Supporting Your Home Care Staff amidst COVID-19

For the past couple of months, Caresmartz is monitoring the pandemic situation and its effect on the home care industry, caregivers, & clients and making every possible effort to minimize the impact.

With a dedicated team working to help every individual associated with the home care community, we’ve left no stone unturned in offering relevant and useful information through webinars, guides, whitepapers, and blogs.

Now talking about your agency’s front-line warriors, every home care agency delivering personal care services must understand the importance of supporting their skilled caregivers during the crisis especially when the states reopen and you’re operating in full capacity.

Caregivers who are already burdened to deliver consistent quality care to clients at their place would now need to get back to the field and deliver quality care to seniors by taking adequate precautions.

Supporting your caregivers and staff members is crucial more than ever before to keep the organization functioning and reducing stress in these tough times.

Here are some tips and other useful resources to help your staff members as they prepare themselves to work on and off-field.

Ensuring Overall Health of Your Caregivers

Initially, you need to ensure that your caregivers who are joining back aren’t infected. This is crucial to ensure safety for your clients and other members of your team who may come in direct contact with caregivers.

You can ask them to screen themselves before they begin their shifts through the CareSmartz360 Pre-Screening feature in the mobile app. This will provide you an insight into the caregiver’s health & symptoms and you can eventually take necessary actions for your clients’ safety.

If you find your caregivers are completely fit to deliver care, you must ensure proper PPE kits and other required equipment for their safety while they begin their regular shifts.

How CareSmartz360 can help?

The Shift Pre-Screening feature in CareSmartz360 helps agencies in monitoring the overall health of their caregivers and detailed information about their health is updated in real-time.

Caregivers need to undergo a quick COVID-19 screening before they can clock-in for their shift. If a caregiver is found with any of the symptoms associated with COVID-19, he/she is restricted to clock-in and the same is informed to the agency in real-time through SMS/Email.

This helps in keeping your staff members safe and ensuring adequate safety for your clients, which is a crucial part of delivering quality care.

Ensure Your Caregivers are Sufficiently Paid

Since the outbreak of the global pandemic has forced the caregivers and agencies to walk the extra mile to meet the surging demands of seniors, many caregivers aren’t sufficiently paid.

Many caregivers who are working for long hours aren’t compensated for the extra hours they work to meet the demands of the clients during this crisis.

Certain billing errors can be responsible for reduced payments to the caregivers, which can affect the quality of care and caregiver churn rates in the long run.

Agencies must ensure that they’re paying their caregivers for all of the hours of hard work they put in while ensuring they are providing quality care. Moreover, it would be great to offer incentives and bonuses to the caregivers that are providing the next level of care during these tough times.

How CareSmartz360 can help?

CareSmartz360’s smart billing and payroll help caregivers track every minute of delivered care through hassle-free clock-in & clock-out.

Caregivers who are working for long hours even after their shifts have the record maintained over a cloud-based home care software, which can be considered for final payment settlement.

The caregivers who wish to work more can present themselves as available and they would be assigned another client by the agency based on certain parameters including location and type of care required.

Furthermore, caregivers can now record expenses during their shifts and get the same reimbursed without any hassle with CareSmartz360 smart mobile application.

Training for your Caregivers

Training is a crucial aspect of delivering quality care and ensuring your clients get the best regardless of the circumstances. Home care agencies need to ensure that their caregivers are professionally trained to meet the diverse demands of clients amidst COVID-19.

It’s important for you as an agency owner to keep a track of the feedback offered by the clients and tailor your services accordingly.

Ignoring the essential care needs of your clients could be the reason you may end up losing some of your loyal clients in this crucial time and may affect the overall performance of your caregivers.

How CareSmartz360 can help?

CareSmartz360 helps agencies review every piece of feedback from the client for a particular caregiver. This not only helps to analyze the diverse care needs amidst COVID-19 but eventually it helps in tailoring the services according to individual clients.

With CareSmartz360, agencies can review the ratings and feedback from the clients and work precisely on improving services through the right training.

Furthermore, with CareSmartz360’s voice feedback feature, the elderly who are unable to write feedback can record voice feedback through a mobile app. This feedback is reviewed by the staff members of the agency to enhance care delivery through regular training.

Conclusion

Your caregivers are undeniably an asset to your organization and you must ensure you offer the highest level of support and care for them. By following these mentioned ways, it can help your organization by enhancing the overall performance, productivity and client retention during the toughest times.

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