Appointment Management System for In-Home Care
Custom appointment management solution for providing home healthcare services at a patient's location powered with an advanced booking system
Industry
Healthcare
Team
12 members
Started in
2024
Country
USA
About a Project
Our customer is a US-based nursing home provider. They also offer additional services at the patient's location, enabling patients to receive in-home care. The client needed a brand-new system to automate the appointment management process for home nursing care and was looking for a team of healthcare IT experts for the task. The customer reached out to Cleveroad for IT team augmentation services.
Goals set to Cleveroad
Create an appointment management solution to deliver home healthcare services at a patient's location with easy appointment control and reporting capabilities
Design the business logic and technical parameters of the system so that they can meet the requirements of the highest security standards and domain-specific regulations
Provide the customer with staff augmentation services to augment development capabilities by hiring healthcare tech experts
Solutions we've delivered
Development of the automated platform for providing home nursing services with a powerful appointment administration module. The system integrates a mobile app for healthcare providers and an Admin panel for medical facility
Appointment management platform development with robust security measures (implementation of AES-256 encryption standard and RBAC access control) and compliance with healthcare industry legislations (namely HIPAA)
Integration of competent healthcare software engineers into the customer's project to add extra force and build a solution from scratch
Results for the Customer
Cleveroad healthcare software engineers created an intuitive appointment management system that addresses the business needs within in-home care services
The company got modern home healthcare software that meets the requirements of the latest security standards and US laws in healthcare and allows the business to maintain users’ trust and the long-term viability of the solution
The customer received a team of pre-screened healthcare IT experts to quickly start the product building. It allowed the healthcare business to save money on hiring in-house specialists and get the expertise they require right now
Business Challenges
Our customer has a running business, Nursing Home, and extends home-based assistance to patients at their location. However, this line of their business relied on manual intervention for appointment control, leading to operational inefficiencies. For this reason, the company decided to build an automated appointment management system to optimize in-home care provision. The customer has a tech expert that continuously supports their existing solutions for the Nursing Home's internal processes. Faced with the lack of resources for building such software, the organization decided to engage external expertise. Mainly, they were looking for a third-party healthcare software development team that could quickly integrate into the project and develop the system from scratch. So, the customer needed to:
Onboard external IT specialists with health tech expertise. Form a team of competent specialists in medical software development and healthcare data protection standards to implement them into the project. It was required to gather a domain-expert team that met the unique requirements of the product and be able to jump into the project in a short time.
Automate a business segment that oversees services provided at the patient's location. Design and build a solution to move from manual managing of appointments to brand-new automated appointment management system. It was necessary to create a powerful appointment booking module enabling two-sided management of scheduling sessions: clinical staff (Admins) can book appointments and care providers can supervise assigned sessions.
Guarantee the system’s compliance with industry-related security laws and standards. Develop an appointment management platform that supports compliance with healthcare regulations (namely HIPAA). It was required to ensure the developed solution meets all the requirements for PHI and ePHI data storage and processing as well as adheres to US healthcare data protection regulations.
Project in Details
Our team built the system from scratch, considering healthcare legislation requirements and providing the client with on-demand expert team
Business Architecture
- Fully-featured and robust mobile application for care providers. Users can manage assigned appointments and confirm their completion with e-signature functionality to prove the care was provided. Our team also integrated map and geolocation services to enable caregivers to locate patient residences quickly and effectively plan travel routes.
- The custom appointment booking engine is the system's core: it allows convenient appointment scheduling and administration for home nursing services within a single system. We also implemented appointment reporting to enable the creation of detailed and structured reports attributed to scheduling, management, and completion of appointments for care services provided at a patient's home.
- The web-based Admin Panel for the appointment administration system. It includes six major features: user management, patient management, appointment management, reporting module, dashboards, and widget functionality. Admins can book appointments, see their statuses and progress, view the details of the performed work, generate payroll reports and claims. The access level to the system functionality depends on a user’s role according to the RBAC approach.
Product Essentials
The system modules were built and integrated to ensure smooth and logical flow and address all the needed functionality
The schedule management feature allows users to review their own schedules and see appointments for the current, past, and future dates. Healthcare providers receive appointments assigned to them by their organization’s Admin. According to the business requirements, an appointment is a visit to a patient's location to provide health care service at home. There can be one or several appointments per day.
E-signatures enable healthcare providers to confirm the completion of the patient care provided. The caregivers must use their own signature to confirm that they have completed all the tasks in the appointment and they must request patients to provide their signature as a confirmation of service received. Both signatures are made on the provider's app and account. Patients don’t have a separate interface or account in the system.
The map and geolocation services are vital to include in the software when delivering home healthcare services at the patient’s location. Providers can view and follow directions to the appointment location right in the app, minimizing travel time between sessions.
