How To Get Private Home Care Clients With the Power of GPS Time and Mileage Tracking
Natasa Djalovic
Last update on:
November 14, 2024 3:06 AM
Published on:
The private home care industry is booming, fueled by an aging population and the growing need for personalized, in-home support. Yet, despite the increasing demand, the industry is not easy to navigate, as the market is highly competitive and very crowded.
As a service provider, you might ask yourself, “How can I get more private home care clients in such a challenging environment?”
Proven client acquisition strategies won’t suffice if you want more home care clients. You need a powerful tool to boost your business efficiency, compliance, and quality to stand out from your competitors.
In this guide, we’ll discuss how, with Timero, you can top your competitors and attract more clients. For a complete walkthrough, we’ll also explore other effective techniques you can try or improve.
Stay EVV and HIPAA-Compliant
Timeero tracks your employees' time, location, mileage, and schedules.
If you’re running a home healthcare agency without embracing top-tier technological solutions, you’re missing out on many opportunities to streamline your operations, improve care quality, and, most importantly, differentiate your business in an overcrowded market.
Your nurses and caregivers are your front-line team, doing essential work in the community. They must have the right tools to manage their professional tasks efficiently. Technology can play a critical role in achieving that by enabling smooth workflows.
The home healthcare industry has stringent regulations like EVV and HIPAA so that the right technology will enable seamless compliance in your day-to-day operations.
By choosing the home health software with these features, your agency can improve efficiency, quality, and profitability while following the relevant laws and regulations.
All this can be a decisive factor in getting more private home care clients. The trust and reputation you build with your team and current clients will have a ripple effect, making your agency a go-to choice for quality home care.
How Can EVV-Compliant GPS Tracking App Help?
Timeero is a GPS time and mileage tracking software tailored to fit the needs of private home health agencies.
You can learn more about its benefits and features by checking out our detailed Timeero review.
But, if you’re short on time, we summarized some of the crucial points below.
Ensure EVV and HIPAA compliance
According to the 21st Century Cures Act, all states must implement EVV (Electronic Visit Verification) for all Medicaid personal care and home health services that require in-home visits.
One of the main reasons for implementing EVV was the report of Medicaid fraud and abuse reported by the US Department of Health and Human Services in 2006.
However, these types of practices still linger. In 2021, the criminal cases opened by Medicaid Fraud Control resulted in 946 fraud convictions. Personal care services agencies and attendants accounted for 434 convictions, considerably more than any other type of provider.
As of the beginning of 2023, meeting EVV requirements is required for all agencies, including home healthcare companies. If an agency hasn’t implemented an EVV-compliant solution, it might be unable to cover the services by Medicaid.
The agencies must be able to record and verify key data elements electronically, such as the type of service, date, and location of its delivery, the person receiving and providing the service, etc. Each state can choose how it collects and discloses EVV data.
With its robust features, Timeero ensures EVV compliance and prevents fraudulent and abusive behavior, including all the negative consequences it may lead to. Moreover, it does it in a HIPAA-compliant manner.
By enabling compliance with industry-specific laws and regulations, as well as the more general ones, Timeero helps you avoid penalties and safeguards your clients’ and employees’ privacy, showing your commitment to professionalism and integrity.
Streamline time, location, and mileage tracking
With Timeero, you can track and manage your carers on the fly.
With your carers and nurses out in the field of the day, it’s hard to track whether they are where they’re supposed to be and how their work is progressing.
With Timeero, you can achieve precisely that.
Using Timeero mobile app, caregivers can completely forget about minor but essential tasks, such as time or mileage tracking. All they have to do is download the app and clock in when their shift begins.
The Timeero mobile app is simple for your staff to use.
If you choose the segmented mileage feature, the app will segment their working hours into the time they spent traveling, the distance they covered, and the time they spent in specific locations visiting their clients.
As they can complete all these tasks with a single click on their phones, your nurses and carers can focus only on their core, vocational tasks. They can build relationships with the clients, improving their satisfaction and chances for genuine and authentic referrals.
At the same time, Timeero will provide you with a real-time view of where your staff is or has been and alert you if they go out of bounds. At any moment, you can see the whereabouts of your available employees so you can assign the nearest one in case of an emergency.
See the locations of your available staff at a glance using a satellite or street view.
You can use the software to monitor their performance, ensure their safety, and verify their visits. Timeero also has features that can help you improve your employees’ accountability and cut down on any time or mileage-related costs.
