As home care providers contend with increased demand and rising client acuity, leaders look to AI, proprietary technology and real-time patient information to meet these challenges.
Technology should help staff by reducing administrative friction, giving frontline caregivers better access to relevant client information and facilitating the credible data providers need to showcase value-based care outcomes, according to industry leaders in an August FUTURE conference panel.
Case in point, Caring Senior Service developed its proprietary technology platform, Tendio, to streamline scheduling, billing, payroll, human resources and marketing for franchisees. The investment has helped the company manage its operational and growth demands, CEO Jeff Salter said.
“For us, the most significant [use case] has been reducing friction — really working to allow our teams to do the work that they need to do efficiently, effectively — and that’s been a lot of investment in our own proprietary software to manage end-to-end,” Salter told Home Health Care News at FUTURE.
San Antonio-based Caring Senior Service provides home care, hospice and other healthcare services across 23 states.
AI and real-time information tools also offer providers ways to identify operational pain points and develop solutions more quickly, noted Dan Deak, CEO of Home Halo. In June, Home Halo partnered with Sensi.ai, an AI-powered remote patient monitoring platform designed to improve safety and improve care responses.
AI can help organizations innovate and adapt in real time, while better use of data can help providers identify meaningful trends and demonstrate value-based outcomes to payers, according to Deak.
“They don’t want to just hear from us that, ‘Hey, we can reduce unnecessary rehospitalizations,’” Deak said at the conference. “They want to see the data.”
Based in Greenwood Village, Colorado, Home Halo is a home care company serving older adults and veterans in eight states.
Helping humans
Technology’s purpose isn’t to replace caregivers or simply cut costs, the panelists said. The goal is to reduce and streamline the administrative burden on staff.
“If you focus on the caregiver experience, then you’re going to have a good outcome with the client,” Salter said.
Reducing the time caregivers spend reviewing a patient record is one way to boost efficiency, said Tammy Tenton, vice president of clinical and compliance at Avid Health at Home.
“It’s very nice to have someone be able to quickly get a synopsis of that patient … they’re able to see exactly what’s going on — when was their last hospitalization, their medications — very quickly, so that when they go in, they can make the appropriate interventions,” Tenton told HHCN.
Chicago-based Avid Health at Home is an older adult home care provider serving five states.
Identifying and responding to changing needs is crucial for caregivers entering homes of patients with complex conditions, Tenton added. Using technology to glean data allows caregivers to provide more coordinated, tailored responses to care needs.
“Rising acuity doesn’t necessarily mean asking staff to do more of the same,” Tenton said. “It means the sickest clients get measurably more attention by design, and certainly not by whoever happens to notice.”
Salter also said the technology can give caregivers who are new to the organization a fast and thorough briefing of years’ worth of data. Caring Senior Service often sees caregivers who are new to the organization and thus new to clients. Therefore, providing them with thorough client information as quickly as possible is “important,” he said.
Overall, the best business case for home care companies is to use technology to scale operations, support value-based care and reduce administrative burdens on caregivers and staff, the panelists indicated.
“Home care, specifically, for us as an industry, is the very last to adopt [new technologies],” Salter said. “There’s so many people who are going to need care, and if we don’t become better, we won’t be able to meet that challenge.”