Tips for scheduling, mapping and routing

Hey guys, new to this place and really appreciating all the topics I’m reading and getting all the helpful tips from veterans in home health, especially in wound care topics. Started Home Health about 3 years ago at Loma Linda MC HH and since then moved on to work per Diem for 2 to 3 agencies and one aspect that frustrated me was keeping track of multiple patients frequencies in a master calendar, locations with address information spread out between different EMR systems and trying to figure out most efficient routes.

With most online options like google calendar and google maps layers (for saving patient locations) not being hippa compliant I would end up doing everything on paper. Really would eat up almost 40 min a day planning and try to be more exact than, “I’ll be there between 1-3pm” which would sometimes cause my time to overlap with a PT, PTA, OT..etc and either they would have to wait for me or me them. So anyways one of my coworkers gave me a great tip that has saved me a lot of time and helped me create way more efficient routes and wanted to share it with you guys. He told me he uses a system made specifically for home health clinicians called zigbuddy which his agency recommended to their workers since its HIPPA compliant

Tried it out and man it’s been a life saver and time saver. You just add your active patients in the system from the different companies and has nice master calendar that has drag and drop functions and color coded patients so you can differentiate from different companies. Each pt is plotted on a map with color coded pins. You can click on a work day and will plot all those patients on the map for you and give options like which patient you want to start with or end with and ability to add time constraints like if a patient can only be seen between 1-4pm because has dialysis in morning or MD appointment. When done you click on route it will figure out best route with all those variables. Gives estimate times you will arrive at each patients home. Really has made HH more enjoyable and freed up time to finish up those documentations that are left over at the end of the day.

Another thing that it has helped me with is being able to save notes on it like gate codes...or patients that have dialysis on certain days. Also, as I call within the system using the phone has options like marking the appt as confirmed or left voice message. I just love that it was made specifically for home health clinicians. Hopefully this tip really helps you guys. If you guys have any other tips for scheduling and mapping please comment! Zigbuddy.com is where you can check it out.