Home Care Software ROI – An Honest Look At Return On Investment
If you are looking at home care software you will probably want to find some reassurance on what you will get back for the money you put in.
You’ve probably experienced that this information can be difficult to find, and while some home care software providers will promote an ROI calculator of their own, it’s rare they will tell you where the sums it is using have come from or the rationale behind them.
In this article we will look at real world measurements of ROI made by actual home care providers in the UK.
Using their examples, you should have a better idea of what you will get back when you invest in home care software.
All the providers we will examine are using Access’ software, including our care rostering and electronic care planning solutions.
That’s not to say you can’t achieve similar savings with home care software from other companies, but we can’t guarantee that, because every piece of software differs in its functionality, integrations and so on.
So, after reading this article you should have a much better understanding and greater confidence in how much time, money and other benefits home care software will give you back, broken down into the areas of:
- Savings on printing and postage
- Time savings and increased capacity
- Staff satisfaction; how this impacts care and your finances
- Improved care quality and how this could impact your finances
Home care software ROI - where our figures come from
Calculating ROI for most domiciliary care providers is difficult, as they typically lacking the time and resources to make the necessary before and after measurements.
Most of the measurements used in this article come from City and County Healthcare, the UK’s largest provider of home and community based social care services in the UK, who embarked on a ‘digital transformation’ project in 2019-2020.
The core of City and County’s digital transformation included using Access’ care management software, such as our rostering, digital care plan and call monitoring software.
They created a ‘model branch’ programme, which meant they would measure the impact of the software, the ROI, at the level of individual branch. This means that you can easily apply these results as estimates
To substantiate the scalability of City and County’s figures, we will also be referring to case studies from domiciliary care providers of other sizes:
- Bay Care Group, who at the time of their case study provided care to around 300 people
- Countywide Caring, who at the time of their case study provided care to around 30 people
You can watch their full presentation on their returns on investment, from the ‘Access All Areas’ event in 2020 here:
Home Care Software ROI Factor 1: Time Savings
Invoicing and Payroll
City and County, Bay Care and Countywide Caring all use the Access PeoplePlanner care rostering system, which automates much of the work associated with calculating and generating invoicing and payroll.
Through the use of Access PeoplePlanner, City and County reported saving 6.5 hours per week per branch just on processing payroll.
Meanwhile at Bay Care, also using Access PeoplePlanner, their managing director, Kat Green, told us “payroll now takes me a day to complete for a 4 week period. Invoicing now takes me just 2 hours to complete, with next to no errors.”
Before using the system at Bay Care it took Kat over a week to complete payroll and invoicing for a 4 week period. Assuming alongside other duties Kat spent a maximum of 2 hours per day each week on payroll and invoicing, that equates to 8 hours saved per week, not too far from the 6 hours per branch per week that City and County achieved.
Savings by system may vary
But be warned, different care rostering systems differ in their levels of functionality. Often the cheaper end of the market will lack proper financial tools, such as automated invoice and payroll reconciliation, you can read more about this in our guide to home care software pricing.
When selecting a rostering system always closely scrutinise the quality of its invoicing and payroll capabilities, to ensure the maximum amount of time saved for your care service.
Time Savings on Care Processes
City and County also recorded substantial time savings in some key care processes. For example, the use of digital risk assessments and eMAR resulted in a 48% time saving versus paper processes.
Meanwhile they found that using an electronic care planning system (in this case Access Care Planning), with all the automation involved, made it 50% faster to onboard new service users and to create new care plans.
Auditing is often overlooked when people are considering home care software. But as you probably know audits are as time consuming as they are necessary. City and County found that home care software reduced the time spent on audit execution by 60%, by centralising their audit function across all their branches.
What can you do with more time?
City and County found that implementing domiciliary care software gave them an overall increase in workforce capacity of 6% per week. This is time they got back, which could be spent on more ‘value adding’ activities.
Meanwhile Countywide Caring reported they had “clawed back” 30 hours of staff time per week, that’s in a small care service that cares for only 30 people.
But what could you and all your team members do if you had more time? This is really a question for you. You are probably always thinking of things you would like to do, or for your team members to do in your care service, if only you had more time.
Below are some examples from City and County and other care providers that use our software, to spark your imagination.
When home care software gives you, your care managers, quality managers and of course your care workers as they deliver care, more time, then it really is a case of how you deciding how you want to spend it best:
- Improving quality of care
- Recruitment activities
- Collaborating with partners.
- Training
- Spending more quality time with clients
- Improving your marketing for more clients
- Developing partnerships with local organisations
- Tendering for more contracts
Streamlining the back office
In addition to the examples above, freeing up staff from non-value added tasks can sometimes mean freeing up back office staff completely. This can mean streamlining the number of staff you need in your back office and putting more resources into care delivery, or transitioning them to new branches you are setting up or into care leadership roles.
For example, prior to using home care software from The Access Group, Kat Green at Bay Care found that as they were adding new clients the numbers of staff needed in the back office was increasing in proportion. You might call this ‘unscalable’ growth.
It meant finances were being stretched extremely thin as more money was needed to cover back office staffing requirement.
Implementing home care software increased the capacity of each member of office staff. This enabled Bay Care to reduce the number of staff in their back office by 50%, saving around £75,000.
Meanwhile, Premier Community reported that they were saving a massive £40,000 for every additional 500 hours of care. Why? Because using Access' home care software meant staff in various roles (managers, coordinators and so on) could do more in the same amount of time. So, they didn't need to hire additional staff at the same rate.
