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V isiting Healthcare Technicians and Home Health Nursing professionals must focus on what matters most in the field – providing quality, on-time appointments with exacting skills and equipment. Whilst scheduling operations must work with precision and agility, professionals in the field need support through speed and simplicity.

The technology should be equally agile, aware of the value you offer your clients and in turn, add value to your scheduling teams in real-time. This post highlights recent developments in the sector and where real-time field software controls risk, to design an improved performance.

REAL-TIME SCHEDULING TO MEET MODERN REQUIREMENTS

In the last decade, home healthcare providers have learned the importance of reliable scheduling and the support software provides to service last-minute patient visits (field appointments). Persistent factors such as a patient’s availability and emergency call outs remain.

These, however, are met by new operational issues such as:

• Shortages of medicines creating repeat deliveries
• Low skills availability means overworking and is delaying hiring
• Increased fuel and vehicle costs
• Telecare/app scheduling with a consistent assigned professional

It's these day-to-day dispatch tasks that must be solved before commercial teams may consider scalability. This has changed how pharmacy delivery and care/nursing scheduling teams evaluate field scheduling software, and the willingness of the solution's developer to mirror their unique requirements. As healthcare field services have evolved towards an on-demand experience, large and mid-sized providers must move to a real-time, integrated digital ecosystem to match.

Recent rising workloads in field healthcare services are created through:

• Providers cutting risk through strict facilities management – less likely to offer appointments in a formal health setting
• Authorities clearing hyper-local backlogs – this includes screening and dentisty through pop-up, vehicle-based clinics
• B2B vaccination services such as corporate flu jabs in greater demand – vastly increased scheduling for teams of qualified professionals to visit an office location
• Retailers moving into in-home optical testing – inexperienced dispatch managers are trying field scheduling with little technical support

WHAT ARE MODERN FIELD HEALTHCARE CUSTOMER EXPECTATIONS?

Just as real-time technologies have existed in the e-commerce sector for many years, patients have now begun to accept and utilise digital options as customers of modern healthcare services. Whilst the nature of on-demand answers has sped diagnosis and treatment, advertising and word-of-mouth has lead to ever-growing waves of 'new customers' looking to take advantage of a more 'democratic access' to healthcare services in the field:

• Choice – non-critical treatment, delivery, and service on their schedule
• Streamlined experience – requesting appointments in as few clicks as possible
• Proactive monitoring – just as diabetes patients can test at home, patients expect their equipment to self-diagnose
• Transparency – real-time ETA for in-person visits and deliveries