Welcome to Shoshana Technologies' blog! We'll be talking about all sorts of things related to Home Care, Technology and the people who make them play nice together. We've worked with thousands of agency owners, operators & staff persons as well as hundreds of technology and service vendors to the industry, franchise executives, marketing directors, business coaches, CEO's, caregivers and just about everybody else over the years. So, we've learned a thing or two about this business.

Home Care is such as important part of the changing landscape of our culture and society! It is bound to be a crucial part of the answer to the big question of "how does the Baby Boomer generation grow old gracefully?" Without it, it's hard to imagine how we can move into the future. Healthcare is in such turmoil and the pressure of the coming wave of older Americans so great that there can't help but be great upheavals. Some things will fall away. But not Home Care.

Conversation with a former Rosemark customer

This is a conversation that I've been having with a CCSC member and former Rosemark customer (1284). Thought it might be instructive for the team to read.

Hi Mary,

Thanks so much for taking the time to give me some feedback on your decision. We are continually striving to make Rosemark better, so your input is invaluable. If I may, I'd like to address some of the points you made so that you can better understand where we are coming from and where we are headed.

Each system, of course, has its strengths and weaknesses. A few of the things you mentioned are things that we plan to add to Rosemark. A number of them Rosemark already does, you just might not be aware of them. For example, you CAN email & text from within Rosemark.

I really believe that much of your frustration with Rosemark comes from not having sufficient training. Rosemark does not work like Outlook because it was designed specifically for the kind of scheduling that happens in Home Care. Therefore, it really requires a bit of training in order to use it effectively. I understand that some people really don't want training, they just want to figure it out on their own. That's where the familiar "Outlook" look & feel have an advantage.

Pretty much all of our competitors have taken this route, which is essentially deriving their look and feel from other applications. Our approach has been to design the tools from the ground up, in conjunction with Home Care professionals, to make it the most efficient and effective for the specific task. We have many hundreds of users who handle their scheduling very efficiently and effectively using Rosemark, including some who have switched to Rosemark from other systems.

There are other ways that Rosemark is substantially different than other systems. The reliability of the software is really unsurpassed, because we have made that a priority from the beginning. I have been told that some of the other online systems have significant outages: Rosemark does not. I'd be happy to describe in more detail why this is so, if you are interested.

Another way that we are different is support. I am confident that you won't find better support with any software company in any industry. We understand that the business and the tools are complicated, so readily-available, patient, unlimited support and training is a vital part of what we do.

Concerning telephony: our telephony is as fully integrated as any. Everyone uses back-end providers, even if they don't admit it. The only difference with us is that you get two bills. If it is being used properly, you never have to do anything about PATTI other than pay your bill. The payroll process happens entirely within Rosemark, but, again, there has to be sufficient knowledge of the process in order to use it effectively.

On the other side, some of the things you mentioned are, indeed, great ideas that we should add. Dragging a shift to change it is a good example. Publishing the Care Plan on a shift basis is also a great idea. Both are on our docket, along with many other enhancements. Something you haven't mentioned, but other agencies have, is the online employment application that eRSP has. We listen to feedback, and will be including that in the next couple of weeks.

Thanks again for your thoughts. I am more than happy to continue the conversation if you choose to. In any case, I truly wish you the best.

Tom

On 10/5/2011 5:44 PM, Mary Nielson wrote:

Hi Tom –

There are a lot of improvements in the newer systems. It’s not so much that Rosemark is hard to learn, it’s just not intuitive. The newer systems use an “Outlook” type UI that is very familiar to most. Ours texts and emails the schedule to the caregiver the night before so there’s no confusion about where or when she’s supposed to be there. We can text message selected caregivers with an open shift right from scheduling so someone can “claim it” right away. No more outbound phone calls. We can email out of the program directly as well. Moving a shift is as simple as click and drag. And we have the option of putting the care plan tasks on the shift, so the caregiver can report complete, incomplete, or incomplete with explanation. The client families can see this info. Telephony is fully integrated – I get my payroll reports directly from the program, along with a very useful Gross Income report. No PATTI or other extra telephony service. And, like Rosemark, we will be able to integrate with QuickBooks.

Scheduling takes us a fraction of the time now. I tore my hair out this summer trying to keep Rosemark up to date with what I’d arranged off line. Now it’s simpler than pie.

You may want to take a look at Generations, ClearCare, eRSP and some others to see what features they have.

Take care,

Mary

From: Tom Voiles [mailto:tvoiles@shoshana.com]

Sent: Tuesday, October 04, 2011 10:32 AM

To: 1284 Loving Care @ Home CCSC

Subject: Rosemark

Dear Mary,

We're sorry that you were not able to learn how to use the very accurate, productive and powerful tools that Rosemark offers. If you have any suggestions about how we could make it easier to learn, I would love to hear from you.

Of course, we would be happy to serve you in the future if what you have chosen does not serve you well.

