Ep. 68: 5 Home Care Software Tips to Jumpstart Your Growth in 2022

Miriam Allred (00:08):

Welcome to Home Care Live! I’m Miriam Allred from Activated Insights. Today. I’m really excited to introduce our guests. We’ve got the President and the Vice President of SwyftOps joining us, Bruce Berglind and Chris Trempe. Gentlemen, welcome to the show.

Chris Trempe (00:24):

Thank you. Happy to be here!

Miriam Allred (00:25):

I just wanna start by saying it is a busy time. We were just highlighting how hectic the beginning of the year is. And so I just wanna congratulate all of you for making time to, you know, step back from your business. Join us here, live be able to chat with other providers and listen into really the expertise of Bruce and Chris today. So without further ado, I wanna highlight what we’re gonna talk about today. We’re gonna talk about some, some software tips that can really jumpstart your growth and help you reset your business at the start of 2022. So setting the stage, you know, we’re really in our software day in and day out, it’s easy to overlook simple functionality or underuse certain features. So the beginning of the year is really a perfect time to reset and take a step back and kind of look at, you know, your daily processes. So I’m really gonna turn Chris and Bruce loose on getting some of these tips that, that we recommend for you today. So Chris, why don’t you kick us off with this first tip around features and roles?

Chris Trempe (01:33):

Sure, appreciate it. Thank you, Miriam first tip truly is to identify feature sets, which in, within your software that can drive stronger time management and overall all operational efficiency. So a lot of folks will not look at linking the different features that are in a software together that can accentuate a certain role save time and drive revenue that way they just look at each feature individually or just don’t take time to actually learn how these link together reaching out into let’s say a knowledge base or even into your software company’s support and asking questions and things like that. It can really drive a lot of efficiency for you. And a lot of you, the folks that are inside of your agency just making their role a little bit more efficient, a little bit easier for them to find things locate and move through the software. It, that frustration level goes down because it’s just stressful, no matter what, as they’re doing their role.

Miriam Allred (02:38):

I know this is kind of a, a basic question, but on average, how many users from one an agency are you seeing inside the software on a daily basis?

Chris Trempe (02:47):

So generally we’ll see in between, depending on the agency size, but five to 10 people, you’ve got your schedulers, your on call, you have your, your admin team, whether it’s the nurses that are there or just your overall manager that’s watching it depending on the time billing and payroll. So really when you talk about the different roles that are inside of here, you look at, you know, a good example would be your scheduler, right? So open shifts are, are a dead revenue if you can’t fill them. So let’s say you have two or three schedulers inside the system at that time. If you do not take advantage of your system’s smart matching and for what we call it at swift ops is advanced, smart matching. So every very powerful software’s going to give you some sort of ability to locate a caregiver and match them to a client.

Chris Trempe (03:41):

You wanna make sure that your software has something that might be a little bit more towards the times. And what I mean is personality traits. You need to know that distance. You need to know if they are on a care team, you need to know if there’s any ratings that are around that caregiver in terms of old overall care, if they’re in a, have a certain skill, a zone, how many hours you have scheduled for ’em all of these things, and then tie in those personality traits to be, are they allergic to dogs, cats do they smoke? Do the what’s their personality and allowing your scheduler with one click, to be able to find a list of a, of caregivers that are available and message them right from the system and be the, and do this very, very efficiently is you’d be surprised. Maybe you won’t. How many schedulers open up 52 tabs of caregivers and are looking at availability one by one. They don’t need to do that. So if, if you do have anyone that’s doing that look into your softwares smart matching with, with with swift ops, it’s called advanced smart matching. And all of this is gonna save you time and help you find and fill those shifts quickly.

Miriam Allred (04:48):

Great example, you said kind of five to 10 people on this call. Some of you may have even more than 10 people inside your software on a daily basis. That’s a lot of different processes and dreamlining to do for each visual role, but like Chris is saying, you know, each person should have a process that they can follow. And the more you can simplify that and streamline that the better are there any other changes that you’ve seen in software that support individual roles and the value of that?