Premier Community are a real leader and an example to follow, find out more about what they've achieved in the video below:
Looking for a quick quote tailored to you? Let’s start talking today.
Home Care Software ROI Factor 2: Staff satisfaction
Recruitment and retention is a massive issue in social care. Attracting good care workers, or managers and keeping them is a challenge you probably face. When home care software is properly rolled out, with efforts made to ensure staff ‘buy in’ to it, you can see significant improvements in staff satisfaction.
After implementing our home care software City and County achieved a 63% improvement in care worker satisfaction across multiple categories, measured using anonymous staff surveys.
Logically, staff, especially care workers, who are less frustrated and more happy in their role Although there is no data to show a direct link between care worker satisfaction and care worker retention, logically if people are more happy in their role they should be less likely to leave.
You will already know that keeping those experienced, trusted and knowledgeable people in your care service is so important to keeping things running smoothly and ensuring continuity and quality of care.
Adding up: The financial impact of improved staff satisfaction
In addition, while staff satisfaction may seem like a non-financial return on investment, think again.
Think about the hours and the money you spend on recruiting, on-boarding, and if needed training each new care worker.
Skills For Care estimated the cost of recruiting a care worker at £3642, and that was in 2017. We could comfortably expect the price has increased since then, with some care providers reporting that since the pandemic it costs four times as much to recruit staff.
Let’s say you have the Skills for Care estimated average annual churn rate of 30%. Based on this rate if you employed 150 care workers, you would expect to ‘churn’ or lose around 45 of them in a year.
Taking the Skills For Care estimated recruitment cost from 2017, that means you would need to spend £163,890 each year on recruitment and on-boarding to refill those jobs.
If we make a rough, and really, a low estimate that a 63% improvement in staff satisfaction through use of home care software can lead to a 10% improvement in staff retention. Then you could reduce staff churn to 20% by implementing home care software.
This would mean churning 30 staff instead of 45, saving you £54,630 per year that would’ve been spent on recruitment and on-boarding.
For your more exact calculation
Of course these are just estimates, and each agencies’ costs and churn rates will depend on many other factors too. However, this should be a good guide to how improving staff satisfaction with the help of home care software can also claw back crucial funds for your care service.
You could apply a more comprehensive calculation. If you have records of the number of staff you needed to replace in the previous 12 months, you could then apply a rough estimate of 10% improvement in retention, through improved staff satisfaction after implementing home care software.
Likewise if you have tracked your own cost per new recruit, or estimates of them, you can apply those too for a more representative ROI estimate.
Home Care Software ROI Factor 3: Quality Improvement
Alongside reducing costs and improving operational efficiency, one of the key reasons care providers invest in home care software is to gain greater visibility over care quality, manage it, and improve it.
Improvements in care quality can be difficult to quantify. In their own ROI assessment, City and County took the approach of monitoring changes in overall ‘care quality scores’ in their audits. After implementing our home care software they saw a 12% increase in overall quality scores across all sites.
In addition, using their anonymous staff surveys they found that 81% of care workers felt better equipped to deliver high quality care now they had the software in place.
We can also suppose that the improvement in staff satisfaction detailed above and the increase in perceived ability to deliver higher quality care support each other. That care workers who feel they can deliver better care are more satisfied and you can expect higher quality care from more satisfied care staff.
Does quality improvement have a financial impact?
Unfortunately we don’t have proper data to show you the link between higher quality care and a return on your investment.
On its own, improving care quality will probably be one of your primary aims, aside from whether it helps improve your financial sustainability.
However, we can speculate on this point. As a care provider you will probably understand that improved care quality and safety would reduce the likelihood of you receiving any fines, or reputational damage that would impact your ability to win local authority contracts, or new private clients.
Likewise, a better rating from your regulator (such as the CQC), or a better reputation for maintaining the highest standards of care should mean that private clients and local authorities are more keen for you to be the ones delivering their care services.
So while a financial return is of course not your primary motivation for improving care quality, there may be some knock on business benefits from improving and maintaining standards.
I won’t factor it into our ROI calculation as we lack the data to do so, but it is worth keeping in mind when you assess the overall range of benefits to your business from using home care software.
Home care software what will your ROI be?
After reading this article you should feel much more confident about the different ways you will see a return on investing in home care software for your business. You can also read our home care software price guide to get a better understanding of how pricing models work.
There are the direct financial savings, for example in postage and printing where savings in the region of 37% have been reported. You could also reduce the costs of travel and back office staffing by as much as 50%.
Then there are the hours upon hours saved each week that can be put to better, more productive use. With at least 6.5 hours per week, per branch saved on invoicing and payroll alone.
As we’ve explored above, home care software also has less tangible returns, in care worker satisfaction and improved quality of care.
Ironically, as you’ve read above there is a financial implication for these results too. Those improvements in staff satisfaction can translate into substantial savings on recruitment costs. While quality improvements could make your care service more competitive, more attractive to private clients and local authority commissioners.
The Access Group’s home care software is the UK’s most widely used, and hopefully from the examples I’ve used in this article you can see that we work with all shapes and sizes of care providers, from the brand new to the national and international.
We apply that experience to ensure your choice, deployment and use of your home care software delivers maximum ROI for your care service. If you would like to get a better idea of what you could achieve with home care software get in touch and we can start talking ASAP.
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