Easily identify opportunities for cutting down your mileage costs.
For instance, the Suggested Mileage feature can compare the shortest distance to your client’s location and the actual carer’s route. With such a quick insight into a difference, you can spot any red flags in the field and take needed action to improve employees’ practices.
Caregiver management
Timeero offers quite a few caregiver management functionalities that can come in handy for your home health agency.
The app lets you easily create jobs and assign them to your field employees, providing them with all the necessary information, such as location, contact details, and tasks. If you need more control, you can even set a geofence around a client’s location, allowing your caregivers to clock in and out from in-home visits only while on-site.
Timeero’s robust scheduling feature allows you to create and edit schedules for your nurses and caregivers in real time and send notifications and updates to them.
Improve your scheduling process easily with Timeero.
The software also streamlines PTO requests and approval processes, helping you know who you have available for work at any moment.
You can avoid schedule conflicts, reduce no-shows, and deliver timely service.
As scheduling is one of the major problems for field nurses and caregivers, using an efficient tool can improve their job satisfaction and reduce churn, leading to higher service quality and client satisfaction.
Accurate reimbursement
As it tracks the time and mileage of your staff, Timeero lets you generate timesheets and mileage reports for quick and accurate reimbursement.
Generate time and mileage reports for accurate and seamless reimbursement.
You can export data to a PDF or CSV file or use one of Timeero’s integrations with payroll software, such as Viventium or ADP, to pay your team fairly and reimburse them for mileage-driven, with no manual work whatsoever.
Other Best Techniques for Getting Private Home Care Clients
Choosing the right software to improve your operations and the quality of your services will, no doubt, consequently land you more clients.
But what are the other strategies and techniques that give results?
Let’s dive into them.
Prioritize Excellent Care for Both Your Clients and Your Staff
If you’re wondering how to get private home care clients, remember that word of mouth can make or break your business. All your marketing efforts will be useless if you’re not providing exceptional care for your clients. Make it a top goal for your home care agency, and focus most of your resources on achieving it.
Your clients and their families should receive the best possible treatment from the first interaction with your agency, continuing through every subsequent touchpoint with your employees.
Besides providing exceptional care to your client, you must provide the same quality to your employee caregivers so they can achieve the level and quality of care you require.
You will have to hire excellent staff and onboard them to address client’s needs with the respect and professionalism they deserve.
If your clients and their family members are satisfied with the quality of your services, the referrals will flow in regularly, and there will be no bad reviews that could tarnish your reputation.
Besides using the top-tier tech we’ve discussed above, we offer you not-so-obvious tips on improving the quality of your care.
Measure Client and Caregiver Satisfaction
If you are wondering how to get private home care clients by improving your service, start with regular surveys with the client, family members, and employees to measure the quality of care.
They will give you valuable insight into your agency’s performance in different areas. Based on their feedback, you can continually improve your care and achieve the reputation of an agency that prioritizes quality.
You can ensure your survey results are usable and reliable if the whole interviewing process is anonymous and the questions are focused and easy to understand.
Also, include some open-ended questions, such as: “What can we do to improve our services?” or “What do you like best about our agency?” that can give you a lot of actionable information.
Improve Onboarding and Recognition
One of the aspects of providing quality services is the quality of relationships between your clients and your staff. And it’s hard to form a meaningful relationship if your caregivers quit after a short time working for your agency.
To prevent their churn, focus on improving your onboarding and recognition processes, which would empower your employees and improve their engagement.
To learn more about improving the onboarding process of your nurses and other employees, check out the article Nurse onboarding: How to do it properly in our Blog section.
Starting a recognition program to acknowledge and reward carers meeting your KPIs is also a great idea, as it can motivate others to do the same.
So, above, we’ve discussed how to get private home care clients by improving the quality of your services and ensuring word of mouth works in your favor.
We move to referrals as one of the most budget-friendly and effective ways to build and expand the base of private clients for home care. By improving the quality of your care, you will get good referrals from the clients and their inner circle of friends and family, but you must go beyond that.
Acquire Referrals From the Professionals
Acquiring professional referrals is undoubtedly one of the sure ways to get private home care clients.
To achieve this, you should nurture strong relationships with your area’s professional healthcare services and doctor offices. To provide you with their referrals and recommend your services, professionals must trust that you will take good care of their patients.
So, don’t knock on everyone’s door - choose one or two reputable offices of respectable professionals in your area and establish a connection with them. Also, provide their offices with brochures they could pass on to their clients.
