Clinical Documentation for Home Health Care Agencies – Addressing Staffing Challenges - Part 3

Third Article in the Series: Address Staffing Challenges

In the third article in the series on how home care agencies can navigate staffing challenges, we look at how scheduling, communications, clinical documentation, alerts and validations at the point of care must integrate on one platform to help you utilize resources optimally.

Scheduling

Scheduling plays a very critical role in efficiently managing the time of employees. The agency management platform you use should provide you with the ability to collect all the information necessary, such as patient preferences, employee skills, availability, etc., for efficient scheduling. Some of the essential features in your software platform are:

Intelligent matching of employees and patients based on patient preferences, employee skills, availability, etc

Optimize employee travel time and cost

Proactive alerts to reduce scheduling conflicts, overtime, and schedules outside authorization

Proactive notification of changes to schedules

Communication in home care

Communications

Proactive and effective communication among the home health care agencies, field employees, and other care providers will help clinicians have all the information needed to provide quality care. With information available at their fingertips, clinicians can reduce the spent looking or calling for the patient's care information.

The following are some of the communication functions that will help clinicians.

Communicate schedule changes in real-time to field employees

HIPAA Compliant messages for the home care agency to communicate with employees

Communication logs with patients, employees, and other care professionals are available to clinicians at the point of care

Easily share key treatment notes and plans from the current visit to the next visit

Medication and Treatment changes reflected at the point of care in real-time

Any care Plan changes should get reflected at the point of care

Effective care coordination to send Plan of Care and change orders to attending physicians

Access to Clinical Information in Healthcare

Easy Access to Clinical Information

Access to all patient information – clinical, schedules, communication logs, etc. – will greatly assist clinicians in providing quality care and reduce the stress level of employees. We highlight some of the key information that should be available to clinicians.

Access to clinical summary and past clinical notes before and during the shift/visit

View Medications, Treatments, and Care plans before starting the visit

Easy access to communication logs and visit-to-visit plans

View complete patient schedules to get an understanding of other disciplines involved in patient care

Access to complete patient demographic information when necessary

Access to authorization and remaining visits

Alerts and Validations at Point of Care

Alerts and Validations at Point of Care

Most accurate, complete, and compliant documentation happens at the point of care. Documenting after the fact may not accurately reflect the care provided. Clinicians can use all the alerts and validations they can get at the point of care for providing and documenting care. We highlight some of the alerts and validations below:

Proactive alerts for missed medications, treatments, or interventions

Configurable consistency checks for assessments and other documentation areas

Configurable triggers to detect problem areas to address and modify the care plan

Alerts for clinical tasks for the patient

Advanced clinical analysis using SHP Interface

Access to medications, care plan, and past clinical notes

Create a Plan of Care and OASIS from the clinical note

Conclusion

CareVoyant understands that leveraging technology and automation will help home health care agencies to get the most out of the clinicians and meet the staffing challenges. CareVoyant's integrated functions and configurable alerts will improve the quality of care, documentation, and operational efficiency of the clinicians and the bottom line of home care agencies. The software supports agencies providing one or more home base services - Private Duty Nursing, Non-Medical Personal Care, HCBS, Home Health, and Pediatric Home Care.