Yarmouth Argyle Home Support Services
Nova Scotia Home Health Leader Increases Direct Care with Mobile Technology Solution from CellTrak™
Yarmouth Argyle Home Support Services (YAHSS) is a non-profit service provider funded by the Nova Scotia Department of Health & Wellness, serving people who need ongoing care outside of hospital, either on a long-term or short-term basis. The talented and caring team at YAHSS cares for an average daily census of approximately 300 clients and completes approximately 60,000 visits to their clients each year. The goal of YAHSS is to support clients in their own homes to maintain their independence as long as possible.
YAHSS has been rapidly expanding their agency to address the growing demand for their services. Management has been steadfast in growing direct client care, with little increase in administration or overhead. Importantly, YAHSS needed immediate access to data on an easy to use and cost effective mobile platform to provide security and real-time communications for YAHSS’s Continuing Care Assistants that could interface with their own homegrown EMR system. YAHSS selected the CellTrak VisitManager™ solution with its real-time GPS -location services, and also found the added benefits of administrative efficiency through the elimination of paper-based schedules, time sheets and expense reporting.
Jan Morrow, retiring Executive Director commented, “Our staff work extremely hard and have become an essential part of so many lives as we assist our clients in their homes. YAHSS is pleased in the results they have already seen with the use of CellTrak. We have new tools that give us access to improved data and real-time insight for the safety and security of our staff. Having real-time data has improved productivity and patient outcomes. Electronic documentation has sufficiently increased efficiency and workflow. Working on a mobile platform has kept us connected within our rapidly growing organization”
Heather MacDonald, incoming Executive Director, commented, “Though we expected to see a degree of improved efficiencies in our procedures, we did NOT anticipate that it would eliminate 60% of our first-level workload assignments tech work. This is the level at which scheduling can easily become buried and we need to “talk schedulers off the ledge”! We have established a number of procedural steps, and while working with our own IT supports as well as those from CellTrak, our data sorting capability has now become much more user-friendly as a working tool. We’re further looking to be able to use these tools more effectively in our monthly reporting and data management.”
MacDonald added, “The Agency has needed this savings in paid time for more sophisticated data work, though now it means we won’t need to increase our FTE’s for tech proportionately to our workload increase. This will allow the Agency to look at much needed RN support with the increased volume of service authorizations being received. We attribute this “miracle” to CellTrak!”
Michael K. Wons , President and CEO of CellTrak shared “YAHSS have shown themselves to be a caring and thoughtful organization putting their people first,” Wons added, “we are pleased to be working with YAHSS staff to improve lone worker safety and provide mobile access to real-time scheduling, client information and electronic care documentation using BlackBerry smart phones across Nova Scotia.”
CellTrak is the industry leader in mobile applications for home healthcare workers providing a full suite of workforce management capabilities. In addition to the GPS features that keep workers safe, integrated visit verification and automated mileage tracking and expense calculations streamline administrative workflow saving time and increasing accuracy of results. Real-time access to data collection and documentation allow for better patient outcomes all from an easy to use solution running on a mobile device. The CellTrak Portal provides supervisors and managers with a real-time view of the organization; enabling data-driven quality measures, visit compliance and staff performance management.
About Yarmouth Argyle Home Support Services
The mandate of the Yarmouth Argyle Home Support Services Committee is to deal with any concerns that arise within and concerning Yarmouth Argyle Home Support Services (YAHSS) and to ensure that YAHSS is equipped with the necessary resources to provide the following support services to the residents of the Town of Yarmouth and the Municipalities of Yarmouth and Argyle; Personal Care, Meal Preparation, Light Housekeeping, Sometimes Errands, Respite Visits, Palliative Care in clients’ homes. The goal of YAHSS is to support clients in their own homes to maintain their independence as long as possible.