Chris Trempe (05:16):

So I mentioned a few just in my last answer, but those personality and true rate attributes are becoming more of the norm. And how, but on the other side, the users are not taking advantage of it to be able to, to help their team caregiver rating system survey system, like like you folks have, but some systems have a rating system built in like swift ops. But each platform’s gonna get there at some point. It’s just, who’s gonna get there now, who can, who can provide this to you right now or within this next calendar year, because you want a software that’s gonna be looking at, okay, how do I make your billing and payroll less painful? How do I help them bill outta one record instead of making them create multiple profiles for VA LTC, private pay softwares, shouldn’t ha make you do that.

Chris Trempe (06:07):

You should be able to bill outta one record things like that. What, what are the integrations that are gonna drive? What are the different aspects of pulling information forward? Like we, you have something called swift cards and you can pull information forward quickly about a caregiver or a client, whether it be an EVV log or you wanna see late, a late shift alerts or documents that are voted just quickly, not even having to go on the profile, those type of things. And just looking for a software that’s aware of this and is driving these future enhancements. So I can obviously only speak for us internally, but we roll out roughly 30 to 40 feature enhancements or new features every quarter. And we’ve done that since our inception. So we are very agile in rolling these out and listen, and that’s what you wanna be looking at when you’re looking at your software about growing your revenue and driving, you don’t wanna become stagnant in that software. You wanna make sure you have these tools so you can learn them and then implement them into your agency.

Miriam Allred (07:05):

Yeah. I love that. That’s a great transition into this next tip around the importance of integrations. Bruce, do you wanna speak to the second tip around integrations?

Bruce Berlind (07:14):

Sure. Be happy to. So you know, we’re, we’re actively talking to a lot of potential partners and have had, have added some, some key partners along the way already. And I think the integrations that are, that are perhaps more important depend on the maturity of the agency. So a new agency is typically gonna be more interested in and bene will benefit more from integrations with, with a merchant services provider right off the bat. That is, that is offering clients the ability to make payments via a, a credit card or preferably ACH. I say, preferably from the agency’s perspective, it’s, it’s a lot more economical to do ACH. And so we have a, we have a fully on fully integrated merchant service partnership with Vanko and what’s interesting and a little unique from what we understand is that integration flows through to our integration with QuickBooks online. So, so that Vanko transactions can move back and forth very easily into your bookkeeping system. Another one for, for newer agencies, another important integration might be payroll, right? So we offer several options there, all the major providers there are variations between some are, are download upload solutions and some are API solutions’ with direct integration in that way. That’s where I think an an agency wants to start is, is with those.

Miriam Allred (08:47):

And really the bottom line of integrations is automation, you know, simplifying the process, making it easier on the provider and on all those inside of the software. You mentioned a couple things on areas that providers should start, you know, with integrations, what are, what are some maybe functionalities or features of an integration that they should look for? You know, making sure they’re checking the boxes that an integration includes this, this and this,

Bruce Berlind (09:13):

Right. Do you, and, and you, you hit it exactly. So by, by definition, the integration is a, is a workflow tool. And I, I think ask yourselves these questions when, when evaluating the value of an integration and what impact it’s gonna have on your workflow, is it, does it have the potential to increase your revenue or does it have the, the potential to decrease your expenses? And then the third one and, and not last by any means, but often forgotten is, does it have the potential to, to guard your personal time? So, so does it have the potential to, to improve that workflow to the point, maybe you still get your personal time off mm-hmm <affirmative> right. So, so it’s, so that, that these, these tasks that the integration is doing for you are automating for you, right? Aren’t taking over that time,

Miriam Allred (10:09):

Who on the call doesn’t wanna get more time back into their day <laugh> I’m sure we’d all love as much time him as we could get, honestly, at this point, but I think those are great points to consider Bruce, you know, the time and the cost that that can be saved or reduced with, with these integrations. I appreciate everything said there let’s transition into this third tip Chris around, you know, using your software as a differentiator. What, what do you mean by that?

Chris Trempe (10:36):

What in here is most softwares have these two tools. You have an app and you have a family portal or, or whatever that, that portal is going to be called, where your clients or loved ones can interact inside of it and ensuring that those two tools, one, you understand every, all the functionality that can be there and you understand how to promote it. So family portal wise, you can be looking at it like, all right, I can provide visibility to the client themselves, or the loved ones. You, I hope that your software offers ere requests for them to be able to request shifts electronically built in messaging, be able to electronically hip a compliant messaging built in to be able to have that conversation, but really, really important tying what Bruce just said is does your merchant service provider integrate into your family portal so that your clients can go in and pay because obviously you getting your money is the most important thing.

