Do you find yourself hiring more providers even though you’re not bringing in enough money to justify it? Or maybe some of your non-exempt care givers end up putting in overtime to accommodate their patient load.

This is one of the biggest home health care problems. But how can you generate more profit without accepting more patients?

The key is to make your visit schedules more efficient. Taking caregivers off the road maximizes the time they spend with patients. Plus, you free up their schedules for new appointments.

Each patient has their own individual needs, and it’s important to match them with the right provider and care worker. But sometimes, identifying the ideal match and when they’re available can be a challenge.

Don’t settle for scheduling patients their second-best match. Instead, implement a database management system that keeps track of all of this for you, so all you have to do is search for what you need.

Do your care workers spend more time driving than they do on-site with patients?

Mileage is one of the most costly (and underestimated) problems for home health care businesses.

Driving takes up valuable time that could’ve gone toward a new patient’s appointment. Even worse, it racks up unnecessary gasoline expenses. Many home care companies suffer from the cost of driving between appointments.

Solve the issue altogether by optimizing caregiver routes to cut back on drive time.

Not every care worker has the same availability. Even if they aren’t overbooked with patients, they have their own personal schedules. This sometimes makes it challenging to accept new appointments.

Stop writing and rewriting schedules. Instead, empower your team to report their own availability. Then, leverage an automated system to pinpoint ideal appointment times. (We’ll show you how in the next section!)

Does your team ever schedule appointments that take a caregiver 10-20 miles out of their way just to see one patient? It isn’t ideal.

But how do you accept as many appointments as possible without adding unnecessary drive time?

Believe it or not, it’s achievable. But first, you need a method for pinpointing provider locations at any given time. Then, it becomes simple to identify the best appointment timeslots.

When scheduling lacks efficiency, you end up with an imbalance in staff assignments. Some people may feel overworked, while others don’t get enough hours.

Either way, this is bad news and can lead to high turnover rates.

Prevent dissatisfaction among care workers. Put into action automatically balances appointments across all your providers.

When a patient no longer needs home care, the caregiver will have a new opening. This is a great opportunity to fill their schedule with a new appointment.

But keeping track of thousands of patients and hundreds of caregiver openings can be daunting.

Stay on top of it with automated workflows. Use a proven process that re-assigns team members as soon as their schedules free up.

The best home health care solution automates your processes and offers the best routing and location-based scheduling.

Imagine if your staff could always see the following information in a single glance:

• which providers need more patients
• which care worker is the best match for a particular patient
• the caregiver’s availability and when they’re visiting the patient’s zip code
• when and where the cargiver’s other appointments are in that area
• which appointments were completed, delayed, or need to be rescheduled, and why

Let’s say you’re on the phone with a new patient. She needs an in-home physical therapist three times a week.

Before the patient even finishes explaining her needs, you’ve already pulled up an interactive map. The map displays the locations of all your physical therapists on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.

You plug in the new patient’s zip code, and the map zooms in to display several color-coded map pins: blue and orange. Each color represents a different physical therapist’s appointments in the area.

Geo Scheduling identifies available caregivers, shortens routes, and maximizes time spent with patients.

For example, if no qualified care workers are available or nearby at the requested time, Geo Scheduling identifies the next applicable timeslot.

If a caregiver is over-booked, they’re de-prioritized in favor of other nearby, qualified providers.

Now, you’re now able to accept as many appointments as possible without driving too far out of the way or compromising quality of care.

Cargivers and patients no longer call in to update their availability. Instead, care workers submit their own availability through Mapline’s secure forms. While on-site with patients, they submit appointment requests, referrals, and other important information.

For example, caregivers are empowered to report environmental concerns, patient preferences, or necessary safety precautions, all right in the moment.