Aides
A scheduling app for home health aides, starting with EVV.
More visits a day than nurses, shorter ones, in split shifts, in your own car, on lower pay. What the app has to do, including the one requirement that is not optional.
Aides have the hardest schedule in home care and the least software built for it: more visits a day than nurses, shorter ones, often in split shifts around meals and personal care, on lower pay, in their own cars. This page is about what an aide scheduling app has to get right, including the one requirement that is not optional.
Start with EVV, because you have to
The 21st Century Cures Act requires Electronic Visit Verification for Medicaid-funded personal care and home health services. In practice that means the visit's start and end time, location, the aide, the patient and the service are captured electronically, usually through the state's chosen system or an approved vendor. Any aide scheduling app either is an EVV system or has to live alongside one.
What makes aide scheduling hard
- Short visits, many of them. Six to eight visits of thirty to sixty minutes make the drive between them a larger share of the day than for any other discipline.
- Split shifts. A morning block for personal care and breakfast, a gap, an evening block for dinner and bed. The gap is unpaid and the drive home and back is usually unreimbursed.
- Tight windows. Getting somebody up, medication with a meal, a bath before a family member leaves for work. These are not preferences.
- Continuity. Patients want the same aide. Swapping in a stranger to save ten minutes of driving is a real cost to the patient, and the software should know that.
- Pay. On an hourly rate near the state minimum, unreimbursed driving can push effective pay below the legal floor, which is a wage violation under the Fair Labor Standards Act.
What an aide scheduling app has to do
| Need | What "done well" looks like |
|---|---|
| Order the block by drive time | Within the windows, with the same aide kept on the same patients wherever the arithmetic allows. |
| Handle a no-answer | The aide says "Maria's not answering", the visit is flagged, the office is told, and the next visit is offered early if the patient will take it. |
| Refill a cancellation | Who is nearest with a visit due this week, ranked by driving added, so a cancelled hour is not a wasted one. |
| Change it from the car | By voice. An aide between visits does not have a hand free for a keyboard. |
| Produce the mileage log | Automatically, from the planned and driven route, so reimbursement is not reconstructed from memory. |
| Keep the patient's data on the phone | Speech and photos stay on the device; addresses are placed by servers the agency can point to. |
The money, plainly
An aide on eight visits a day across a suburb can drive thirty miles between them. If the order is poor, that can be forty-five. On an hourly wage and a per-mile rate below the IRS figure, that gap is paid by the aide, every day. The Windshield Tax calculator will show you your own number in a minute, with the arithmetic shown.
Where Obillions fits
Obillions plans the block by drive time inside the windows, keeps continuity where it can, refills a cancellation by proximity, and takes the change by voice. It does not do EVV, timesheets or payroll, and it is in private testing on iPhone with a public TestFlight next. For agencies whose aides are on Medicaid-funded visits, it sits beside the state EVV system rather than replacing it.
Questions people actually ask
What is EVV and does an aide scheduling app need it?
Electronic Visit Verification records a visit's time, place, aide, patient and service electronically. The 21st Century Cures Act requires it for Medicaid-funded personal care and home health. A scheduling app either is an approved EVV system or has to work alongside your state's. Obillions is not an EVV vendor.
How many visits does a home health aide do in a day?
Commonly four to eight short visits, often in split shifts around morning and evening care. The driving between them is a larger share of the day than for nurses because the visits are shorter.
Is my agency required to pay my mileage as an aide?
Federal law does not require it except where unreimbursed driving would push your pay below minimum wage, which is a real risk on hourly aide rates. Some states, such as California, require reimbursement of necessary work expenses.
Can the app keep me with the same patients?
Continuity is a real cost to the patient, so the planner keeps the same aide on the same patients wherever the time windows and driving allow, rather than swapping for a few minutes' saving.
What happens when a patient does not answer the door?
You say so. The visit is flagged, the office is told, and the next visit is offered early if that patient will take it, with nothing changed until you confirm.
Does Obillions do timesheets or payroll?
No. It plans and orders the day, refills cancellations and takes changes by voice. Timesheets, payroll and EVV stay in the systems your agency already uses.
Obillions
A voice agent for a day of visits. You say what changed and the day re-plans itself: the order, the drive times, and who nearby could take the hour a cancellation just freed. Nothing changes until you confirm, and your voice and photos never leave your phone.
In private testing now. A public TestFlight comes next, then the App Store.