Chris Trempe (11:32):

At the end of the day, once you invoice, if you make it easy for them to be able to go in and pay the family portal become very, very powerful. So we have some other things that we have that may be unique to us, but social history assessments, which drives back to my first point of learning the client more and learning about their interests in music and, and sports and hobbies and things like that. And we also have something called news and events where we can, you, you, as the agency can promote out different things going on with your agency or things you want these users to to see. So the family portal can really drive you a lot of visibility. It can drive you the ability to obtain your payments quicker. Obviously the big challenge is going to be getting folks to make that jump into technology is to get folks that want to go into that family portal, but you and your agency, being able to sell that and promote it and not saying from what I’ve seen a lot is, oh, that’s okay.

Chris Trempe (12:27):

You don’t have to go into that. We don’t really utilize that. You’re kind of underselling depending on the system you have now on the other side, the app, if the app that you have you look at is simply clock in and clock out, then I would advise you to see what other features are available. This could really help you become a differentiator to find more and retain more caregivers by the amount of features that are inside of that, that can help them provide visibility to what they’re doing and make it easier for them to execute things through the app. And you, you want something that’s going to obviously make you EVV compliant. And if you’re involved in the waiver system or Medicaid, you obviously need that. But all that data flowing over to you safely. So for example, what should you look for in the app?

Chris Trempe (13:14):

Can your caregivers see the hours that they work, the shifts they’ve completed? Can they request to make adjustments or edits to that with an approval process on that? Can they put in any PTO request? Is there built in messaging, getting away from text messaging is important, is their messaging there? Are they able to adapt their profile? Can they upload their vaccinations, all of these things. If you’ve got it in one place and you hire someone and you sell that, and they’re going across the street to someone else, and they get an idea of what the app is like, and there’s multiple systems to do this, or it’s manual. You wanna find folks that can gravitate towards that because that’s going to make you more efficient and it’s going to have all, all of your information stored electronically, and just help you be able to drive your revenue.

Miriam Allred (14:00):

We may be preaching to the choir here, but I wanna ask, you know, what’s, what’s holding providers back. It seems like there’s so many opportunities to streamline, to automate, to use all of these features inside of one, you know, streamline process. But you work with a lot of pro and you’re talking to them on a daily basis. What what’s maybe holding them back, or why aren’t they utilizing all of these tools?

Chris Trempe (14:22):

Time. Time that they don’t have. And many of them that I speak to would love to dive in and they attend our trainings and, and come to our support. But it’s always in a desk mode when they come to support, right? Oh my gosh, I don’t know what I did. I screwed something up. I need help fixing it the time that’s there initially while trying to run the business and manage all of the people, what becomes the biggest deterrent. So when we onboard folks, we try and we try and have a plan for them to come on and get through that. And you wanna make sure that there’s some sort of training system that’s involved. And when I say that it’s not drop someone into a, an LMS, drop someone into a track, okay, go learn it. Not everyone learns that way. So that’s the biggest roadblock I seen. And then on the other side, just lack of awareness of what a system can do. Just very limited skillset in terms of technology. But again, if you go with the right company that partners with you and, and walks with you, rather than just points you’ll be in better shape

Miriam Allred (15:28):

And this takes us back to your first point. I think another solution to the time issue is delegation. Setting your team up for success, getting them up to speed on the, the processes that they can manage inside of your software. And, and that takes time, like you said, to train people, to get them up to speed, but I think delegation can really be another solution to utilizing all of these tools and resources to be able to automate your process on a daily basis. So thanks for the insight there.

Michelle (15:59):

I have a question this is Michelle Armour at Comfort Care in PG County, Maryland.

Bruce Berlind (16:03):

Hi Michelle!

Michelle (16:05):

Hi. So of course we use SwyftOps at Comfort Care, and we were recently looking into are using Text-Em All for a tech solution for our business. Do, does anyone have any experience with using Text-Em All? Is, am I buying something redundant to what swift ops already provides me? Any guidance would be helpful.

