Migliori Software per Residenze Assistite

What is Assisted Living Software?

Why Use Assisted Living Software?

Who Uses Assisted Living Software?

Kinds of Assisted Living Software

The different kinds of assisted living software aligns with the different kinds of assisted living communities that exist:

Assisted living— Assisted living communities provide housing and social opportunities for the aging community, as well as basic health services. However, because assisted living health services are not provided by skilled nursing caregivers, assisted living solutions should offer a staffing, scheduling, or caregiver outsourcing module that helps coordinate services rendered with the resident’s schedule.

Senior living — Senior living homes, also referred to as independent senior living, provide housing, transportation, and recreational activities for the aging population, but health care services are not necessarily offered. Managers and operators of senior living communities should look for solutions that help maintain the community, encourage communication between residents and operators, and offer functionality like meal planning, activity, and care planning.

Skilled nursing — Skilled care can only be dispensed by a nurse or medical professional that has a license to practice medicine. For example, the care that a non-skilled caretaker can provide is limited to daily living activities like bathing, dressing, and eating. Skilled nursing software, then, must have a validating or credentialing module that helps assisted living facilities verify the abilities of the nurse prior to hiring them.

Continued care retirement communities (CCRC) — CCRC provide housing to a variety of seniors, offering a continuum of care that can benefit both residents with declining health and residents that want to retire to an active, social community that offers health care services. Assisted living solutions that cater toward CCRC must have a robust resident care and documentation module to help operators and caregivers keep tabs on the progress of their residents.

Hospice — Hospice care manages the care of terminally ill patients, so assisted living solutions tailored to hospice must have strong data sharing capabilities to better streamline interoperability and exchange of patient data between hospital and hospice.

Assisted Living Software Features

Assisted living software varies in comprehensiveness. Some are complete management systems, some focus on streamlining front-office responsibilities, some coordinate nutrition and recreation activities for assisted living facilities, and some integrate with or offer insurance claims management functionality to simplify billing and accounting. The following features typically appear in any type of assisted living software.

Resident care management — Automates the creation of service plans, captures and documents delivered care and services, and schedules and analyzes resident assessments. This allows care managers to accurately assess resident needs.

Staff management — Centralizes staff records, manages the hiring and verifying of prospective caregivers, automates scheduling staff shifts, and facilitates eased communication between managers and staff.

Clinical communication and collaboration — Facilitates the immediate exchange and transmission of care summaries, referrals, discharge notifications, lab results, and other relevant data between care teams and health care facilities.

Financial management — Monitors budgeting and expenses, payables, and census and occupancy information. Generates reports on financial operations, equipping facilities with actionable insights.

Additional Assisted Living Features

Resident contact management — Maintains a database of resident profiles and contact details. Enables documentation of any incidents, behaviors, or events that may befall residents. Helps facility managers and care staff get a snapshot of each resident.

eMAR integration — Solutions that integrate with electronic medical administration records (eMAR) help the handling and monitoring of dispensing medication to residents.

Patient engagement — Provides either a portal for patient families to get updates about the resident or provides interactive patient care (IPC) tools that help residents interact with their caregivers in a modern way.

Trends Related to Assisted Living Software

Increased automation — Automation of manual tasks is a clear benefit of using assisted living software, but what if every single process and workflow was automated? The ultimate goal is to optimize the assisted living facility (with the added benefit of relieving caregivers from unnecessary stress and busywork). Once every task is automated, then the facility can reap the benefits of collecting and tracking data, as well as increasing their ability to provide the best care possible.

Sophisticated diets — Stereotypical hospital food won’t cut it at assisted living communities. More software has emerged to facilitate meal planning; promote coordination between nutritionists, dieticians, and caregivers; and cater to all potential diets. Assisted living software that either seamlessly integrates with such software or provides an add-on module will succeed in these dietary efforts.

Medical devices — Medical devices are a natural extension of both medical technology as well as consumers’ penchant for body sensors and trackers. Medical devices will become more and more integrated into the lives of seniors. Facilities should be prepared to leverage the information that can be pulled from these devices, as well as outfit their facilities to ensure they’re optimally primed to support these devices.

Rise in qualified health care professionals — More people are entering assisted living communities and more people are pursuing careers in the medical field. Both require deft staffing and human resource management and put pressure on facilities to reduce staff turnover. In turn, there’s a growing need for software that streamlines the recruiting, hiring, and onboarding processes for medical professionals, as well as software that can effectively automate tedious tasks. Why waste the precious hours of professionals who are becoming part of a dwindling pool?

Mobile access — Every industry is experiencing the benefits and need of either supporting the mobile version of solutions or simplifying mobile data entry. Not all assisted living industry professionals are tethered to their desktop, and consumers are already familiar with leveraging mobile applications. Mobile health apps that help report on residents, provide facility maintenance requests, and record facility activities will only help with the increased adoption of the tool.

Data analytics — Any kind of business can benefit from a software’s ability to collect, store, and analyze data or intelligence. For assisted living communities, they can leverage software to gain data and insight that will ultimately help operators provide enhanced services, automated workflows, ideal offerings to residents, and a healthy work/life balance for caregivers.

Potential Issues with Assisted Living Software

Resident expectations — The expectations of senior citizens are changing. They’re becoming more tech savvy and social and refusing to sacrifice the lifestyle they had been accustomed to prior to entering the assisted living community. If your current programming, services, and technology are unable to keep up with resident expectations and needs, then your facility will lose money, no matter what kind of solution you attempt to deploy. Make sure that the assisted living software you end up choosing can help you collect and address complaints, issues, and lines of communication.

Employee use — If the product is difficult, confusing, or time-consuming to use, your assisted living staff will be less motivated to move from your current system to a new, automated one that requires training and onboarding. Carefully consider whether you’re choosing a solution that truly fits your needs or whether it’s full of unnecessary functionality. Then consider what extra resources and support you will need for easier implementation and adoption of the tool by all of your employees.

Data breach — While assisted living software digitizes and centralizes patient and facility data, it opens up the risk for potential data breaches. Whether the software is hosted in the cloud or on premise, it can still create a security vulnerability for any unauthorized access from the community. Make sure that your facility is equipped to handle security risks.

Software and Services Related to Assisted Living Software

No matter how comprehensive an assisted living solution is, good ones will need to communicate with other systems to support operations.

Ancillary care providers — Ancillary care providers ease the staffing requirements and operations of non-primary care practices by promoting information exchange and supporting workforce management needs of outpatient and physician services. With the network that ancillary care providers leverage, assisted living communities can minimize gaps in communication.

Patient case management — Patient case management software coordinates care across hospitals, practices, and ancillary care clinics. Assisted living facilities are ancillary care clinics, meaning they are a health care service that supports the work and care delivery of the primary care physician. Assisted living facilities depend on referrals and data from hospitals for the nurses and caregivers to properly take care of the population within the facility. With patient case management software, all clinical documentation and patient health data is centralized and effectively communicated.

Clinical communication and collaboration — While assisted living operators will benefit from a clinical communication and collaboration tool to streamline internal communication, much of the coordination will happen between primary care practices and the ancillary assisted living facility. Still, tools are needed to ensure secure messaging as well as activity and medication coordination.

Clinical documentation — Charting and accurate documentation of services are necessary responsibilities of assisted living caregivers. Clinical documentation software automates the generation and management of necessary medical documents and forms. Clinical documentation solutions also promote paperless offices, which is beneficial for assisted living facilities’ efforts for centralized information.