It’s time to drive digitalisation in home care

HOW TO SELECT A SOFTWARE PROVIDER TO DRIVE YOUR BUSINESS INNOVATION

There is no doubt that the pandemic has brought many changes to our lives across all generations. For older generations, the ‘new normal’ means increasing interactions with technology in their everyday life.

The Smart Homes for Senior project, run by a specialist notfor-profit care provider McLean Care and supported by the Australian government’s Department of Health, showed some positive results particularly as it enabled many of the users to maintain contact with family members as the country went into lockdown.

With the number of elderly Australians receiving home care almost overtaking the number of people living in residential aged care, going digital is no longer a nice-to-have for home care, but a must-have.

For home care providers that want to remain appealing in a competitive marketplace, now is the time to digitise processes and leverage the right tools to generate better care for home care service users.

Like any change, challenges can sometimes follow but by choosing the right home care software provider, they can be easily overcome. The three attributes you should look for when selecting a software provider for your home care business are:

• customer support • real-time data, and • continuous improvement.

A dedicated customer support team

Going digital means doing away with outdated processes and systems and embracing efficiencies, both in terms of staff time and expenditures. Going digital is not about replacing carers but about automating processes and giving people more time so that they can focus on delivering high quality care services.

Here are four key points your software provider should be offering as standard:

• Onboarding of any new software or applications with minimal disruption. • Taking into consideration the home care agency’s technical abilities and tailoring their services and language to you (and not the other way around).

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• Having a dedicated customer support team that can provide clear straightforward explanations and support to non-tech carers and agencies. This is essential to help them understand how to onboard the software easily and feel comfortable in using it. • Delivering intuitive, user-friendly technology. Rather than using multiple solutions that must interface and sync with each other, it’s important to find an intuitive all-in-one solution (and provider) that can help digitise most or all your processes.

Access to real-time customer data

Privacy, data accuracy and consistency has never been more important.

With home care technology rolled out across multiple devices, data syncing is required to ensure records are kept up-to-date, security isn’t compromised, and the quality and value of data is maintained.

Choose a software product that delivers accurate and consistent data in real-time and ensures your data is stored and accessed securely.

For example, a client of ours came to us as they wanted to move away from time consuming, inefficient and ‘open to errors’ processes of having to manually update client care plans and records. With our support they were able to update client records in real-time which made them more efficient and more transparent.

Carers and managers know they are accessing the latest client’s information and they can easily add notes to any task or visit that they carry out, so people are always informed.

A provider that continually innovates

As Australia’s population continues to age, many more people with complex needs will need care.

It is imperative to choose a software provider that is committed to continual testing of their product and new product development so that it can future proof your business.

This is the time to go digital as it will allow your home care business to scale without increasing your costs disproportionately.

Dec Norton is Chief Technology Officer, CareLineLive. To find out more please visit www.carelinelive.com.au

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