care management software, creating schedules, assigning appropriately qualified carers to visits, making changes when required, and spotting mistakes, should be simple.
And it’s not just software for software’s sake. According to Regulation:18 Staffing, the CQC state that providers need to make sure that providers must provide sufficient numbers of suitably qualified, competent, skilled and experienced staff to meet the needs of the people using the service at all times.]
What is scheduling & rostering software?
Scheduling and rostering software help businesses manage staff rotas and client assignments. Scheduling software includes features like shift planning, time and attendance tracking, and client and staff management.
Recently, care management software, like IQ:caremanager brings together all aspects of workforce management, including care rostering to provide a complete package of features for home care businesses.
Why home care providers need scheduling software
With digital scheduling software, home care providers can optimise their operational processes by reducing the time spent ensuring caregivers are scheduled and assigned to clients. More intelligent software can also help match clients to carers based on need and preference, contributing to delivering more person-centred care.
The benefits of scheduling and rostering software for home care businesses
Several benefits care management software with scheduling and rostering capabilities can provide for a home care business:
- Improved efficiency: can automate many of the manual tasks involved in scheduling, such as creating repeating visit patterns, assigning preferred carers, cancelling visits or swopping carers.
- Enhanced communication: can provide real-time updates to caregivers and clients, improving communication and coordination.
- Remote management: can be accessed from anywhere with an internet connection, enabling remote management of scheduling and care needs.
- Reduced administrative burden: care management software can automate many administrative tasks involved in planning and delivering care, with payroll and invoicing populated by the schedules created.
- Improved caregiver satisfaction and retention: scheduling and rostering software can help ensure caregivers are assigned to clients based on their preferences and availability.
- Improved client satisfaction: consider client preferences when arranging visits to ensure that you act upon their wishes.
Care scheduling & rostering features in IQ:caremanger
IQ:caremanager contains intelligent features that help home care providers efficiently plan and schedule home care provision. Here are some of the most useful features:
- Simple calendar view / daily overview for client and carer visits, with drag-and-drop functionality
- Create a range of visit types including single, double-up, joint, recurring or group activities
- Ability to create shift plans or rounds
- Organise observation visits, training sessions, shadowing visits or supervision visits
- Assign regular carers to client visits to ensure consistency
- Automatically match carers to clients based on skills, experience, qualifications or client preference
- Quickly assign visits to different carers when necessary
- Warnings to highlight unassigned visits
- Alerts to highlight problem visits (e.g. when a carer does not meet the visit requirements)
- Pre-plan visits to test your business capacity
- View clients’ planned care hours vs actual hours delivered
- Plan carer holidays and record sickness
- Deliver schedules via the carer app and client & family portal – with alerts to notify of any changes
- Seamless integration with funder contracts, payroll, mileage, invoicing, time sheet management and billing.
What kind of visits can IQ:caremanager schedule?
Scheduling and rostering software can provide home care businesses with benefits that can improve operations, communication, and the quality of care provided to clients. If you are ready to take your first step towards digitising your scheduling processes or are looking for something better suited to your business needs – get in touch!