GPS Tracking - A must-have for home health providers

The healthcare industry is growing exponentially and is the fastest growing industry with an expected growth of 14% from 2018 to 2028. The older population is also rapidly increasing, meaning that it is more important than ever to make sure these people are properly cared for at home. With 850,000 workers in the industry, it's crucial to find qualified home-based staff. Home health care is becoming an increasingly popular opportunity for employers and employees all over the world.

While caregivers are tasked with a difficult and demanding job, it’s the employer’s job to make sure that they’re equipped with the best tools and equipment in the industry. GPS tracking for home healthcare providers is a must for caregivers who make routine visits. Without some kind of a tracker, a provider’s attempts to locate a client or to track a client’s location may be difficult, time-consuming, and pose the risk of making your clients unhappy. 

This is why a GPS tracking device can be a much safer alternative for home healthcare providers to find accurate client locations. 

Besides identifying client locations, GPS tracking has a few more benefits that just make the day-to-day work a lot easier. 

Better route planning

Physical maps can sometimes be bothersome, and even if you learned a route by heart, every now and then you might forget which turn to take. In many cases all home health providers are given is a region or neighborhood. It is up to them to figure out exactly how to get to the patient’s home on time and as fast as possible. This is where GPS devices come into play - they can help providers ensure they are following the right route to patients' homes.

Providers know the way to work well, but GPS tracking can help them explore new areas and routes that they can use to get around traffic, road construction, or roadblocks. Another perk is that home health providers can even look at reports generated through the software and figure out which routes are better to take, to minimize any potential future delays.

Lower administrative costs

Another advantage of using GPS tracking for home health providers is that it automates a task that would otherwise require a lot of human input and effort. Administrative tasks can seem tedious, but they still need to be done. 

So anytime that you can involve automation, digitalization, or machine input you save both time and money. Instead of having your team log or report every route they take, GPS tracking does that all with little to no contribution from them. You just start your tracker and you’re good to go. The same goes for managers and other staff members whose tasks include dispatching personnel, logging data, and creating reports. When you have a GPS tracker doing the heavy loading, everything is logged automatically and you can generate reports within minutes by just clicking a button. This way, you cut down drastically on administrative costs and save a lot of time that could be better spent on more pressing tasks.

Monitor travel speed 

We all know that caregivers are vital to those in need, but it’s important that we remain diligent with tracking caregiver attendance. The last thing you want is for an under-compensated caregiver to be rushing to work and have an accident because he or she wasn’t properly following the rules. Ensuring that caregivers are safe and responsible can be done by using GPS tracking devices and apps.

Accurate data

It’s always important to keep accurate time and location records when employees are on a shift. This allows home health providers to document that they’ve arrived at the patient’s destination or that they’re on their way. With Atto, for example, you can map out routes as well as show for how long a caregiver is somewhere so they don't have to manually record their hours and location every day.

Geofencing is a type of technology that can restrict out-of-area punches. With GPS tracking, you can select specific locations for when your employees can clock in, such as the patient’s home. So if you have a time-tracking app that also supports GPS, you have highly accurate data that is extremely valuable for reports, payroll, reviews, and when making important decisions.

A direct link to the office

Using GPS on your phone, the system allows you to monitor all of our carers. Although there's not much they can do to avoid accidents or bad weather, apps can send you notifications about an expected traffic delay and give your team the opportunity to contact customers in advance.

With real-time technology, you can always know where your lone-working caregivers are and what's going on. Besides knowing which patients your employees are, it’s extremely helpful in cases of accidents. Because of GPS tracking systems and apps, managers and others from the office are able to accurately find the location of employees who are involved in an accident either on the road or at the patient’s home. This is extremely important for branch managers because they are responsible for the well-being of their staff and knowing they’re safe is always a top priority.

Increase employee satisfaction

Your caregivers are the backbone of your business. With the many tiring tasks that come with their job, difficult ways to track hours, location, and other things just make their work harder. This is why you should always look for ways to help them focus on their work, rather than administrative tasks. 

When your employees are happy and satisfied, even the hardest days can seem manageable, because they don’t need to worry about every aspect that is indirectly linked to their job. With GPS tracking, they’ll have one part of their daily routine taken care of. When they wake up in the morning, they’ll only think about the patients they'll visit during the day, without the stress of how to get there. 

How Atto supports your business and caregivers

Atto is designed with you in mind, so all you have to do is sit back, relax, and let the app do all the tracking for you. 

With real-time activity tracking, you can see exactly what your caregivers are doing and where they're located at all times. You can tell if they're working or on a break and even see that they're taking the day off.

It can be difficult to keep on top of all your caregivers’ activities when they visit multiple patients per day. But with Atto, you can see the live locations of these caregivers at every home and even check how long they've been at each one!

Recording timesheets using paper is a time-consuming process, and there’s always a risk that employees might clock in early or even accidentally skip a day. With Atto, you can set the location of any of your patients' homes and restrict caregivers from clocking in until they’re physically present.

Atto provides your caregivers with complete peace of mind and makes your life a whole lot easier. Try Atto now!