Assisted living facilities face a myriad of concerns every day. However, those running such residences can take full managerial control by building assisted living software. While there are pre-made solutions on the market, developing a custom platform according to your facility’s needs is usually more beneficial.
Let us explain why tailored-made solutions beat most off-the-shelf applications. And if you don’t use management software in your facility yet, this article will describe the business opportunities these systems bring.
How assisted living software solves business challenges
Management software can handle most administrative problems in senior living facilities. More importantly, it can open your eyes to the issues you didn’t know were there.
Let’s look at five apparent benefits of assisted living software.
-
Improved facility management
The 20th century isn’t the time to burden your staff with paperwork. Specialized software can store data about your residents, employees, inventory, and medical supplies from every facility in an easily reachable cloud database. As a result, your staff will have quick access to the necessary data from any desktop or mobile device.
-
Stronger data protection
According to a 2019 Global State of Cybersecurity report and home healthcare trends, approximately 60% of healthcare organizations suffer from data loss incidents. You can’t rely solely on physical storage devices either. Even without hackers, about 0,89% of hard drives can fail on their own.
How can senior living facilities safeguard their data? A reliable cloud software platform with data backup features is the best solution, especially for multiple facilities owners.
-
Better cost management
Nursing homes and senior living establishments deal with routine operations on a daily basis, which your staff can handle manually. However, it’ll require a lot of time and energy. Besides, you should consider the human factor — people will make mistakes.
Assisted living facility software offers a more cost-effective alternative for routine operations. An effective platform will streamline time-consuming processes like:
-
Residents admission
-
Staff scheduling
-
Care planning (nutrition, medical care, etc.)
-
Billing
And the best part — this software will minimize errors and miscalculations during management.
-
Improved medical care
Do you want to raise the medical care quality? You can buy specialized software or develop software designed for complete care management with eMAR (electronic Medication Administration Record), EMR (Electronic Medical Record), and care planning to help your staff:
-
Quickly access residents’ medical reports
-
Create and update personalized daycare plans and medication schedules
-
Set up notifications and alerts for upcoming events
-
Assign tasks to personnel
-
Monitor resident's activities
Management software will help your employees take even better care of residents.
-
Conversions boost
If you are thinking about increasing your reach, you can acquire more clients using assisted living facility software.
As we already pointed out, this software can help you provide better services due to improved medical services and billing consistency. This means you’ll have a competitive advantage over other assisted living providers.
On top of that, the right platform can help you “sell” your services. For example, it can identify the right prospects and manage marketing activities.
Assisted living facilities are very similar to hospitals and nursing homes. More importantly, they share issues like routine operations management, resident admission, care planning, and invoicing.
Thankfully, most of these problems are easy to solve with a proper management platform. But what features should be included in this kind of software?
Key Features of An Assisted Living Facility Platform Software
Senior facilities and nursing homes gain droves of benefits from assisted living software. However, most canned applications don't provide the full spectrum of features you might need.
With assisted living software development, you can build a custom application that will solve all your pains. Here are some must-have features your facility can benefit from.
Admissions management
After entering the resident’s data into the system, all subsequent upgrades will be automatically added to that person’s file. Resident data stored in management systems usually consist of:
-
Personal and contact details
-
Information about relatives
-
Medical condition data (health problems, disabilities, etc.)
-
Document scans
Your employees can manage and access crucial information in a few clicks. Besides, both staff and residents will be informed about upcoming events (such as new arrivals, departures, birthdays, and appointments).
Billing and invoicing
You should eliminate needless paperwork in favor of digitalization. Assisted living software can help you with this. For example, it can store bills, invoices, medicare, pace cards, and insurance in one unified cloud database.
The system will also allow you to generate custom report forms and track client payments. You can even develop a custom assisted living facility software to monitor residents’ invoices in multiple facilities. Read more about developing a custom medical claims management software and e-prescribing software development.
Care planning
Your staff will know the medical history of every person under their care to manage medication and nutrition. Moreover, people with specific conditions or disabilities (for example, people with Alzheimer’s or those who rely on walkers and wheelchairs) can be easily assigned to qualified caretakers.
Staff management
Assisted living software is perfect for keeping track of employees’ roles and responsibilities. For example, you’ll easily create and upgrade:
-
Contact data
-
Competence level and training
-
Copies of documents (such as General Equivalency Diplomas and certificates)
-
Permissions
-
Responsibilities
On top of that, custom software allows for easy and quick background checks on potential hires.
Employee scheduling
You can assign duties, as well as upgrade staff schedules in real-time with a system like this. A comprehensible software will have a customizable dashboard with alerts and reminders for every employee.
Moreover, senior living facility software works as a communication platform. Your employees will receive SMS, VoIP, and email notifications about urgent tasks or emergencies.
Incident handling
Incidents are inevitable when you deal with older adults. Your employees must be ready for falls, heart attacks, hospitalizations, and other emergencies.
Assisted living software can help your staff instantly access the resident's medical data to provide sufficient help. Artificial intelligence-powered systems can even help forecast incidents (strokes, panic attacks, etc.)
Elderly people can wander off outside the facility. If you want to know your residents’ real-time locations, you can implement tracking devices and software into the platform.
Let’s not forget about government inspections. Many facilities benefit from compliance check-ups. You can be ready for HIPAA (or GDPR) inspections by building assisted living software, even if inspectors show up without notice.
Marketing management
The right solution will empower your marketing and sales departments. You can build a custom senior living software that can:
-
Gather data about potential leads
-
Evaluate the prospect's financial capabilities
-
Track the sales process
-
Manage and update tasks for various departments
-
Generate exhaustive reports
-
Manage marketing activities and contacts
These features can impact the way you acquire clients and help improve your reach.