Bruce Berlind (16:28):

So short answer regarding redundancy plus will let anyone else on the call, chime in with their experience with, with Text-Em All but short answer is, yeah, you might be doing something that’s redundant. It depends on your case use. And ultimately you’ll decide that. So, so you can text through swift opt. You’re probably aware of that you can text clients or, or caregivers. You can do it, you can text in groups, et cetera. You can also through swift ups. The, the thing to be careful about though, with both of those media is they’re not HIPAA compliant, right? As soon as you send a text message and it’s received on someone’s individual private cell phone, it becomes by definition, not HIPAA compliant. The third option through swift up is HIPAA compliant to a archived messaging. So again, it can be done individually or, or with groups of caregivers or, or to a client, et cetera. But you can message through the caregiver app or through the family portal. If I’m saying that Chris will, if I’m not a Chris will correct me. But that messaging is secure. Right, right. It, it in fact, it I’m gonna, I’m gonna ask Chris a question here and, and then flip it over to him. Chris don’t, those messages delete off of the, say for example, the caregiver’s cell phones after a certain amount of time, those

Chris Trempe (17:49):

Messages delete off their phones. Is that right? Mm, right. Yeah. There’s a certain amount of time that they’ll they’ll fall off after they’ve been read. If you haven’t read them, they’ll stay. But that might be the redundancy that you’re asking is if, if you haven’t started using that two-way messaging, so it’s the little envelope or the messages tile on the homepage you might wanna try that it goes directly to the app, so you have to use the app to be able to use it. So if you are, if you have a mixed mash of folks that don’t use the app and do you probably need to, to look into some sort of tech solution, now we, we obviously have those conversations as well. Do we change the tech solution that we have? And, and how do we wanna do that? We just believe so strongly in, in our messaging because of the HIPAA compliancy and it’s included, there’s no extra cost or anything like that, not even to comfort care or anything like that. Like that’s not, that’s not something we just do for comfort care, that’s everybody. So there might be a little redundancy there. And obviously we’re more than willing to, to talk to you more about it, if, if you, about how it can work and how you can implement it.

Michelle (18:52):

Okay. Yeah. I, I might be interested in that. I have, I mean, I’m aware of the texting function in swift ops, however, you have to accumulate the information about each person’s carrier carrier, which is not as simple as it might seem, you know?

Chris Trempe (19:09):

Right. I, no, I totally understand that. That’s why we promote the two-way messaging, but also why we’re looking at, you know, other possibilities to eliminate that aspect. We really want our users to use the messaging, but the adoption, you know, is, is a different story across the board, like for the reasons I said, right. I totally understand.

Michelle (19:29):

Yeah. Our high and tell is maybe not of an age group, that’s going to easily adopt to the portal all the time. And of course you can’t really communicate with anybody outside of a text these days. I mean, nobody reads their email except, you know, on the weekends or something like that. So we are just really, and, and I don’t, I’m searching for a solution so that people are, aren’t using my personal cell number to communicate with me easily, because that has quickly gotten out of hand. I, yeah, almost afraid to pick up my phone these days, I

Chris Trempe (20:01):

Would highly suggest just because we work so closely with them is contacting the, the tech team at comfort care and see what they have in the works. They work very closely with us in terms of integrations and such. So they might have a vendor that they’re vetting and you wanna find out who that is, because obviously there might be savings there as well. Right, right. That’s the beauty of the franchise system. Right. So see who they’ve got they’re working on because eventually that will come around to swift ops because right. They’ll come and say, hi, how, how, how can we make this work together as a team? And, and we take the obviously comfort care extremely important to us in terms of our overall success with our platform. They just, you’ll all just give us great insight as well.

Michelle (20:43):

Okay. Well, thank you for that. Appreciate it. Yeah. Great question, Michelle. Thanks for chiming

Miriam Allred (20:47):

In Bruce on this same vein there’s a lot of opportunities for enhanced focus on retention, both client and caregiver retention right now. What, what does this fourth tip have to do with retention?

