NEW YORK, (November 17, 2020)—The COVID-19 global pandemic has shed light on significant needs within the home healthcare industry. At the same time, societal and cultural changes have accelerated a demand for new ways to take care of the elder population who are staying at home more than ever before. As care providers and caregivers alike turn to digital solutions to help streamline and evolve at-home care, Medflyt, a cloud-based web platform and mobile app that changes the way homecare agencies staff, train and onboard caregivers to deliver in-home care to patients, today revealed exclusive survey results highlighting the current state of homecare in the United States. Surveying over 11,000 home caregivers across the U.S., Medflyt found COVID-19 has drastically affected their need for training and education. In fact, over 83% of caregivers have become more interested in in-service mobile training since the beginning of the pandemic—underscoring the need for technology that helps facilitate and streamline at home-care operations.
“The pandemic has forced the homecare industry to digitally transform sooner than expected, creating a skills/training gap as patients rely on at-home health care,” said Levi Y. Pavlovsky, COO and co-founder of Medflyt. “Based on our findings, it’s clear that agencies are in need of solutions to help simplify caregiver staffing, training and compliance. In addition, caregivers are looking for more mobile-based options.”
Medflyt, which is a HIPAA-compliant SaaS platform, has the industry’s only mobile-first based suite of home care management solutions: Online Staffing, Online Training, Remote Onboarding, Clinical Documentation, Compliance Tracking and Value-Based Payment Tracking. The current product suite aims to help home care agencies save time and money, while also lessening caregiver burdens by allowing access to their intuitive mobile-app.
The Future of At-Home Care
Following are additional takeaways from the survey:
- As a result of COVID-19, home caregivers look for more transparency and wider range of online training options: Though 84% of caregivers felt safe at their jobs during the pandemic, over half (54%) asked to be more educated on pandemic topics (sanitation, social distancing, regulations) as it relates to their work and 62% noted they were more interested in mobile in-service training.
- As the need for caregivers grows during the pandemic, these workers look for safer training and onboarding protocols: 60% of respondents preferred to be trained online instead of in-person, and 38% are now asking to onboard remotely— compared to much lower percentages prior to the pandemic.
- Flexibility and easy onboarding, staffing and training are the driving factors for positive caregiver experiences: The majority (62%) of caregivers said that easy and quick onboarding and ease of staffing are the reasons to stay with one agency over another. 44% noted that their training would be immensely improved with better communication and flexibility from agencies.
“The data also shows that caregivers need more communication from their agencies,” added Pavlovsky. “In-home health care remains one of the most underserved and unappreciated industries, and the challenges posed by COVID-19 have called attention to that sentiment. Through our suite of solutions that aim to provide the resources and flexibility caregivers and agencies need to continue to provide quality care to every patient, Medflyt is in a position to change that.”
To learn more about Medflyt or their survey result visit medflyt.com.
