Keep your Employees Productive at Home During COVID-19 using iCM

With governors of different states issuing stay-at-home orders to control and prevent the spread of coronavirus cases, providers servicing the i/DD industry are also adjusting their staff roles. Since people with disabilities continue to require critical services even during the state of emergency, the mobility of certain staff members (e.g. DSPs) is considered essential.

On the other hand, it is crucial to ensure that staff members that are currently working remotely can be utilized properly and that their time is appropriately billable.

While this is quite possible to do with the assistance of a reliable technology solution, it is almost next to impossible to do in an efficient manner if you don’t have an EHR backbone. If you currently do not have a technology partner, this is a time for rapid changes in your operations for ensuring that your organization is digitalized and adept for handling such situations. We would be happy to assist you in making the transition as seamless and quick as possible.

Here are some recommendations for how agencies can keep their employees productive at home using iCM’s electronic healthcare software:

1- Keep Track of Attendance:

Using iCM’s attendance module, you can plan activities and then track attendance for each person that your DSPs are supporting. The DSPs can enter the attendance directly into the system, giving your supervisors and managers consistent oversight of the work being conducted at all times.

2- Communicate Effectively using MyWork:

iCM’s MyWork module has been designed to help teams keep track of their tasks and to communicate with each other. DSPs and other staff members can log in to MyWork and use that as a starting point for monitoring their individualized daily tasks, seeing alerts, and responding to any messages that they’re tagged on. The @mention tagging feature allows them to address specific people in their messages.

3- Don’t let Needed Supports Slip:

iCM’s CareTracker module provides visibility into day-to-day support needs such as turning and positioning, washing hands, and more.

4- Keep your PCP’s on track:

Staying on top of critical PCP tasks is crucial to ensure that you don’t miss your overall PCP dates and targets. iCM uses auto-calculated due dates for tasks to determine whether a PCP is on track, off track, or out of compliance.

5- Provide Custom Access Control and Permissions:

Through iCM’s sophisticated role-based permission management system, you can assign staff members to specific people you support or to entire sites. Based on the custom permissions that you add, different staff members will be able to access the system without risking the security of confidential information.

6- Use eMAR for Overseeing Medication Administration:

By using iCM, RNs can log in to the system and see what medications are being given and by whom. The software integrates with pharmacies. This integration with the pharmacy ensures that there is accuracy in the order information that is coming through. You can check each person’s medications without having to rely on paper-based records.

7- Get Alerted when Incident Reports are Filed:

You can get alerts through email or text messages every time an Incident Report is filed, allowing supervisors to act expeditiously and with full knowledge of all the contributing factors that would affect the handling of the said incident. The system automatically notifies the right people and generates documentation for reporting purposes.

8- Do Effective Management & Reporting:

One of the biggest advantages of iCM is that it provides a dashboard with all of the reporting tools necessary to get a big picture understanding of the organization, along with the ability to hyper-customize reports for specific decision-making abilities. This reporting module is useful for executives to keep track of what’s going on and make course-correction decisions in a timely manner.

9- Drive Consistency in Support:

The level of services provided to the people you support should not get negatively affected by this current pandemic. The benefit of using a technology solution is that you can continue to offer a consistently good quality of work even in times of transitions such as these.

10- Temporarily Shuffle Roles during the Crisis:

If certain staff members are not required during this crisis, you can shuffle their roles and assign them to tasks that may be more in demand. This will allow you to fill in the gaps where there is a dearth of resources and ensure that everyone has payable work to do.

11- Utilize Idle Resources for Training & Development:

Agencies can make the most of this time by providing training to staff members that are otherwise idle during this pandemic. iCM is working with its customers to provide training webinars on how to best utilize the system during and after the state of emergency. Our training is always free and can be requested on-demand on need-basis.

12- Stay on top of your State Billing Cycles:

With iCM’s Billing View module, you can stay on top of your billing cycles by ensuring that every work conducted is tracked and billable.

13- Keep your Records Secure & Paperless:

With iCM, you can maintain a comprehensive set of electronic documentation for each person that you support. All of this information is kept secure and accessible in our HIPAA compliant servers.

14- Conduct Drills & Maintenance:

When servicing residential homes of the people you support, it’s important to keep on top of monthly/quarterly fire and disaster drills even during these times. All such drills, as well as maintenance requests, can easily be handled (tracked, recorded, and reported) through the system.