Ali's Home Healthcare saves time and delivers improved client and staff outcomes with eCase.

Published by Health Metrics, 1 March, 2024

Ali's Home Healthcare, Director Kelly Seed reflected on the outcomes they have achieved with eCase and the benefits being delivered to both their staff and clients since deploying eCase in 2021.

Key take-aways include:

• eCase is meeting Ali's Home Healthcare's current business needs and offers functionality and scalability for future planned growth
• The eCase Self-service Client Portal has been a real game-changer for the business, delivering an improved client experience as well as achieving weekly time-savings of 14 hours plus a reduction in overall communication costs
• Ease of use of the eCase App has supported great staff take-up - "staff love eCase and are using it well to deliver improved outcomes for clients."
• eCase has significantly improved the efficiency of the audit process - feedback from auditors was that eCase was fantastic and definitely made their job a lot easier

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The Challenge

Ali’s Home Healthcare provides in-home support services to more than 300 clients in the Canterbury region in New Zealand, offering a range of services to disabled and older people including personal support and nursing services, and domestic assistance.

With more than 20 years’ experience in the home care sector, Ali’s Home Healthcare operates in line with the principles of Enabling Good Lives (EGL) to provide its clients with the flexibility to determine the type of care they would like, and how they would like to access it. Ali’s Home Healthcare offers a range of services to disabled and older people including personal support and nursing services, and domestic assistance.

Acquiring the business in 2020, Ali’s Home Healthcare, Director Kelly Seed saw an opportunity to review their current business systems.

“Our previous systems were in-house built, and while they were functionally rich there was high dependency on several key staff, which created a level of risk for us,” said Kelly.

“A change of systems also gave us an opportunity to review our business processes and make sure they were fully aligned with our vision for providing our clients with the highest standard of care and supporting our staff to deliver that care.”

The Approach

A market scan was undertaken of potential software vendors and eCase was chosen as Kelly believed it was the only product available in the market that offered the functionality Ali’s Home Healthcare would require as the business grew.

“eCase stood out as the home care solution that could meet our business needs today as well as offer the functionality and scalability we will need as we grow.
We’re committed to achieving strong business growth over the next 5 years and eCase is the right system to support us on that journey,” said Kelly.

Kelly also believes eCase is the only software application in the New Zealand market that will provide the level of flexibility required to meet any funding changes that take place over time.

“Being an Australian-built application eCase has the capability to meet the complex funding requirements of the Australian government. This gives us confidence that we will be able to leverage these capabilities when the New Zealand funding model changes.

”Deployment of the new system commenced in 2021 during the pandemic and as a result the entire implementation process was completed virtually.

“The eCase team led by Karan Grewal was great and the entire process went very smoothly. A great example of what can be achieved when two teams work well together - regardless of location.”

The Solution

Ali’s Home Healthcare has deployed the eCase Home and Disability Care platform across the organisation and is taking advantage of its rich client and workforce management, clinical care and scheduling capabilities to streamline its business processes.

According to Kelly the eCase Client Portal has been a real game-changer for the business, delivering an improved client experience as well as achieving time and cost-savings.

The Client Portal provides clients with the convenience of a self-service approach as they can simply login at any time to view their schedule and carer details.

“We’ve achieved a saving of 14 hours of staff time a week, as a result of clients using the eCase Client Portal to view and confirm their schedule instead of calling us,” said Kelly.

In addition, our communication costs have reduced significantly as we’re no longer sending client confirmations of their appointments by text or by phone.”

“Our clients love the Client Portal as it gives them convenient and easy access to their schedule. They are already asking for us to give them access to more information, which we will look at in the future in line with our commitment to empowering our clients to make decisions relating to their care.”

Kelly also observed that their recent annual audit process was significantly more efficient with eCase in place. By providing the auditors with access to eCase, they were able to easily find the information they needed in a single place.

“Often the audit process results in a degree of business disruption and takes us away from our core business as we work to provide the audit team with the information they need. Our last audit was very efficient – and the feedback from our auditors was that eCase was fantastic and definitely made their job a lot easier.”

The Results

Kelly identified early in the deployment process that the approach to training was going to be critical for staff take-up and to ensuring a positive experience for clients.

Taking a ‘whole of system’ approach and providing individualised training to each staff member has meant that there has been a very high-level of buy-in across all areas of the business.

“All staff were shown both the front-end and the back-end of the system so they could see how eCase was supporting all aspects of our business. From our schedulers to our carers to administration and finance we wanted to be inclusive and take everyone on the journey.”

During the training phase Kelly would say to her staff “if you can use the Facebook App or your Banking App on your phone – you’ll have no problems using eCase!”

“Our staff love eCase and they are using it well, which ultimately means improved outcomes for our clients. And it also means a better experience for our staff, which is very important to us as a business.”

Ali’s Home Healthcare has excellent staff retention and unlike many providers in the industry has not experienced issues with staff shortages, which Kelly attributes to the focus the business places on the quality of the overall staff experience.

Going forward, Kelly is keen to take advantage of additional functionality within the eCase platform that will improve the client and staff experience and support business growth.

“We’re strongly focused on continuous improvement and growth and I’m confident eCase is the right system to help us achieve our business goals,” said Kelly.