Home Health Software

The home health care market continues to grow as health care shifts from the hospital to the home. Like many healthcare professionals, home health workers need to speed up patient encounters, while providing better care. Home health care providers also face the added challenge of being constantly on the move. Fortunately, home health agency software is designed to automate many of the day-to-day activities home health professionals encounter - from completing clinicals to scheduling and billing. We have created this guide to help buyers better understand the home health software market and how to identify which systems will best meet their needs.

Here’s what we’ll cover:

What Is Home Health Software?
Deployment Strategies
Application Categories

What Type of Buyer Are You?
Market Forces and Trends

What is Home Health Software?

Home health software includes features typical of most electronic health records (EHRs) to streamline the day-to-day clinical operations of home health providers. More specifically, these systems have been designed to automate nearly every process needed in home health care - ranging from clinicals, or point-of-care records to billing, scheduling, and accounting. Most systems are designed take you through the Home Health Care Outcome & Assessment Information Set (OASIS) - while keeping patient data secure and HIPAA-compliant. Some home health systems offer unique features designed to meet the needs of specialty areas within home health, such as physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech-language therapy, or others.

Deployment Strategies

When selecting a software solution, buyers can choose to implement applications for specific tasks - known as standalone, best-of-breed software. Or, they can go with an integrated system that has a full suite of tools to address all of their needs - such as accounting, billing, human resources, and more. Agencies also need to determine how they would like to access the software. For example, some systems are offered completely over the Internet as web based home health software systems. This is also referred to as a software as a service (SaaS). These SaaS systems are typically offered in a pay-as-you-go monthly or annual subscription and are hosted and maintained by the software vendor. Other vendors offer on-premise solutions where users install and run the software from a server at your agency. It’s important to note that many vendors today offer both SaaS and on-site software.

Application Categories of Home Health Software

What Type of Buyer Are You?

Before evaluating software and lining up a formal comparison of systems, you’ll want to make sure you know what type of buyer you are. We’ve found almost all buyers fall into one of the four categories listed below:

• Home health care. These agencies provide care by licensed health workers - including registered nurses, licensed practical nurses, and licensed therapists - to treat patients for illness or injury. The most important features of software for these agencies will likely be the clinicals (also called point-of-care records) and scheduling features to help you monitor your patient census. Most agencies will also require applications such as human resources, accounting, billing, and customer relationship management. Therefore, integrated suites are ideal for these buyers.
• Hospice care. Organizations that provide hospice care will often look for human resources and customer relationship management systems. These features help support communications with volunteers and philanthropic donors that help the organization either financially or with in-kind contributions. Human resources features are important for conducting tasks, such as background checks of hospice care workers, payroll, and performance reviews.
• Private duty. These buyers typically provide non-medical care and require software that can support billing to organizations other than Medicare. They oftentimes also require human resources, scheduling, and accounting solutions.
• Therapy / rehabilitation. Therapeutic care providers, such as speech therapists and physical therapists, often look to systems to help manage patient data and track therapy progress. Other common needs include ensuring compliance, scheduling, therapist productivity, and managing accounts receivable.

Market Trends You Should Understand

Buyers should keep the following trends in mind when researching software. How a vendor fits within these trends can affect its viability.

• Software as a Service (SaaS). The growth of cloud, or web-based, computing practices has touched many industries and healthcare is definitely among them. Within healthcare, home health agencies can appreciate the lower upfront costs, monthly pricing model, lack of IT infrastructure, and remote accessibility that web-based applications can deliver.
• Accessibility from mobile devices. Web-based home care software solutions provide convenient access to patient data from mobile devices, such as an iPad, iPhone, or Android. This improves your efficiency and reduces paperwork by helping you complete assessments directly at the point of care.
• Quality assurance features. Given the prevalence of mobile devices, it can be increasingly important that a point-of-care system automatically generate a Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) form following completion of an OASIS so that payment from Medicare is assured.

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