How Fractured Scheduling is Costing Your Home Health Care Company Money
Posted: Oct. 20, 2021
Patients are waiting months for home healthcare services due to an ongoing home healthcare labor shortage that predated the onset of COVID-19, and has been exacerbated by the pandemic. In effect, home health companies across the country have reported as many as 10,000 unfilled staffing hours each week, leaving vulnerable patients without care. This trend is likely to continue as more Baby Boomers reach retirement age, take advantage of assisted living services, and begin to require in-home care.
There are also organizational reasons that lead to a home healthcare company’s inability to fully staff their patient’s schedules. Many home health facilities are operating on out-dated, inefficient IT systems, and as a result are experiencing underutilization of their field staff. Underutilization leads to poor employee satisfaction and high employee turnover, costing the company money to pay for unemployment claims and reducing their overall service capacity.
Follow along as we cover the cause and effect of inadequate scheduling in the healthcare field, and how that affects a company’s bottom line.
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Poor Communication Practices Lead to Lost Staffing Hours
Over half of home health companies are losing billable client hours because they are unable to fill current staffing requirements in a timely fashion. Schedulers are usually plagued with the daunting task of assigning thousands of hours each week. They must coordinate patient needs against a roster of available field technicians, as well as cross-check employee specializations and patient preferences.
Schedulers must then reach out to each field technician to determine their availability and interest. With little-to-no streamlined scheduling communication systems in place, schedulers are left to call, email, or text staff and await their response.
This is a highly inefficient process as schedulers typically reach out to field technicians one at a time. In addition, HIPAA requirements prevent schedulers from sharing basic care information necessary to understand and provide care services - including the patient’s name. The ambiguity and back-and-forth communication increases the time needed to staff a shift, and inevitably leads to missed shifts.
Inefficient IT Systems Waste Valuable Office Hours
While the home health care gross profit margin is particularly high, many health care companies lose almost two thirds of their margin after operating costs. Companies can protect their margins by controlling their biggest cost: labor. This is most effectively accomplished through improving their IT systems.
In general, the healthcare field lags behind other major industries in technology adoption; a large majority of home health care providers are still operating on paper systems that are time-consuming and ineffectual. Not only do poor IT systems cut into the schedulers’ ability to successfully staff shifts, but it clearly eats up their time as well.
Staffing Politics & Procedures Leads to Higher Overtime Costs
Another consequence of poor IT systems is that schedulers are unable to complete their whole job; a scheduler is responsible for filling shifts with a field technician who is right for the patient AND the company. When a scheduler is struggling and grasping at straws to fill call ins and no shows for patients, they often deprioritize their responsibility to the company’s bottom line. In order to make sure as many shifts are staffed as possible, shifts are often awarded on a first come-first-serve basis and eager field workers are able to rack up favorable field hours and considerable overtime pay.
Unchecked overtime pay can dramatically increase a company’s labor cost. It’s been reported that overtime costs are consuming 11% of total payroll costs in the home health industry, while at the same time some employees are underworked and not adequately compensated. Companies can cut unnecessary overtime by having stricter procedures on field assignments and better utilizing their entire staff, but they can only accomplish this with better tools and instruction.
This leads us to our next point: a lack of software prohibits home health office staff from being able to strategically staff hours according to an intended budget.
Poor Office Understanding of Variable Costs Leads to Higher Labor Expenditure
Variable costs are costs that can be controlled in the healthcare industry, such as overtime and salary/wage labor costs. While schedulers are tasked with the responsibility of filling shifts, they are often unaware or unable to take the budget into consideration when choosing field technicians to assign.
Providing home health care office personnel with the knowledge and the know-how to factor variable costs into their scheduling can greatly reduce the overall labor expenditure of the company.
Transitioning home health operations to efficient and secure scheduling and communication systems can reduce the costs associated with poor labor planning and increase the number of patients they can service. As companies begin to approach scheduling with greater technical strategy and efficiency, they can significantly impact their top and bottom lines.
Improve Scheduling, Cut Labor Costs, & Stay HIPAA-Compliant with Notifyd
At Notifyd, we’ve taken the time to understand the struggles of the home healthcare industry and have created an all-encompassing software solution that can help home health providers cut costs, increase revenue, and improve internal processes.
From HIPAA compliance and data concerns, to thoughtfully-designed communication procedures, Notifyd can make home healthcare a breeze.
On average, home health companies only fill 85% of their shifts due to inadequate scheduling, resulting in lost revenue and inevitable lost clients. Notifyd’s HIPAA compliant communication software has led to improvements in staffing rates amongst our customers by 5% and saves each scheduler an average of two hours each day per day. Photos, videos, and secure patient information can be sent across Notifyd as well, improving quality and effectiveness of your team’s communication, while simultaneously making scheduling and other job functions significantly easier for your team.
Talk to one of our Notifyd Account Executives today to learn more about how Notifyd can improve your home healthcare operations and ultimately improve your profit margin.
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