Why Mobile Healthcare Service Providers Need Automation Software Now

It’s astounding to reflect on the technological transformation underway across practically every industry. With the proliferation of mobile applications, cloud storage costs continuing to decrease and cutting-edge technology (think augmented reality, Internet of Things and artificial intelligence) making its way into everyday life, now really is the time for industries lagging behind to seriously consider digital transformation.

Being in the field service management and automation space for some time now, I understand the reason mobile healthcare providers, including hospice, home healthcare, nurse visitation services and others, have lagged behind other industries: compliance with stringent regulations such as HIPAA.

Here, I make the case how mobile healthcare service technology is transforming the industry and why now is a crucial time to enable your mobile workforce with field service management automation technology.

Paper-Based Processes Will Be Your Downfall

It sounds dramatic, but at no other point in history has every organization of any size had the same opportunity to analyze their operations from any angle. Technology has made it possible to consolidate operations in all-in-one software solutions that take guess-work out of where mobile healthcare staff is at any given time, what health forms have been completed/started/past-due, or which technician has the inventory of specific equipment.

Seemingly obvious, paper does not scale. Paper cannot do calculations for you to reveal trends or surface healthcare supply shortages. Paper is physical, requiring a physically secure storage mechanism.

On the other hand, digital scales infinitely. Digital not only does all the calculations for you, but—at least with HIPAA compliant field service automation software like Field Squared—is interoperable across healthcare information systems (i.e., EMR, EHR, business intelligence, analytics, revenue management), automatically orchestrating updates, thereby eliminating data re-entry and keeping all systems up to date with the same information at the same time. Digital data is secured behind redundant servers, encrypted and leaves no physical paper trail to worry about.

Digital Mobile Healthcare Forms Can Empower Your Workforce and Reduce Errors

The concept of being a mobile healthcare worker is innately centered on mobility. Providing a mobile app for digital healthcare forms empowers the workforce with tools that reinforce their mobility, unlike paper-based forms.

In addition, digital forms offer significant advantages, not the least of which is helping to reduce medical errors. While there are too many benefits to list here, I’ll start with a few that our customers have said are some of the most impactful.

1. Auto-populate as much as 80% of a patient’s health forms, saving mobile staff valuable time while on patient visits.
2. Employ skip-logic and business rules, where the form displays the next field based upon the answer to the previous field. Healthcare is notorious for the implementation of lengthy forms where not all fields are relevant. There is no need to display them at the time the form is being filled out, so only display the relevant fields.
3. Automate admit/discharge approval workflows to capture required signatures.
4. Integrate EMR tools and other health information systems to reduce re-entering data into multiple third-party systems. Instead, data is automatically updated across the various, disparate systems ensuring the same data is available in all systems.
5. Provide clinical decision support documentation within the mobile app. In all-in-one software, there is no need to switch apps/systems or, worse yet, thumb through paper medical literature when it’s all available within the same app.
6. Capture photos to document such things as living conditions or scan barcodes on assets and inventory. Documenting livening and/or self-care conditions is especially crucial for assessments before admits in some mobile healthcare fields.

The right mobile field service automation software is flexible enough to ensure any health form can be digitized (i.e., admits, advance directives, visits, aide activity, skilled nursing notes, physical therapy plan of care, occupational therapy plan of care, medical social work assessment), while still being HIPAA compliant, like Field Squared.

The Ability to Send Real-Time Status Updates Improves Patient Care and Service

Immediate gratification takes on an entirely different meaning when it comes to healthcare. For patients that are in need of critical but non-emergency care, knowing when the healthcare professional is scheduled to arrive or is running late is crucial information. Many patients plan their entire day around a visit, from when they wake up to what meals they eat or medications they take. All of that requires delicate coordination that, for the most part, is visible only to the case worker.

The ability to send real-time status updates, reminders, reschedule appointments and more is no longer a nice feature; it’s a must-have. Even in healthcare where insurance dictates in-network healthcare professionals, patients do have choices.

If your mobile healthcare service organization does not have any way to communicate with patients in real-time, you will lose business today. That’s just the bottom line.

Keep in mind that it’s necessary to balance the ability to send such notifications with ensuring the happiness of your mobile healthcare staff. To that end, the technology you adopt should offer real-time messaging and communication capabilities in-app. Don’t make your mobile workforce juggle multiple apps; that’s not acceptable, nor is it necessary with the right software.

What is All-in-One Field Service Automation Software and Do You Need It

There are many types of software on the market that fill one or two needs of mobile healthcare service organizations. There are very few that provide a comprehensive, enterprise-grade solution and even fewer that are HIPAA compliant.

All-in-one field service automation software is something we came up with at Field Squared to explain what our platform does. Basically, such software allows an organization to do everything from a single pane of glass that would normally be done with multiple pieces of software, including:

• Schedule and dispatch health workers to patient visits
• Create digital mobile health forms from what once were paper forms
• Track assets and medical supplies inventory
• View medical staff in real-time on a map (i.e., visits, stops, speeding)
• Manage scheduled/unscheduled patient visits
• Integrate with third-party health information systems, software and tools

Mobile healthcare service operations are vast and complex, requiring a solution that can coordinate all the things as well as provide an intuitive, easy to use mobile app for the healthcare staff.

The question is, does your organization need this type of software. Through my experience with the many customers I’ve helped over the years at Field Squared, we find the answer to that question is maybe. Ask yourself the following questions to help inform your answer:

1. Do we need to be able to schedule and dispatch our workforce to patient visits?
2. Would it be beneficial to automatically optimize their routes to reduce drive time?
3. How much could we improve our patient customer service if we had the ability to message them in real-time?
4. Is our mobile healthcare staff spending significant time filling out paper forms? How many data entry errors do we fix per day/week/month?
5. Is the software we’re evaluating HIPAA compliant?

These questions are just the tip of the iceberg. In fact, an entire article could be spent detailing field service management software evaluation criteria. For now, this is the best place to start.

The digital transformation journey is a journey because it doesn’t happen overnight. If you want to learn more, visit Field Squared at www.fieldsquared.com/solutions/healthcare/.