Bruce Berlind (21:02):

I would start by saying that the, the whole topic of, of hiring employees and retention or acquiring clients and their retention has, has flipped over the past few years. Right. And this is not news to anybody on this call. I’m sure. You know, but when I, when I opened my agency on the east coast in 2003 it was completely D for when I, when I sold that agency in 2012, I had 960 caregivers on my roster. We were, we were constantly searching for clients that, that, that ratio or, or, or that, that positioning is unheard of typical. And so finding the, the caregivers becomes more important. So there are automation tools, there are home care software tools that can be helpful with that. Make sure you know, whether or not your software has them. And if, and if, if it has them take advantage of them, right?

Bruce Berlind (22:07):

So your question was why don’t people do do that? Why don’t people move ahead? So I want to add to the, to the suggestions that you and Chris made, one more, which is inertia, which could also be described as complacency, and we’re all guilty of it. Right. And any one of you could come spend a day watching what I do and probably point out multiple things that, that could be done better. It’s just, I don’t, I don’t change them because, because I’m complacent with them. Right. But it’s, it’s worth the effort to look into some of these. So when it, when it comes to employees, both, both hiring and retaining, we all are competing with other agencies in our marketplaces. And the, the, the difference is we want to be an employer of choice, right? We want to be the place employees want to be.

Bruce Berlind (23:03):

And the basics of this over the years haven’t changed. So I’m not so what I learned and I say learned not discovered or invented, but what, but what I learned when I had my agency is, is the two most basic things. Our employees want to be paid accurately and they want to be scheduled accurately. And both of those things are ultimately driven by your home care software. So it’s important that, that your operation software correctly, it’s important that the software lends itself to that. But it’s the pay and scheduling beyond that. I know, I know our software, for example, has a gamification feature. Okay. Which is what we’re talking about, our abilities to, to track certain behaviors and then reward employees for those behaviors like punctuality and attendance behaviors like, like compliance with filling out forms, completing tasks in and out on time, things of that nature, as well as birthdays and anniversaries, and think things are a little more personal along that way, but those, those can be incredibly helpful. Caregiver ratings, so surveys those surveys can be from your administrative staff. They can be from clients, but evaluating or assessing caregivers in that manner. And then that can, can translate to incentives or translate to compensation levels. So that’s what I would say about that

Miriam Allred (24:38):

Great insights. I like what you said about caregiver attention. There’s a lot of factors that that can be attributed to the retention of your actual staff, but what you said, it really can boil down to pay and scheduling and both of those take place in your software. And so if you, you need to prioritize, pay and schedule for caregivers. I think back to when we published the top 10 complaints from caregivers, you know, end of last year, pay and schedule are always in the top five and they will, will always be in the top five. And so making sure you’ve got those things down, pat in your software and that the process is streamlined. And also, I think educating your staff as well on what those processes look like. So there’s no guesswork on their part of, you know, when they’re gonna get paid or when their schedule’s gonna get updated. So refining that internally and then communicating that to them as well. Anything that either of you would add to that Bruce or Chris

Bruce Berlind (25:32):

Back in the day, right? If, if, if a, if an employee got paid incorrectly, they got upset. And I understood that if an employee got scheduled incorrectly, they got upset much more so than made sense to me. Right. but but yeah, those, those are important factors to them. And, and, and we didn’t have an app then. Right. So now with the features that are available in an app, this, this becomes so much easier if the apps being administered correctly. Right. So some questions include, you know, does your app allow your MP employees to go in and, and verify their pay? Can they see their recent work history and say, yeah, that’s all correct. I’m gonna get paid for this. This is great. Right. So that’s a, that’s a piece to look for in addition to the more traditional things like, can I see my schedule going forward? Can I bid for shifts? Right. So can, Hey, there’s a shift available tomorrow that just opened up I’m I’m am I being alerted to that? And then can I say, yeah, I’ll, I, I, I’m interested in

Miriam Allred (26:35):

That. I know we’ve touched on the employee retention side, any thoughts on, you know, how a software can help with the client retention piece as well?

