How Virtual Visit Capabilities Kept Homecare Running During the Pandemic—And Beyond

I’m not sure any healthcare company was prepared for the COVID pandemic, but those companies that had already started to modernize their applications were definitely better positioned to continue care. That was true for one of our client - a Home Healthcare Company. They are providers of homecare and hospice services that had begun an application modernization project prior to the pandemic.

They had updated legacy systems, moved them to the cloud and had started developing a mobile app for patients and a progressive web app for clinicians. Their goal was to automate workflows and communications, thereby improving clinician productivity and patient care. They had a beta version in testing. Then the pandemic hit.

Watch the Home Healthcare Company’s VP of Marketing Innovation Discuss the Project to Create Virtual Visits

They Needed to Reprioritize Features—Fast

The Home Healthcare Company had been working with a technology partner that understood agile development that had been helping them roll out functionality in short bursts. They had virtual visits on the roadmap, but had not planned on releasing the apps with this feature. With the sudden need for this capability, the company worked with their development partner to change the priority of feature development and start working on virtual visit capabilities.

Within two months, the patient and clinician apps had the ability to hold virtual care visits that was completely secure and HIPAA compliant. They were able to roll out the apps and get high adoption thanks in part to this important feature.

They Continued to Improve Virtual Visit Functionality

Once the Home Healthcare company rolled out the basic virtual visit functionality, they didn’t stop there. They realized there were many situations that required multiple clinicians, caregivers, and family members all in different locations. So, they expanded on the capability to add multiple attendees—all while maintaining HIPAA compliance.

The Home Healthcare Company saw that virtual visits were not just a band-aid for the pandemic, but were an important feature for homecare and hospice in the future. The pandemic just made that evolution happen faster. They therefore committed to continuing to improve the functionality of virtual visits to provide their clinicians, the patients they serve and their caregivers with an excellent experience.

The Results Were Spectacular

The most important outcome of implementing virtual visit capabilities was that the Home Healthcare Company was able to maintain operations and continue to provide patient care while keeping everyone as safe as possible during the pandemic. Beyond just staying in business, their revenue began to grow. They saw an increase in referrals—both because they had this technology, but also because both patients and clinicians were so happy with it and passing the word on. The average patient rating for care services skyrocketed to 4.9/5. They knew they had made a smart investment that would reap benefits long after the pandemic was over.

And the Home Healthcare Company, which prides themselves on innovation in healthcare, plans to continue to invest in these applications to add features that improve operations and care. You can follow these links to read more about the specific features in their clinician app and patient app.

Want to hear about other healthcare projects that are making a big impact? Find more healthcare modernization case studies here.