Speaker: Stephanie L., Community Access Manager, Hospice of Health First
Tell us about your company and why you chose OptimoRoute.
Stephanie L.: Hi, I'm Stephanie, I'm a Manager at a hospice agency in Brevard County. We serve hundreds of patients in the community and part of the reason we chose OptimoRoute is because we have a team of volunteers who travel around the county every day and deliver medication to our patients' homes as a service that we offer. So we were able to use OptimoRoute, give the volunteers iPads and then have our Volunteer Coordinator team manage the routes to make them more efficient to make it easier for the volunteers and to get better timeliness to in our volunteers and to our patients and families. So we use it every day, five days a week.
How did you manage route planning before OptimoRoute?
Stephanie L.: Before we had OptimoRoute, our team of Volunteer Coordinators would enter every address for the delivery manually. They would use Google Maps or MapQuest and they would route it out themselves. Sometimes they would even print out the paper maps and give it to the volunteers. But they spent a lot of time doing the routing themselves manually. They did that for many, many years. So the biggest benefit we have seen to using OptimoRoute is the time saving abilities that it's given us and also the ability to be more flexible. When a volunteer is out on the road, we able to, in real time, send them changes if needed and redo their route and it also keeps track of their mileage without us having to manually track it. So it's been a huge asset to our organization.
How has OptimoRoute helped you?
Stephanie L.: OptimoRoute has been invaluable in saving time for our team when they need to make last minute adjustments to the patients, route, to the volunteer, to add on something that's been changed because hospice care can change on a dime. So there are times where we have to cancel or readjust on the hour. Just, it depends, every day is different. So it's really helped our organization with time saving, efficiency, process, streamlining and our volunteers surprisingly, they love it. We weren't sure because a lot of our volunteers are seniors themselves. So using technology and getting on an iPad, we thought there would be a lot of negative feedback to that. But we have received very positive feedback and they really enjoy using OptimoRoute and some of them won't even do it without it.
How easy is OptimoRoute to use?
Stephanie L.: On the Management side, OptimoRoute is pretty simple to use. Once you get the hang of it, it allows you to enter addresses through an Excel spreadsheet. So we're able to use our EMR, download the patient census and pick the ones who are going to get a delivery that day and enter it right into the OptimoRoute software, tell them where we want them to go, tell them how many volunteers we have and they are routed automatically. So it's very easy to use on our end. Also on the user end for the volunteers, they love it. They have all taken to it and they have their iPad and they go out and they're able to just click the next button when they're ready to move along to the next delivery.
How important are speed and flexibility for you - how has OptimoRoute helped?
Stephanie L.: Speed and flexibility are very important in our world of hospice. We have patients whose symptoms can change every day for the better, for the worse. And then we still need to get them what they need no matter what. So being able to respond in real time is very important. So OptimoRoute has helped us adapt to that and to prepare in advance. We are able to use volunteers as needed, get the routes to them in their iPads through OptimoRoute and get them out on the road in a quick manner and very organized and also to be flexible because sometimes things change very last minute and we can have an add on or we can have someone who has passed away and so we need to remove them - that's just the world that we live in and hospice. So OptimoRoute has really helped us facilitate that effectively.
