Digital Strategies for Home Care Agencies to Navigate the COVID-19 Crisis

We all have witnessed a situation where following social distancing and adequate safety measures have become the new normal. While the states have officially announced to reopen, many industries are planning early to navigate the crisis efficiently.

Talking about the home care agencies, ensuring quality care is again the biggest priority as always but how to implement the best strategies is an important question for the agencies that are having a tough time over the last few months.

COVID-19 has undeniably escorted some new challenges along with smart solutions that help in supporting personal care businesses, caregivers, and clients. Since home care isn’t something that can be paused or can be managed remotely for a long time, it’s the right time to think about what to do next.

In the last couple of months, Caresmartz is closely monitoring the situation and organizing webinars that depict the best practices to navigate the crisis and stabilize business revenues.

Now let’s focus on implementing digital strategies that help businesses in streamlining processes and making most of the virtual practices for enhanced productivity & safety.

Digital Transformation Strategies for Agencies

Technology has empowered our lives in every aspect of our contemporary lifestyle and has eventually helped the home care industry since the pandemic outbreak.

Without leveraging technology, it wouldn’t have been possible for many home care businesses to survive in the market.

Here are some digital aspects that can help home care businesses to continue navigating the COVID-19 crisis even if the state reopens.

Virtual Caregiver Training

Training is a crucial part of quality care, which can’t be neglected especially when we’re in the middle of a pandemic.

Your caregivers must be aware of the latest guidelines of the government and must deploy caregiving best practices to ensure seniors get the highest level of care at their residence.

Agencies can arrange video conferencing and video training sessions for caregivers to ensure they are trained to handle a critical patient as well as deliver optimum care for those who are believed to be by following the right protocols.

Caregivers can communicate through video conferences and essential information can be provided remotely that further helps in improving efficiency and productivity.

Digital Feedback from Clients

One of the most important aspects of managing care whilst the states are reopening is to work on client feedback.

Since the quality of care isn’t something that an agency should compromise; client feedback can be a game-changer for businesses seeking growth.

Smart home care management apps equipped with clients’ feedback could be leveraged to analyze the areas that need continuous improvements.

You can consider using video calling to your clients and ask them how they’re feeling with the level of care delivered during the new normal and ask what else do they want you to improve or work on.

This can again help your agency to provide an enhanced level of care, which eventually leads to more referrals as happy & satisfied clients will always refer your business to others.

Caregiver Pre-Screening

Agencies need to keep prioritizing the overall health of their clients even if they are preparing to work in full capacity once the state reopens.

The first step is to ensure that caregivers aren’t infected and must be completely fit to deliver care for the ones that are at a higher risk of developing severe symptoms.

CareSmartz360 helps agencies to monitor the health of every caregiver remotely and track insights in real-time. If a caregiver is having one or more symptoms of COVID-19, he/she is restricted to deliver care and another caregiver is assigned immediately by the agency.

The COVID-19 Pre-Screening feature of CareSmartz360 screens caregivers before they clock-in and detailed information about their health are shared with agencies through Email/SMS notification. The caregiver can’t clock-in if he/she has one or more symptoms.

Remote Hiring

As we all are aware of caregiver churn becoming a great challenge among home care agencies even during the pandemic, hiring skilled resources will continue to be a part of quality care delivery.

Automated screening solutions can make the job easier and virtual interviews can help agencies identify talented individuals to join their team. Also, agencies could set important questions through an automated platform that the new applicants need to answer as soon as they apply.

This will simplify the overall hiring process without the need for manual shortlisting of the candidates based on their skills.

Encourage Remote Monitoring

Though remote monitoring may not be an ideal choice in many circumstances, it may surely help clients with basic care requirements.

Caregivers can monitor the health of their clients remotely and seek medical help if required. There’s no point to expect your skilled caregivers to devote long hours on shifts that can be still managed remotely.

Smart Marketing

Businesses need to focus on their marketing campaign as well if they are already facing tough competition in the market.

Staying updated on various social media channels and building a website with relevant information can be quite helpful in generating leads that can be further converted into clients.

Providing solutions to clients’ issues and actively responding to their queries on social media is yet a great way to build a positive market repute in uncertain times when there’s a surging demand for skilled & reliable caregivers.

Conclusion

Technology has played a vital role in helping the entire industry to explore new ways to deal with the challenges that no one imagined a couple of years back.

The digital transformation of home care agencies is undoubtedly the need of the hour and businesses must inch towards adopting technology to meet the ever-increasing demands of quality care and sustain it in the long run.

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