Best Wishes,

Tom

Hi Tom,

We are discontinuing our agreement with Shoshana Technologies, effective Sept 30. Your service has been impeccable and we have no complaints.

However, there are easier to use scheduling and agency management programs out there and we have selected a new provider.

Many thanks for all you have done.

Mary Nielson
Executive Director

Powerful article by Angil Tarach-Ritchey RN, GCM about the state of choices available to aging Americans without sufficient income. According to Angil, many Home Care agencies can't afford to provide care under Medicaid Waiver programs because they pay less than the agency has to pay to get and keep good caregivers.
http://www.angiltarachrn.blogspot.com/

She has also started a petition to bring awareness and change to the situation:

Petitions by Change.org|Start a Petition »

Public blog direction

Seems like Chuck has made it clear that we need to have a public blog that is separate from our website. So, we ought to setup one of these on blogger.com for ourselves. He also says that we could setup a custom url (like rosemarkblog.com or something). Let's do that!

This is from Chuck's email about it:

http://www.seohosting.com/blog/articles/why-does-a-blog-help-seo/

"Last item is gaining inbound links to your site. Now, this part is something that not many people do very often. If you have a website and you’re trying to get it to rank for top rated keywords, the blog itself is what can thrust your website into top rankings. The key to doing this is to make sure that you’re blog is completely separate from your website. Meaning, if your website is YOURBUSINESS.COM, don’t make your blog YOURBUSINESS.COM/BLOG or BLOG.YOURBUSINESS.COM.

Instead, make your blog something like YOURBUSINESSBLOG.com. Additionally, your blog and website should be different IP addresses, in fact, maybe hosted by different companies. The purpose of doing this is to have the ability to point links back to your website and have search engines credit these links as true external inbound links."

Archive from the website blog

More Blogging Thoughts

Some responses to things so far:

1) I use 2 browsers so I can see the whole thing (as a public person would) and edit. Chrome, Firefox and alt-tab make it pretty easy.

2) We still need to get clear about the internal vs. external aspects. Stuff like we're talking about here doesn't really belong in the public blog, in my opinion. So, how do we distinguish them?

3) Re: Are all blog entries going to be done via the drupal editing window, 'menu settings' options and all? Seems like that's the way it's done.

4) Re: Are we thinking of adding a new 'blog' tab next to the 'forum' tab? How are we making it accessible? Good question. One thing to keep in mind: without doing a significant re-design, we can't add more tabs, as they won't fit. However, seems like we are talking about doing away with the Demo tab, so we could re-use that. What to call it? Something concise (so it fits) that means "Communications",  "Resources", "Community Resources" or something. I don't think we want it to be single-purpose ("Blog"), as we're likely to need other things in there. Should probably include the Forum, too.


-Tom

Yay for blog!

As far as the tone of the blog, I think it should definitely lean towards informal. Of course entries should be at least a little bit relavent, but I think moderately personal posts will make us seem more accessable to customers. For instance, I think an entry about Tom's dentist appointment would be appropriate; it's personal, but still still relevant because it caused Tom to be out of the office for part of the day. Stuff like that.

We should start compiling a list of the other blogs we want to follow. Also, since keeping updated with other blogs will be an ongoing task, someone should probably be responsible for doing that as part of their regular weekly duties. I'd be glad to take that on, as it seems to be a logical extension of my job title as a technical writer anyway. Let's talk about it!

So here' s a few questions about how the blog will work:

Are all blog entries going to be done via the drupal editing window, 'menu settings' options and all?

Are we thinking of adding a new 'blog' tab next to the 'forum' tab? How are we making it accessible?

-Jon

What shall we do in this blog?

What shall we do in this blog? I'm wondering if there should be an internal blog, for company eyes only, and a "public blog" for each of the two divisions of the company. In the Rosemark blog, the focus will be anything related to Rosemark, Home Care, office technology, etc. In TechA2's blog, the touch on all things tech. The blogs could even link to each other as needed. Seems obvious how Rosemark's will refer to TechA2's, for reference to technology; not sure how it would go the other way, but we'll see.

Then there's the whole question of tone.  Some kind of balance between formal and casual, professional and personal. They say that it's better to have frequent content changes than to have each entry perfect: remind me of that every day! I will tend to want to create little masterpieces, but I will try to put things in even if they aren't fully polished.

We should also be reading blogs that relate to our business, and link to them as needed. Angil has a blog (angiltarachrn.blogspot.com/) and it seems there must be others out there. 

This is an exciting new chapter! Let's have at it...

 -Tom 

AVG PROBLEM

AVG PROBLEM!
This is high-priority.

1) We need to put out an announcement about the AVG problem. Otherwise, it looks like we've got buggy software.

Links to alternatives:
MS Security Essentials -
Avast -
Avira -
PC Tools Spyware Doctor - http://free.pctools.com/free-antivirus/

2) We should also see if there's any buzz about AVG breaking anybody else's software

3) Submit a bug report to AVG

4) Come up with a patch that bypasses the problem.

New team blog

Here's a new entry in our new private blog...