Leaving the flyers in hospice care centers and hospitals for nurses to hand over to patients who can benefit from your services can also get new clients.
Partner Up
So, we are still on referrals as one of the best ways to get private home care clients.
You can get more home health aide private clients by partnering with other companies and reciprocating referrals. If you come across a person who can benefit from your partner’s services, you refer them to your partner. And they, in return, do the same.
However, be aware that your reputation is at stake here, so approach it with utmost care and be very selective when choosing your partner.
If you refer to a company and it doesn’t meet the person’s reputation, your reputation will take a blow. But if your referral helps someone solve their problem, your reputation will grow—the same stands for your partner.
Be Active In the Local Community
Another approach to the issue of how to get private home care clients is by improving your agency’s visibility and reputation in the local communities. You can accomplish this by showing you care for the community and participating in its everyday life.
For example, you and your employees can volunteer in certain activities - spend time in soup kitchens or homeless shelters or organize clothing or blood drives. Such actions will help you get your name out and build trust among people, as they will know you are the agency that cares for their well-being and gives back to the community.
To get ideas about volunteering, you can contact food banks, schools, churches, and NGOs and determine your community’s essential needs.
Sponsoring different events, such as local foot races, is another way to become a visible subject in front of your local target market. As branding improves visibility, have banners and wear T-shirts with your agency’s name and logo. If budget allows, you can even consider handing branded T-shirts out at these events.
Digital Marketing
Although your clients are most likely local seniors, your target audience is much broader. Your potential client’s family might live all over the country, and you can’t reach them using face-to-face techniques that boost local visibility and reputation.
A family member helping the relative find services they need will look for them online. Even if they’ve heard of your agency, they will do their job thoroughly - research you and check out the reviews.
So, how to get private home care clients using digital marketing?
Have a website that is fast, easy to use, informative, and up-to-date. Your website needs high-quality copy and graphics to create a strong brand image. Show your professionalism by paying attention to every detail. This way, you will make a great impression on your potential clients, their families, or professional partners. Also, ensure your website is SEO-optimized to increase the number of visitors and retain them.
Have a blog with relevant and valuable content addressing your target audience’s pain points. Besides being useful and unique, your blog posts need to be SEO-optimized with keywords so your target audience can easily find them. If you’re successful in providing great content, you can establish a reputation as a reliable and trustworthy expert in the field, which is a great way to stand out from your competitors and acquire new home health aide private clients.
Set up a Google My Business Profile. You can create a free GMB agency profile on Google and attract new clients via Local Search. This way, the name and details of your agency will be displayed when someone searches for a home care agency in San Francisco.
Have Reviews. The competition is tough among home care agencies, and you need to use all your resources to stand out. Having social proof on your digital properties will help you achieve this. The latest figures show that 87% of consumers check out the reviews of local businesses online. In comparison, 81% believe that having no reviews lowers their trust in business. When they look for home care services online, people will most likely go for the agencies with the highest quality reviews. So, you must proactively ask for reviews from satisfied clients and use them as social proof on your GMB profile, website, or social media profiles.
Use Social Media. More than half of the world uses social media, so having a social media presence can be beneficial. Even though people might generally not use Facebook to look for home care services, you can use the profile to promote the valuable content you publish on your blog. You can also participate in relevant group discussions and improve your agency’s visibility and trustworthiness.
Advertising
Advertising is one of the ways to get private home care clients. As it can be expensive, ensure your ads hit the right audience.
Besides online advertising, which needs to be broader, target your other advertising campaigns locally, where your agency provides services. Consider local newspaper and radio ads, bus stop advertisements, billboards, and leaflets. You can print business cards with a special offer to attract new clients and make money.
So, reserve and strategically plan some funds in your advertising budget to acquire new private clients for home care.
Summing It Up: How to Get Private Home Care Clients
To get more private home care clients, you must offer a high-quality service that stands out.
Timeero can help you achieve this by streamlining routine tasks and processes, reducing your employees’ workload, and freeing up your time and energy for more profitable activities, such as planning for growth or networking.
With Timeero, you can enhance service quality and increase client satisfaction.
Stay EVV and HIPAA-Compliant
Timeero tracks your employees’ time, location, mileage, and schedules.
Natasa is a writer specializing in the IT and software industry with 6+ years of experience in content writing and online marketing. During that period, she wrote more than 1,000 articles and several ebooks. She majored in English language and literature and loves cats, sneakers, and candy. When she's not working, she's probably binge-watching Netflix.
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