Caregiver management, and its associated labor costs, are quite possibly one of the biggest challenges home care agencies face. And, the specific issue of managing caregiver overtime (OT) can literally make or break an agency’s bottom line.
Given this reality, it’s critical for agencies to manage caregiver OT effectively and to include tracking OT as part of the key performance indicators in home health care.
Do Agencies Need to Worry About OT?
The simple answer is: Yes, you do! While the rules for OT billing and pay can vary slightly according to which state your agency operates in, in-home caregivers are entitled to overtime when they work beyond the full-time threshold. In 2015, the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) ruled that home care workers must be paid overtime pay when working over 40 hours in a seven-day workweek. And hours worked must include the travel time for caregivers to get from one client to the next.
To put it plainly, once 40+ hours are worked, your agency must pay the caregiver a higher rate. Without a dedicated system that can track caregiver hours and allow for response when employees are reaching OT, you could find yourself losing money in excess OT hours. Therefore, the key to preventing OT is to see it coming and either move hours to another caregiver or plan ahead to have clients absorb those OT costs. And that is where the Rosemark System comes in!
Your Caregiver Management Solution
Home care agencies must have full visibility of service delivered in order to plan and process overtime, and Rosemark provides that visibility as well as options to customize how you plan and bill for OT as well. With the Rosemark System, agencies can:
- Clearly see when a caregiver is scheduled to work over 40 hours. Our Hours by Caregiver report allows schedulers to see how many assigned hours per week each caregiver has. With this information, shifts can be assigned to another caregiver or, if the client prefers only this caregiver, they have the option to negotiate an increased rate with the client prior to service delivery.
- Identify underutilized caregivers. If a caregiver has experienced canceled visits, this opens up the opportunity to shift potential OT hours from one caregiver to a caregiver who has not yet reached that threshold.
- See newly hired caregivers who do not yet have a full schedule. It is important to give new employees a schedule right away so they stay engaged and reduce the risk of turnover. With Rosemark’s fully visible scheduling system, schedulers can assign new caregivers to shifts that would otherwise be OT for another caregiver.
- Have more flexibility with how they process overtime. Rosemark offers more modes of control than a lot of software systems, allowing you the ability to customize the rules for how you bill for OT, whether you choose distributed OT, OT averaged out over the week, or OT surcharge, which gives you the option to pass on the added cost of OT to the client.
As a business, home care has many moving pieces, making effective caregiver management critical. If a caregiver’s schedule changes, it’s important for the scheduler to know that so they can look for OT to avoid (if work hours increased) or assign that caregiver to other work opportunities (if hours decreased). Rosemark provides a real-time view of service delivered, giving the supervisor the tools to be informed of changes and to utilize caregivers most efficiently.
Our system allows you to work in multiple, user-friendly windows so you can get a full view of your reports and scheduling, allowing you to easily reference the scheduling information you need when making adjustments to a caregiver’s shift. Additionally, the report is updated in real time, so you always have the most current information at your fingertips as you make business decisions and track key performance indicators in home health care.
The Rosemark team has a firm grasp of the rules of overtime for the home care industry, and we can work with you to provide recommendations on how to use our caregiver management system for OT billing and payroll. Ready for a software solution that takes the stress out of overtime? Contact us today to learn more about the many benefits of the Rosemark home care management software system.