Segmented Tracking for Home Care: Take Caregiving to the Next Level
Jessica Helms
Last update on:
December 10, 2024 7:05 AM
Published on:
Knowing where your caregivers are throughout the workday is an important part of delivering high quality patient care. But, more important than capturing real-time location is being able to track how your team spends their time each day. Using segmented tracking for home care helps you do just that.
When it comes to addressing caregiving practices and improving time management strategies, Timeero’s segmented tracking allows you to view your caregivers’ daily whereabouts, eliminate deviations to assigned routes, and increase compliance with EVV requirements.
Are you ready to take caregiving to the next level?
Timeero’s segmented tracking offers a game changing experience to home care businesses, transforming the way you track and record caregivers’ time and location history. Segmented tracking technology automatically divides your employees’ driving routes into individual segments as they stop at each patient’s location.
Without segmented tracking, your caregivers will have to clock in and out at each stop they make. This approach to time tracking can be overwhelmingly time consuming, as it reduces worker productivity and contributes to increased business expenses. This innovative tracking solution is a must-have for mobile teams and caregivers on the go.
Timeero’s segmented tracking changes the way you manage your teams.
Caregivers only need to clock in once at the start of their shift to start tracking mileage and segmenting trips with Timeero. Once a caregiver completes their patient care visits and clocks out, Timeero records and stores caregivers’ trip logs and patient visit details in the app.
Why should you use segmented tracking for home care?
There are many ways you can incorporate segmented tracking into your current home health management system.
Quickly verify patients received care
Your patients are your number one priority. Determining if they each received care according to schedule shouldn’t be a difficult process.
This is where using segmented tracking for home care has its biggest impact.
Note: Before you use segmented tracking to verify patient visits, we recommend creating job assignments for individual clients. This makes it easier to track time and mileage associated with specific patients and remain EVV compliant. We’ll briefly walk you through the job creation process below.
As a manager, you have the ability to assign patient visits to caregivers from Timeero’s Jobs and Tasks dashboard. When creating a job, enter important patient details such as name and address of care, and add any notes about the patient that caregivers should be aware of. To keep your staff organized and efficient, Timeero allows you to assign patient visits to particular caregivers.
Our in-depth Youtube video guides you through the job creation process.
When you use segmented tracking to verify patient visits, Timeero recognizes when a caregiver arrives at a patient’s address. A breadcrumb will be dropped on the virtual map and Timeero begins tracking these details:
The exact time the caregiver arrived at the patient’s location
How long the caregiver spent at the patient’s location
How many miles were driven to get to that location from the previous stop
The exact time the caregiver departed the patient’s location
The segmented tracking timeline shows stops made.
Segmented tracking provides you with the documentation you need to remain EVV compliant and verify your patients are receiving care as scheduled.
Thoroughly investigate and resolve patient complaints
One of the most troublesome aspects of managing a home care agency is hearing that patients have not been receiving care as expected. Whether that be inconsistent visits or the quality of care rendered, Timeero’s segmented tracking gives you a detailed record of how caregivers are spending their time.
Address inconsistent patient visits
When patients report inconsistent visits, the first thing you need to look at is if caregivers are actually visiting the patient at all. With the help of segmented tracking, you can view each location caregivers visited throughout the day. This information is invaluable! If you have suspicions that caregivers are deviating from their schedule and making unauthorized stops, segmented tracking gives you all the proof you need.
Once caregivers clock in for the day, Timeero automatically begins tracking their time and GPS location. As they visit their scheduled patients, segmented tracking identifies the stop and drops a breadcrumb on the virtual map. Driving history is simultaneously displayed as a timeline, which really gives you a breakdown of how caregivers use their time.
Select a segment to zoom in on the virtual map.
Use segmented tracking’s virtual map and timeline to verify if the patient has been receiving care and determine the frequency of patient visits. With the insights this feature provides, you can approach caregivers with hard facts to improve patient care and eliminate workplace violations.
Improve quality of care
The quality of care that your caregivers provide is dependent on many factors. But, segmented tracking can help you track one variable of patient care – the amount of time caregivers are spending with their patients. Knowing how long your caregivers spend attending to patients can be an indicator of the quality of care patients are receiving.
To view the duration of patient visits, navigate to the time and mileage menu and select the assigned caregiver. Segmented tracking details can be accessed by clicking on the car icon, seen below.
Click on the car icon to show segmented tracking data.
If you have chosen to use the recommended jobs function, you will see the name of the job as well as the length of time the caregiver spent with their patient on their timesheet.
Caregivers can easily add patient notes to timesheets.
As a team manager, you usually have a general idea of how long it takes to deliver adequate patient care. For example, if Mr. Jones needs to be bathed, dressed, given medication, and complete 15 minutes of physical therapy, you can expect the assigned caregiver to be with Mr. Jones for a minimum of 1 hour.
By using segmented tracking for home care, you can check the assigned caregiver’s driving route to see how long they spent with Mr. Jones. If the duration reported is consistently less than 1 hour, there is a legitimate cause for concern and the patient complaint should be further investigated.
Expedite fair and adequate compensation
The last thing you want to do is compensate caregivers for time they did not spend attending to patients. Segmented tracking logs the addresses of each stop team members make and allows you to identify visits to unauthorized locations.
With segmented tracking enabled, if an employee chooses to take an extra break and visit a friend’s house during work hours, the exact address is recorded on the segmented tracking timeline. With this data in hand, you can prevent overpayment to caregivers and issue fair compensation for actual hours worked.
Not only does segmented tracking help you verify patient visits, it encourages employee accountability.
In addition, by documenting each segment of a caregiver’s shift, you can more accurately allocate costs and streamline the billing process for all services provided.
Elevate your home care business with Timeero
Managing a care team can be stressful. Timeero offers innovative GPS time and location tracking features to reduce administrative burden and streamline your business operations.
Are you ready to take caregiving to the next level?
Jessica is a skilled writer and proofreader with a unique flair for crafting engaging and impactful content. Her work reflects her ability to connect with clients on a personal level while successfully addressing their most pressing concerns. Jessica's professional background includes: teaching, social media marketing, and e-commerce. She resides in Alabama and loves the Golden Girls sitcom.
%202.svg)