Bruce Berlind (26:44):

I think it’s the, the smart matching is, is certainly important there, right? Identifying caregivers that are more likely going to be a good match with a client that gets harder when, when your roster caregivers shrinks. We so, so we acknowledge that, but at least let’s at least start there because that’s going to all the factors that go into that are going to lend themselves to, to happier clients that is so the skillset of the caregiver, the availability of the caregiver, including how far away do they live, that sort of thing matters. Also it, these two things tie together, right? So happier caregivers are often gonna make happier clients.

Miriam Allred (27:34):

Yeah. Great point. Absolutely.

Bruce Berlind (27:36):

Absolutely. Sorry, Chris, anything you would add accurate

Chris Trempe (27:40):

Billing accurate and timely billing. Sure. And providing the smoothest or easiest way for them to submit payment in a timely manner and having some sort of process there for them to communicate with you. Hopefully it’s electronically as well, because then it’s logged in the system and you have record of that.

Miriam Allred (28:00):

And doing it all in one place!

Chris Trempe (28:03):

All in one place, right.

Miriam Allred (28:04):

We’re all, we’re all guilty of the emails, the team’s messages, slack, you know, we’re all over with our communication. So it’s as simple as it can be all in one place to communicate. Yeah,

Chris Trempe (28:14):

The, yeah. And I think that if if, if you’re able to allow them to see the completed care plan after it’s been charted and, and notes are there and narratives there and your software allows for that, that is another aspect that you’re giving a, a viewpoint to the loved ones and to their, into their the care that’s happening for their mom or their dad. And that’s important. And obviously for you, you want controls on your end to make sure you have chance to look at those before those publish to a family portal or something like that. But I think little things like that add to retention, it’s just, that’s kind of an icing on the cake of if I wanna know what’s going on with mom, I can’t, if, if, if I’m, if I, if I don’t then, then just gimme the ability to pay in there or message or request shifts. So just overall that one stop that, like you said, that they can just manage everything thing and, and feel at ease about what’s happening with the care it’s, it’s such a personal and emotional emotionally driven type appointment. So you wanna make sure that you are providing all the tools that calm, that as much as possible, cuz you are the one that’s providing that care. Mm-Hmm

Bruce Berlind (29:24):

You’re right, Chris, you know, I focus on, on the the caregiver app, right? For the most part. But the family portal offers a lot of the same benefits to the client and, or the, the client’s family insight into future and past schedules, insight to billing and, and, and access to invoices, ability to pay insight to care notes. For mom what’s, you know, what’s been happening in the home. If I’m, if I’m remote all that becomes there and something I want to emphasize about the, the caregiver or employee app and the client or family portal is that these adding these two things to your operation, doesn’t triple your workload, right? It’s just a matter of turning ’em on which granted includes training people, how to use them, but it’s just turning them on. And then those systems are driven by the same information you’re already tracking in the, in the core software mm-hmm

Miriam Allred (30:24):

And stemming back to this tip around retention, the ease of use will directly correlate to your retention, you know, for your employees, for your clients, for the family of the clients, the easier we can make it for them, the longer that they’ll probably stick, you know, we don’t wanna create all of these additional hurdles or points of communication just for the sake of it. We wanna streamline that communication as much as possible in keeping it inside the platform, you know, just making it simpler for them.

Bruce Berlind (30:55):

You are right. Both ease of use, including in intuition, but also the reliability. Right? So, so caregivers are gonna be happy with the app only for so long. If every, if too frequently they go to use it and it’s down.So there has to be limited downtime for the system.

Miriam Allred (31:15):

Good point. Yeah. On the reliability feature, let’s, let’s transition into this last tip, Chris, and I’ll kick it over to you. We talked a lot, a lot of different things in a lot of different areas of a software. Some people on this call may be content with their software. Some may be reconsidering a software. What questions should someone be asking if they are reassessing their software?

Chris Trempe (31:37):

Well, I would say number one, lot of what we talked about, but in order of know the questions, I think you should attend other software events. If they hold something about features, they hold something about some sort of educational aspect they’re doing attend those. And, and you’ll start to pick up the different features of the different softwares, but you really wanna figure out things of one cost, right? What’s by minimum cost. How, how are you going to empower me to grow? Which feature set do you have right now? I want to be able to let’s take gamification. I want to be able to track punctuality cuz that’s important. And I wanna, I want to incentivize all of my caregivers that have no late shift alerts in a pay period. Can you do that? If the answers? No, it’s probably not the software that you should go down the road.

