All About You
Massachusetts-based agency was searching for a skilled nursing solution and found exactly what their health-aide business needed!
Highlights
All About You Home Health Services fell in love with Smartcare’s Home Health program while searching for a skilled nursing solution. The agency signed up with Smartcare immediately, making the difficult decision to implement both a skilled and non-skilled solution at the same time. Implementing Smartcare was easy, and the agency’s caregivers had no problems learning the new program. New Smartcare workflows simplified scheduling and introduced myriad operational efficiencies. Smartcare’s Caregiver Rewards program was exactly what the agency was looking for to increase caregiver engagement.
All About you
Home Health Services
All About You Home Health Services is a nurse-owned and operated agency with branches located in Springfield, MA, Amherst, MA, Westfield, MA, and Easthampton, MA. The agency offers both skilled and non-skilled care services to a broad base of clients.
They specialize in providing the trained resources necessary to minimize readmissions for inpatient medical care and maintain clients’ quality of life at home. Smartcare began a partnership with this agency in February 2021.
All About You is a mid-sized agency with consistent growth plans to reach more clients with needs.
Challenge
All About You Home Health was looking for a new skilled nursing platform when they found the perfect solution for their home care business. The agency went through over thirty demos with a variety of skilled nursing software solutions and had grown discouraged. Each of the platforms had its own set of challenges.
Katie Ortell, Owner-CEO of All About You Home Health Services, finally reached out to her peers in a Facebook group for insight and suggestions. It was there that she first connected with one of Smartcare’s account representatives. They agreed to meet to brainstorm how Smartcare’s home care platform might help All About You Home Health Services.
Solution
“We were looking for a skilled software platform to finally get rid of the paper system that we had since 2007,” says Katie Ortell, All About You Home Health’s administrator. “I asked for advice from other providers on a Facebook user group, and Smartcare’s representative contacted me. There was no pressure – just a request to give him five minutes to show what Smartcare offered. He knew we’d been through multiple demos with other vendors, so he promised to keep his presentation short.”
“As soon as we saw the software, we were floored,” continues Katie. “It was so clean and well thought out. We had no intention of changing home health aide software, but we signed up with Smartcare before we even found a skilled software solution. We were quite impressed.”
Managing the Agency with KPIs
All About You quickly learned the value of Smartcare’s KPI dashboard for managing the agency. “The KPI dashboard is amazing,” says Katie. “I’m still learning things that I can do with it, I can’t say enough. I review KPIs for my day, week, and month, especially when comparing payroll and revenue. That’s a really good tool for us.”
Solving the Overhead Problem with KPIs
“We had a lot of overhead that we couldn’t figure out how to track,” Katie explains. “I had five separate spreadsheets to calculate overhead. So, I entered my administrative staff into Smartcare as salary employees -to get a ballpark figure of overhead. Overhead is a great snapshot view of where the company is,” says Katie. “That’s a huge, very beneficial tool. That was one of the bonuses that the KPI dashboard offered right off the bat.”
“We were looking for a skilled software platform to finally get rid of the paper system that we had since 2007,”
– Katie Ortell, CEO-Owner
Automating Appointments with Dynamic Scheduling
With Smartcare’s automatic scheduling function, the agency saves hours of scheduling labor every month. “The schedule is so easy to navigate,” says Katie. And the auto-scheduler? Fantastic! You just put it in the scheduling rules and forget it. In the old system, I had to manually go in every month, update the schedule, and roll the calendars. It took eight to ten hours a month just to do the schedule! With Smartcare, I enter the schedule as soon as the caregiver and patient agree on it, and it rolls on until there’s a change.”
Payroll and Mileage
Smartcare’s payroll and mileage capabilities not only save time but also allow the agency to reimburse caregivers for their mileage expenses consistently. “Payroll is super easy,” says Katie. “We can check all of our shift differentials, and we can check to make sure all of our mileage is in the system. Then we click a button, and payroll is done. We couldn’t put mileage in the old system; we didn’t even have that option. Our caregivers were still submitting paper mileage sheets. The way Smartcare handles payroll is so smart. I can’t say enough about it. I really can’t.”
Billing
“We do all of our billing,” explains Katie. “My finance manager used to manually hand key all of our claims. With Smartcare, we just click, and the claims get sent right over. The entire office has been affected just with one software program.”
Happy Caregivers
“My caregivers are very happy that they don’t have to turn in paper timesheets anymore,” says Katie. “They’re clocking in and out with ease. Some of my caregivers were nervous about transitioning from paper to software, but they picked it up with no problems whatsoever. They came in, we gave a five-minute quick tutorial, and now their notes are perfect. That says a lot about how easy the program is.”
