How Providers Can Stay Connected to Families Despite Staffing Limitations

It’s no secret that the staffing crisis is impacting organizational outcomes across the long-term post-acute care (LTPAC) continuum.

And while the great walk-out has implications that span every facet of a provider’s business, communication failures between staff and families can increase caregiver dissatisfaction, create unmanageable workloads, and adversely impact your reputation.

While maintaining connection with families may feel overwhelming with limited staff, it doesn’t have to.   

In my last blog, The Great Walkout: How Providers can Collaborate to Do More with Less, I focused on tips to drive operational efficiencies. 

These same tips can be proactively leveraged by providers to ensure that family communication continues despite their staffing challenges.

Secure Visibility

• Increase family and resident’s satisfaction while saving the time of your staff by providing real-time visibility into the resident’s healthcare record
• Enable family members remote visibility into their loved one’s status anytime, anywhere by securing access to real-time records

Automated Messaging

• Keep families informed and reduce the burden on your care team by creating automated workflows using voice, text, and email notifications
• Establish consistent and professional conversations with families and enable staff to spend more time caring and less time calling, by using proactive, automated communication

Consistent, Repeatable Processes

When it comes to saving valuable time, consistency is key.

Improve the family’s experience by shifting focus from paperwork to a person-centered approach through automation of securely generated and signed admission documents.

By enhancing visibility for the family, automating important notifications, and enacting consistent, repeatable processes, you gain a more consistent approach to communication while:

• Improving the family connection and experience by providing the most relevant information anytime, anywhere
• Increasing family collaboration by enabling conversations to focus on relevant updates
• Improving family satisfaction by eliminating manual time-consuming tasks

By enacting these three tips, you can proactively increase your operational efficiencies and strengthen your existing relationships with families.