The shift functionality was integrated for reporting purposes. Providers are required to confirm starting and ending their shifts via the application. The timing will be logged in the healthcare system.
The notification services are vital to ensure caregivers are well-informed about upcoming meetings or any modifications in their schedule. Notifications for assigned appointments are sent to healthcare providers, specifying the date and time of the consultation in real time. Depending on the settings, notifications can be sent at different periods before the start of the appointment.
An appointment management module is integrated to cater to the needs of both administrators and healthcare providers.
Healthcare providers can review appointment details, patient information, and tasks assigned. With the integration of DMAS-90 Aide Note, we’ve made it possible to view tasks assigned in the scope of the appointment, mark them as completed, review notes regarding particular questions, and add notes to the appointment details.
Organization Admin is in charge of managing appointments and appointment schedules. Administrators can create ordinary and recurrent appointments, review appointment reports, and review details of DMAS-90 Aide Notes of a particular appointment.
The user management module provides access to user administration functionality. Admin can manage all organization users (providers), including user account control and roles and permissions management. Users can be added and deleted from the organization by the system Admin.
The patient management module is responsible for managing records with patient information. The organization's Admin can access complete patient information and add, edit, and delete it. There is no unique user role for patients in the system.
The reporting module allows the organization’s Admin to generate reports related to payroll processes and insurance claims. The system administrators can create payroll reports for a defined period (usually for 1 or 2 weeks), view and download them. Same with the claim reports. Insurance claims reports can also be generated in the system and downloaded for further usage by the user.
Dashboards and widgets modules help the Admin to visualize statistics reports related to appointments, healthcare providers, patients and insurance companies. Additionally, these functionalities help keep an eye on the due dates of providers’ licenses to remind them about the renewal in time.
Development in Detail
- The customer required an outstaff team to acquire needed healthcare IT expertise and save resources on hiring in-house experts. We formed a complete team of domain experts who performed all the software development activities. The outstaffed team cooperated with a Product Owner and a tech expert (from the client’s side) in terms of gathering requirements and receiving approvals. Our specialists could jump into the project in short terms, resulting in fast product delivery. The project material transfer remained consistent and supportive as the Product Owner participated in the development process throughout the cooperation.
- Cleveroad medical software development team created a HIPAA-compliant system that allows appointment management by healthcare providers and Admins. To meet HIPAA requirements, we’ve deployed the platform to AWS infrastructure, the HIPAA-compliant provider. Our healthcare software engineers also leveraged the AES-256 encryption algorithm and HTTPS transport protocol around secure access, exchange, and use of PHI and ePHI data. Our team's expertise in HealthTech provided benefits to the customer in the form of a solution that is compliant with all industry security standards.
- One of the tech challenges was to build an appointment booking engine from scratch. Initially, it must be implemented with scalability in mind to effectively support multiple appointment shifts and be intuitively understandable for the new personnel without additional onboarding. Our experts applied a thoughtful approach to the appointment booking system creation: we prepared several concepts that were tested internally with the support and approvals of the Product Owner and a tech consultant from the client’s side. It was required to start the implementation phase with a full understanding of what exactly is needed for the healthcare business.
Technology stack
The technology stack is selected and used, considering the project’s requirements and the solution’s business logic
Web Stack
Frontend
React.js
Redux
Next.js
Tailwind Elstar
Backend
.Net
MySQL
RESTful API
Amazon RDS
Mobile Stack
Cross-platform
Flutter
Dart
AWS Infrastructure
S3
Lambda functions
Route 53
API Gateway
Cloudfront
Amazon RDS
Cloudtrail
Cloud watch
AWS SNS
Results Obtained
Business automation due to new software
The customer received a bespoke appointment management system that allowed the medical organization to automate the business line that covers home nursing services provided at the patient's location. The new software helped to reduce the need for manual appointment administration and thus optimize the line of Nursing Home activities, contributing to their clients’ higher satisfaction with the service.
IT cost reduction owning to a profitable partnership
Staff augmentation services provided by Cleveroad allowed the business to keep a fast product development pace and save costs on hiring the in-house team on a permanent basis. Receiving a team with verified healthcare tech experts (for a defined period), the customer has managed to onboard the required expertise quickly, optimize overall development costs, and promptly release a brand-new appointment management system.
Compliant solution with secure databases
The Cleveroad team delivered a HIPAA-compliant customized system to automate home healthcare services provided at the patient's location. The solution adheres to the highly esteemed encryption standard (AES-256) for sensitive data protection and system integrity. Now, the customer can provide patients with data confidentiality guarantees and remote medical care assistance, maintaining business continuity and patients’ trust.
More Cases
Documentation
Quality Management System Compliant with FDA and ISO