Chris Trempe (32:27):

The question then is when am I gonna have that? Right. what I always tell folks when I, when I train the sales folks that we have or way back when we launched and I did all of this is my job is to put the right software with you. And if it’s not us then great that that’s probably sounds terrible as a sales aspect. Right. But if you’re not happy initially, you’re not gonna be happy long term. So I try and and empower the, the aspects of what’s your pain points, right? It’s generally support. So you wanna ask about that? How, how am I gonna be supported? Are you gonna answer the phone on Christmas? How, how do I communicate with you now for us? We’re the only ones that have 24 7 live support. So we have live chat. We have phone, have email all the time.

Chris Trempe (33:14):

Everyone else sends an email on Christmas that says, Hey, Merry Christmas. And we’ll talk to you tomorrow. So that’s a big selling point for us, right? But that’s a question you have to ask, how are you gonna help me when I need help? Sunday night at 11:00 PM. And then the pricing structure and then the feature sets that are important to you. And you only know that by talking to your people and the roles that they have, what do they complain to you about? Do they complain about finding caregivers? Because it’s so hard to find the availability in the system. Do they complain to you about how many steps it takes to verify a shift’s data and get it ready for billing and payroll? Does the payroll people complain because the, the output is always incorrect and pay rates are missing and things like that. Find those pain points, ask those questions. And I urge you to do demos. You don’t have to go with the software, just do demos, go across the board and just start talking to other softwares. We will all do it. No one will tell you, no, you can’t have a demo. And then just be honest with them that you’re, you know, you’re not really looking, but you wanna know what’s out there because if it’s that good, you will be intrigued if it’s not, then you part as friends,

Miriam Allred (34:18):

Bottom line, just make sure your software is, is right for you and is working for you and not necessarily the other way around. So well said, Chris, we’ve got another question from Mary. She’s asking, does anyone have a suggestion for getting schedules to clients other than the mail, Bruce or Chris? Any thoughts there?

Chris Trempe (34:36):

So my, my standard answer would be your software should do that. So just a couple examples. If you can’t export out and, you know, and pull that, that data out and get it securely somewhere, but we’ve talked about it a few times, the family portal, it automatically publishes there. So the client can get in there. We also have the ability through the system where there’s just a, there’s a feature and a button that says email schedules and you click that and it securely sends that to a client or caregiver if they’re not using the app. Right. So my, my question on that would be does your software have that ability? And if they don’t or if you don’t know, that would be something I’d look into because that, that is a pretty standard feature to be able to pull out that information and send it securely. So I’d be surprised if they don’t have it, but if you don’t have a system that could be why a snail mail would be cumbersome. Of

Bruce Berlind (35:32):

Course know if that’s, what if that’s what a client or family requires. So be it, then it, then it just comes, comes down to a matter of, and Chris, I think addresses, how easy is it to then export and print a schedule from your software? Otherwise emails can be set up to, to be sent or, or should be able to in your system, be set up to send out to the clients on a regular basis on a, on a periodic basis. And then, and then we circle back to the portal, right? So the family or clients should be able to, to go to the portal and view the upcoming schedule. Yeah. If

Chris Trempe (36:07):

There’s absolutely no technology, let’s say the client just absolutely no, then you, you most likely need to involve the caregiver, right? So at that point, I’m assuming you have some sort of binder in that house. That seems to be what the norm was, where the assessment is and the care plan was, and, and things are stored there on site, whether, you know, the, so the caregiver might be your mail delivery. That’s taking that schedule with them. The hard part is, is often a schedules can adapt and change that can become obsolete very quickly, but, you know, technology-wise, that would be the, the biggest answer. The software should do that. There should be a way to be able to send that.

Miriam Allred (36:43):

Bruce. Chris, thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedules to be here with us, to share these tips. It’s a busy time of year, but really just resetting and reprioritizing using these features and functionalities in your, in your software is a good use of your time. So thanks for joining us. We’ll catch up again in the near future. Thank

Chris Trempe (37:03):

You. Appreciate it. Thank you.

Bruce Berlind (37:05):

Great. Thank you, Miriam. Thank you all.