A lot of what you see us write about on this site is how GPS fleet tracking can benefit companies with technicians and contractors that are out on the job in their work truck or van or hauling expensive equipment. Industries like plumbing, roofing, landscaping, and construction all benefit greatly from tracking, but they are far from the only categories that do so.
While protecting yourself from misbehaving employees is one valuable benefit of fleet tracking, another is that you can also protect yourself from customers concerned that your business is not keeping its schedule. For example, if you are in the post-acute healthcare space – be it home health, hospice, physical therapy, even massage – you want to be absolutely certain that your employees are present and completing all of the billable hours you put on their schedule.
Let’s dig a little deeper into the value that vehicle tracking can provide for a home health care business. In this industry, the individual paying for the service is not the patient but rather a family member, private insurance company, or Medicare/Medicaid. Often the patient is an elderly individual that may not remember exactly when, or for how long, their caregiver last visited. For the payor, this may create concern that the patient may not be receiving the care that is being promised. This is where vehicle tracking comes in.
With Rhino fleet tracking, you will have hard GPS data to show payors or families exactly what time your caregiver arrived and left each patient’s home. You can also track engine starts and stops, indicators of when the caregiver got out of their vehicle to attend to the patient, and when they got back in after the appointment ended. Not only does this provide support when you speak to a family member about the care being administered to the patient, but it also gives you peace of mind that your employee is following the schedule and doing the job you are paying them to do.
Along these same lines, you can also get the peace of mind that your sales representatives are out there working full days to drive referrals to the agency. When marketing your agency’s services, your sales team can leverage the fact that your caregivers are tracked. This will help give referral sources the confidence that their patients will be seen as expected. No one wants a nurse to say they saw a patient when in reality, the patient was never seen.
Reporting Benefits
You likely pay your employees for mileage travelled and possibly even fuel as well. With GPS tracking devices in your vehicles, you will have an accurate mileage count for every vehicle, every month. Sure, you could use an app on your employee’s phone to track this information, but then you are beholden to the employee to a) always have their phone on them and turned on, b) remembering to turn on the app every day, and c) correctly tagging each trip as business or personal. With GPS vehicle tracking, your device is always active and always tracking, and you can use custom landmarks and geofences to highlight locations that you know are or are not business related.
Bolstering Efficiency
Collecting data on your employees’ trips can help you evaluate your patient schedule to maximize the efficiency of your workforce. If you see that some employees are driving a lot more miles than others, for example, you can see if there’s a better way to arrange their appointments to cut down on travel distance, time, and mileage reimbursement expenses.
You may also decide that you could redistribute your patients among your caregivers to allow for less drive time and more patient time. The result will be both happier employees and happier patients! Not only that, but if you need to add patients to the schedule at the last minute, you will know exactly where your caregivers are so that you can direct the most convenient employee available to the new appointment.
In addition to all the benefits discussed above, you also have the ability to keep track of employee driving habits to ensure your employees are driving safely and representing your company well on the road. Plus, you can use the application to track vehicle maintenance and service schedules to ensure your company vehicles are always up to date on their maintenance, inspections and registration.
Ready to get the most out of your fleet? Give us a call today at 800-293-0420 and our knowledgeable team will get you set up to track!