Caregiver Rewards
The agency management team often discussed options for rewarding their caregivers. They wondered if they could give points or prizes, or even if they could put names in a basket for a raffle as a reward. With Caregiver Rewards, the agency found they could finally give the motivation they always wanted to offer.
“When we saw a demo for Smartcare’s Caregiver Reward program, Jacob, our Finance Manager, gave me a thumbs-up before we even left the meeting. Caregiver Rewards was exactly what we needed! It is a very inclusive program.”
“My finance manager used to manually key all our claims. With Smartcare, we just click, and the claims get sent right over.”
– Katie Ortell, CEO-Owner
Customizable for Each Client
“Everybody likes the fact that Smartcare is customizable for every patient,” says Katie. “The fact that we can put tasks in according to what the patient is asking for, and we can communicate preferences like the family would prefer to use the back door. We can add things like that the dog’s name is Joy. It’s nice to have everything right there.”
Efficiency for Growth
Efficiencies in the Smartcare system are setting up All About You Home Health Services for growth in a post-pandemic world.
“The software has eliminated so many redundancies that we had in our process and our flow,” explains Katie. “The time it takes for us to collect an intake, put it in as a lead, notify our director of nursing to schedule the intake, and get all the paperwork. It’s shortened the turnaround time for starting a new client to 24 hours, whereas when everything was on paper, it could take up to two weeks. Now they can sign all the forms directly in the home .”
“We’ve streamlined everything from hiring, to retention, to patient documentation,” Katie continues. “And it’s all just one platform. We don’t have to use ten different software programs. It’s all in one place, one login, which we can even access on our phones and iPads.”
Implementation
The agency was concerned about its decision to implement both a skilled and home care solution simultaneously. Still, they found implementing Smartcare simple, especially with training modules and videos to support the process. They also quickly discovered that the Smartcare team went above and beyond to ensure their success.
“I love the fact that they let us play with the software before they trained us on it,” Katie said. “If you’re a new agency, I understand needing a step by step. But for an established agency coming from another platform, there will be certain features that we’re going to automatically home in on and look for and try to figure out on our own. When we started training sessions with our implementor, we had specific questions. We didn’t waste time going over things we already figured out and things we didn’t need to know. That was a key point for me – having the ability to play with the software ahead of time to learn the system and figure out what we needed help with.”
Individual Attention to Achieve Success
“One of the things that I found exceptional was that the implementation team set aside extra time once they found out that we contracted with VA,” Katie continued. “Smartcare’s implementation staff walked us through everything we needed. And they were very knowledgeable. They knew all the little nuances that cause the VA sometimes to reject claims. They gave us tips and tricks on how to avoid claims getting rejected. And that was phenomenal to have that extra little bit of one-on-one time with somebody familiar with the processes that we go through.”
“Caregiver Rewards is exactly what we needed! It is
a very inclusive program.”
– Katie Ortell, CEO-Owner
Support
The agency was happy to find they could always reach out to Smartcare for support. With their previous system, they might log a support ticket and not hear back for weeks, long after they created spreadsheets and figured out a solution independently.
“We were putting in authorizations through the VA so we could do our billing,” explains Katie. “We never really could figure out why, but we couldn’t discontinue an authorization. Within 24 hours of us reporting the problem, the Smartcare development team created a little check box to continue an authorization. It was something simple, but the Smartcare team got it done so quickly.”
“I was dumbfounded how quickly it was resolved,” Katie continues. “We were trying to figure out a workaround because that was our normal thinking. But Smartcare fixed the problem. It was wonderful. And that’s just one little thing. There have been quite a few things that they’ve already tweaked for us or helped us figure out while they work on big features, like the Form Builder, to customize our workflow.”
An End to Downtime
With Smartcare, All About You Home Health went from downtime several times a day to no downtime at all.
“With our previous system, we would have downtime multiple times a day,” explains Katie. “You would put a schedule together, and it would disappear. You would put notes in, and you’d have to go back and double-check and make sure the software saved the note. Since implementing Smartcare, we’ve had no downtime at all. And we’re on it all the time. It’s not unusual for nurses to go in at 10:30 or 11:00 at night and put notes in, and they’re not having any issues”.
One Platform for Human Resources
Another benefit for the agency is Smartcare’s Hiring Hub, which manages all aspects of hiring new employees – from posting the job all the way to converting an applicant to an employee.
“An applicant comes in, and we send them the link,” continues Katie. “The application is stored right in Smartcare. We can click a button to do the background check, and it’s stored right in Smartcare too. We can process whatever type of background check we want. It’s all compliant. Everything is maintained in the employee profile. They do their training – we record it in Smartcare. We’ve eliminated filing cabinets upon filing cabinets of paper.”
“The implementation team set aside extra time once they found out that we contracted with VA. Smartcare’s implementation staff walked us through everything we needed. And they were very knowledgeable.”
– Katie Ortell, CEO-Owner