This article is sponsored by Axxess. This article is based on an HHCN Staffing Summit discussion with Deborah R. Hoyt, Senior Vice President of Public Policy, Arlene Maxim, Senior Vice President of Clinical Services and Tammy Ross, Senior Vice President of Professional Services for Axxess. The discussion took place on May 26, 2022. The discussion has been edited for length and clarity.

Deborah Hoyt: Thank you for joining us for today’s Home Health Care News Staffing Summit and this morning’s panel discussion entitled Uberizing Clinicians: Scheduling Flexibility Puts Nurses in the Home Health Driver’s Seat.

Both Tammy and Arlene are nurse leaders in Axxess with decades of experience sitting in the exact same seat where you’re sitting today. They’ve been former home health agency operators and industry consultants.

Let’s begin by first discussing major market shifts and disruptors. In every industry, technology advancements have always been a disrupter. The disruptor in health care is the educated consumer. Consumers of all ages understand that they can now receive health care in the home for most of their situations. Therefore, it’s natural that consumers are demanding an anytime, anywhere, 24/7 home-based care model, much like how the transportation industry was transformed by Uber and the meal delivery system by DoorDash. We’re behind those industries and we know that technology can help us move us to the next level and solve some of the problems we’re struggling with today. Technology companies like Axxess have been preparing for the workforce in nursing shortage for decades.

Axxess has created the technology now to move our industry forward to empower the caregiver and meet the growing referral volume that all of you are seeing as provider agencies. Arlene, we’ve heard about the great resignation and the significant volume of nurse retirements nationwide. How can we apply a modern strategic and data-driven approach to leveraging nurses and caregiver geographic distribution to solve for this shortage that we’re hearing about? This is something that’s going to be with us for the next 10 years.

Arlene has been leading what we’re calling our AxxessCARE system, which is really the Uberization of in-home care staffing to meet consumer demand and address provider staffing challenges but most importantly, provide flexible job opportunities for those people out in the field. Arlene, tell us a little bit about this, what you’ve been working on, how it’s rolling out, and what’s the receptivity of the caregivers, and the provider agencies.

Arlene Maxim: Thank you, Deb and this is a brand new type of nursing being done. The Uberization of this application is just an absolutely wonderful idea that our CEO at Axxess, John Olajide, came up with a number of years ago, and we’ve been working on this for a number of years. It is not a staffing agency. I want to make sure I make that very clear. It’s an application. It’s an app just like you’d get for Uber, that will allow agencies to, or actually order up nursing whenever they need it. They can also use it for a scheduling system. The problem we found as COVID hit us most recently, in the past couple of years, we found that we lost nurses more quickly than we thought we would be losing nurses.

There’s such a shortage and there continues to be a shortage. This is going to go on for another 10 years as you mentioned. The retirement of nurses is going to speed up. We have fewer and fewer folks in the workforce and this is going to help alleviate and augment the staff that organizations already have in place. I’ve heard stories about agencies losing revenue through loss of referrals that are in multipliers of their 75 to 100 referrals that are turning down in any given week. That’s lost revenue that agencies just can’t afford with all the cuts that we’re coming up with now.

With the application, an agency can actually look for a nurse. We have a mapping piece that they can take a look at. They can see where the nurses are. I think this is a great tool for getting PRN staff out to the home. For instance, if you have an emergency, perhaps a patient has a catheter that falls out or something needs to be replaced, you can take a look at that map, see where a nurse is and you can order that nurse immediately. She can probably be there in a matter of minutes. The advantage that this gives organizations is just absolutely tremendous.

The geographic positioning of the maps and knowing where clinicians are in relationship to patients and also the organization is just tremendous. Now as we get into the end of this month, I’m really, really excited about having Axxess certification available. I know Tammy is going to talk about that. That’s going to give many more nurses, whether they’re retired nurses that would like to come out of retirement, or nurses who are working in hospitals, and that type of thing. They’ll be able to come into the AxxessCARE Family and use that application to pick up extra shifts. They can do that. They can pick up as many shifts as they want.

We have to realize that our nurses and our therapists, they’re not computers and we can’t expect them to be working and taking on 14 to 15 visits a day. I’ve heard from some pretty good sources that that’s what’s happening throughout the United States. There’s a safety factor along with causing burnout with the staff. The AxxessCARE application can be a solution for many, many organizations and we’re going to be really excited to open it up to clinicians across the United States by the end of this month.

I know Tammy is going to get into more of that but the application, I just want everybody to understand this is not a staffing relief operation, it’s an application. It is something that every organization can take part in and the clinicians will be able to have access to the application as they go through the Axxess certification program that Tammy is going to talk about.

Hoyt: This is interesting. If I was a clinician and I wanted to become part of this AxxessCARE, just like an Uber driver, tell me about how I have to be qualified or certified. What do I need to know? Are there background checks done? How do I get on this app and then am I in the driver’s seat so I can choose my own visits? Then I’m not replacing agencies. Agencies can tap into me and show me what visits are available and then I can go on them. Can you talk more about that?

Maxim: Yes, the nurses and therapists, I want to make sure that we remember the therapists can also utilize the application, can use the application and they complete a profile. We have the preloaded profile that they complete. They go through a complete background check, AxxessCARE does the background check. That is all available for the home care agencies as they look at the clinician so that the staff that are available on the AxxessCARE app are all pre-qualified, they have a skillset available so that organizations can take a look at that. If they are interested in doing primarily wound care, they’re going to be able to do that.

They’re all vetted prior to being accessible on the application. Agencies don’t have to be concerned about their licenses being checked, everything’s done prior to placing them as availability on the application. The nurses and therapists then can take the application and sign up for as many visits as they would like to do in a week or in a month, so they have full flexibility and they’re absolutely in control. They are in the driver’s seat for this. They can pick up as many visits as they would like or not. We do have a couple of agencies, I believe in Florida, that do actually shift work as well.

We have nurses that are looking to take care of patients for a longer period of time, not just intermittent care as we do with certified care, but that is also available. It’s just an absolutely tremendous gift to agencies to have this available, and it’s also free. I think we forgot to mention that it’s a free application. Organizations don’t even have to pay for it. For now, this is something brand new in the industry. I’m hoping folks will take a look at it and really take this seriously. It’s really going to help with retention, it’s going to help with recruitment, knowing that agencies can have availability on weekends.

I can remember being a manager in home care agencies and being on call on weekends. The most challenging thing we had to do within our work week is making sure that we have folks available on weekends. This is a great augmentation to your current staff and being able to pick up work on the weekends or on holidays, that’s also available too, and the organizations can pick and choose.

They’ll have options to take a look at. They don’t have to take every single nurse that’s on the application. They’re able to screen them as well. They can take a look at their profiles and see if there’s some clinicians that they would rather have than others. Geographically, it makes sense, because they can find folks that are closer to where they need the work done so that mileage is decreased. Right now, as we know with gas prices, the way they are, that’s going to be a big deal and that is a big deal. There are so many advantages to the AxxessCARE application. As I mentioned before, we’re really excited about May 31st being a kickoff date for all clinicians across the United States to be able to access AxxessCARE.

This excerpt has been edited for length and clarity. To watch the full discussion on video, please visit:

Axxess is the leading technology innovator for health care at home, providing solutions that help improve care for more than 3 million patients worldwide. To learn more, visit: https://www.axxess.com/.