Nutrition management
It’s undoubtedly challenging to balance diet requirements and food costs. Assisted living software can help you track health issues, prescribed diets, and other preferences for each resident. For example, your staff can quickly identify people with diabetes to personalize their menu. Just as important, the right software will allow you to analyze daily food costs and help you plan production.
Medication tracking
Your employees can utilize EMR and eMAR software to keep track of the medical inventory. Innovative software allows managing medicine types and dosage for each person living in the facility. On top of that, your staff will know which residents have trouble taking medicine on their own.
Custom EHR/EMR solution development for senior living facilities can help you create software to support both your residents and staff. As a result, you'll significantly improve the quality of medical care.
Work order management
Even routine processes such as testing water quality and generator maintenance can be critical for vulnerable residents. Therefore, you need effective work order management to prevent compliance issues and schedule preventative maintenance.
A comprehensive software can help your staff assign, schedule, and track various tasks. Moreover, your maintenance team will have an easier time tracking and fixing project requests to ensure they are completed as fast as possible.
Advanced software affects all facets of the facility. Therefore, it needs to adhere to certain requirements during development. Let’s explore these a bit.
Requirements for assisted living software development
Suppose you’ve opted for developing senior housing management software. First, you need clearly defined requirements for production. We recommend focusing on:
User experience
Convenience and intuitive interface are cornerstones of successful applications. Your system won't benefit your facility if it is too hard to use or requires extensive training to understand. The goal should be to make the staff's and residents’ lives more comfortable instead of being an obstacle.
Security
Senior living and nursing homes use software platforms to store payment, contact, and healthcare data about their residents. Cybercriminals may want to steal this info to commit financial fraud and identity theft.
According to the Ponemon Institute LLC study, 89% of healthcare organizations suffer from data breaches, with half of them experiencing data theft multiple times a year. As you might expect, the responsibility for data leaks will lie in the facility owner’s hands.
For these reasons, your platform should be adequately protected from hackers and insider threats with HIPAA and GDPR compliant security foundations.
Scalability
Managing an assisted living facility is difficult enough. Taking care of several organizations is a whole new challenge.
Not every off-the-shelf software supports multi-facility management. If that’s what you need, you should develop a custom platform that allows you to collect, process, and analyze clinical data from several facilities.
Possibilities for integration
Do you rely on specific utilities for management? Most canned solutions are limited in terms of integration. But a reputable IT vendor can build custom senior living software that will work with other applications. For example, Demigos can enhance your platform with HRM, ERP, fitness applications, custom databases, and other third-party apps.
Personnel training
An overly complicated software system won't help you manage the facility. On the contrary, it will complicate even the simplest tasks, frustrating both employees and residents. Therefore, your vendor should provide comprehensible manuals and, preferably, online support to assist your staff.
Flexibility
Care facilities need to improve living conditions and optimize processes. To achieve this, managers should implement long term care software that is easy to modify and enhance with new technologies.
In other words, the goal isn’t just to create a useful platform. You need to digitize senior living facilities with an upgradable solution that won’t lose its relevance anytime soon.
What to double-check before starting a project
No two facilities are alike — all have their standards and workflows. You can try adapting to pre-existing software, but creating a custom nursing home management software or assisted living platform is the most optimal way to go.
If you want to ensure your software meets all requirements, here are things to consider when choosing a vendor.
-
Feature set
Decide on the features you need first and foremost in your adult foster care home or nursing facility. At the same time, we recommend building scalable assisted living software with minimum properties. This will help you reduce expenses and accelerate development. At the same time, you’ll get an upgradable platform that will stay relevant as technology evolves.
The research phase is crucial for Demigos. Our experts analyze the design and provide various prototype versions of the end-product. As a result, clients can see what features are the most crucial for their business.
-
Budgetary constraints
Software projects rarely stay under budget. Healthcare and assisted living software is no exception. So, you need a thorough plan that accounts for extra costs and contingencies.
A qualified IT company will help you achieve the desired results according to your estimates. Demigos will go one step further. Our engineers bring proven practices and methodologies to the table. Moreover, we are responsible for delivering high-quality solutions that meet client's expectations.
-
Data ownership
In outsourcing and managed IT services, the vendor is usually responsible for drafting documents. As you examine the contract, you need to focus on the data ownership aspect of the deal.
You should be able to answer the following questions:
-
Who possesses the source code?
-
Do you own the data and records in the system?
-
Can you restore files without the vendor?
-
Can other vendors support this software?
In other words, you must own the end-product and be able to maintain it (even if you part ways with the vendor who developed it).
Demigos is transparent in this regard. You’ll become the software’s sole owner. Moreover, we can make the databases easily exportable if you want to migrate to another system later on.
-
Vendor's track record
Last but not least, make sure the vendor you choose has relevant expertise. Things to check include:
-
Does this software company have experience in the healthcare or assisted living industry?
-
How does the vendor vet its developers?
-
How many successful products has it developed?
-
Does it have positive feedback from other facilities?
We deliver secure and innovative products that adhere to industry standards. As evident from our cases, the solutions we develop help clients solve their most pressing business needs.
Final thoughts
Facility management software can improve your business efficiency by streamlining redundant processes and reducing operating costs. But not all software platforms are equally useful for senior care and assisted living providers.
Commercial, off-the-shelf solutions offer fewer features and limited personalization compared to custom software. Therefore, companies with defined business tasks should consider building assisted living software with an experienced developer.
Demigos has a proven track record developing software for assisted living facilities and healthcare institutions; as well as providing age tech software solutions. Our professionals can create highly functional and secure platforms that meet all of your requirements. Contact us to learn how we can digitalize your facility.
