Axxess Home Health vs MatrixCare Home Health & Hospice: Which is a better fit?

Chris D.: Hello, I'm Chris. I'm the chief marketing officer and assistant administrator for our company. We have a full-service home healthcare agency providing both medical and nonmedical services, including Medicare, veterans administration, and private pay as well with... And I mentioned the sitter companion services. So everything from homemaker to assistance with concierge-type services. In rating the software access, we would give it two stars out of five, and that's our overall rating for the software. Actually, Axxess was the first software that we used to be able to create automation for our processes. Before that, we used manual processes or paper processes. So this was the first software that we converted to as an agency to be able to update our processes. Axxess allowed us to be able to move and transition from an entirely paper process to an automated process, so it allowed us to be able to process our claims in a more timely manner, allowed us to be able to interact with both CMS, the VA, as well as other places that we needed to electronically communicate with. It allowed our nurses to be able to do their 485s and their initial diagnoses after the doctor's orders, to be able to go through and do their assessments and do it in an electronic format. It also allowed our caregivers to be able to record their visits and be able to make sure that we could monitor the entire care of the patient. The onboarding wasn't very difficult. The program itself is mostly cloud-based, so there wasn't a whole lot of onboarding as far as software implementation, anything like that, but basically, app downloads or being able to access it via browser on desktops or tablets. The only hesitation I have as far as implementation goes is the training. Sometimes there is a little bit of a training curve with any software. With this particular software, we experienced a few bumps in the road as far as our frontline workers being able to have the time to train, but then also being able to have enough training provided in a way that made sense to them. So in other words, it's, a lot of times, with software like this, you don't know what you don't know until you're in the field and until you've had the ability to be able to actually utilize the software on a day-in, day-out basis. So it's one thing to set in a classroom-type setting or watch a video module, those kinds of things. But really, that one-on-one, hands-on training, a little bit more of that, would've made the onboarding process a lot smoother. The biggest advice I would say is do as much due diligence as you can. Seek a trial period with some sample data to be able to determine your comfort level. Make sure that the promises that you get made as far as your needs go, make sure that those match up and that those are fulfilled on, and it's going to take a little bit of time to be able to determine those. Again, when it comes to a training setting or an onboarding-type setting, really dig in, ask the questions, get your staff involved as well. Don't just make these decisions from an administrator level. Make sure that your staff, your RNs, your LPNs, make sure your CNAs get a few of those together. Make a focus group if you need to, depending on the size of your agency, and get them involved as far as the user-friendliness of it. Have them, if it's possible, be able to be involved in the test as well. Then you can determine how effective the software will be for you, because you don't want to spend a bunch of time with tech support. You don't want to spend a bunch of time with customer service. You want to spend your time and have your employees spending their time in front of clients and being able to provide the services that you want to provide, not be bogged down with that. So I would say the biggest piece of advice is get involved in that process up front, ask lots of questions, plan for the worst-case scenario, and really make sure that the software's going to meet your needs ahead of time. Because once you're into it and once you've started to go through a conversion, you don't want to have to do that conversion to another software at that point. Make sure it's right for you.