After-hours coverage for AlayaCare agencies

AlayaCare holds your schedule, your caregivers and your clients. After 5 pm, and from Friday evening to Monday morning, the office is closed but the phone isn’t. For an AlayaCare agency, whatever answers those hours has to:

• Cover call-offs. Find the caregiver’s visit, decide whether to look for a replacement, ask eligible caregivers in the right order and keep the on-call manager in the loop.
• Chase missed clock-ins. Notice that a visit started without a clock-in and reach the caregiver before anyone else.
• Capture new clients. Take the family’s details and put the call through to a person at any hour.
• Send emergencies to a person. A fall, an injury, an animal bite or a threat reaches your team at once.
• Answer caregivers. Schedule questions can be answered from the synced schedule; payroll and HR questions wait for the office.

Add two things that separate coverage from a message pad: no gap when a 24-hour or back-to-back shift loses its caregiver, and a record the office can trust at 8 am. How the four kinds of after-hours solution handle these jobs is on after-hours home care solutions.

The AlayaCare connection is built against AlayaCare’s published API and has never run on a live AlayaCare account. It is switched on only once AlayaCare’s partner agreement is in place. Everything below is what it is built to do then. Until then, HeyHomeCare can still answer your after-hours line by forwarding: it takes call-offs, transfers new clients, sends emergencies to a person and gives your on-call manager the facts to act in AlayaCare. Chasing missed clock-ins and offering shifts from your AlayaCare schedule wait for the connection.

Built, switched on with the partner agreement

• ConnectingYour AlayaCare tenant URL and the public and private API keys AlayaCare issues for your tenant. HeyHomeCare tests them by reading your employee list before it saves anything, then stores them encrypted.
• CaregiversNames, plus phone numbers, languages and skills where AlayaCare’s employee records return them, pulled when you connect and whenever you press Sync caregivers. Anyone without a phone number is flagged so you can add one.
• VisitsYesterday through the next seven days, every 15 minutes: who is assigned, times and status; required skills, service instructions and the home location where AlayaCare returns them.
• Clock-insRead from each visit’s status: a visit counts as clocked in once AlayaCare shows it clocked, completed or approved. HeyHomeCare’s own clock-in link counts too.
• ClientsActive clients, with addresses and phone numbers where AlayaCare returns them, refreshed with the visit sync.
• Filled shiftsBefore caregivers are texted about a call-off, and before each wave, the visit is checked in AlayaCare. If someone else is already assigned, texting stops.

• Reassigning the covered visitWhen a replacement accepts and the office approves, HeyHomeCare reassigns the AlayaCare visit to them, then reads the visit back.
• Creating the covered visitWhen the office recorded the call-off by hand and there is no AlayaCare visit, HeyHomeCare creates the covered visit.

If an update doesn’t go through, nothing is lost: the shift stays covered in HeyHomeCare, the attempt is on the record, and on-call’s text says what to update in AlayaCare by hand.

Not part of the AlayaCare connection

• Preferred and blocked caregiversAlayaCare keeps a per-client blocked list, but HeyHomeCare doesn’t read it, and it doesn’t read AlayaCare notes. Set preferred and blocked caregivers on each client’s page in HeyHomeCare.
• Family and authorized contactsNot synced from AlayaCare. Add them on the client page so missed clock-in and running-late notices can reach them.
• Call logs and leadsWritten to AxisCare only. With AlayaCare, the record of what happened lives in HeyHomeCare.

And in any system, HeyHomeCare never clocks a caregiver in or out and never enters care notes.

Connecting waits for AlayaCare’s partner agreement with HeyHomeCare. Once it is in place, setup is your API keys, your business rules and forwarding your line. AlayaCare issues the keys for each tenant: a public key and a private key.

1. Get your API keys from AlayaCare
   AlayaCare issues a public key and a private key for your tenant. Ask your AlayaCare representative if you don’t have them yet.
2. Enter the tenant URL and keys
   On the Integrations page in HeyHomeCare. HeyHomeCare tests the keys by reading your employee list and saves them, encrypted, only if that works.
3. Your roster and schedule arrive
   Caregivers come in right away and the first visit sync starts; visits then sync every 15 minutes. Caregivers without a phone number are flagged, because the agent recognizes callers by phone.
4. Fill in what AlayaCare doesn’t send
   Add preferred and blocked caregivers and family contacts on each client’s page, and walk through your business rules with us. Because the connection has never run on a live account, we check the first covered-visit update in AlayaCare with you.

Once the connection is switched on, the busiest scenarios run like this. Until then, call-offs and new-client inquiries are taken and passed to your on-call manager with the facts to act in AlayaCare, and emergencies go to a person at once.

Call-offs

The agent never assumes a call is a call-off: the greeting is neutral, and your on-call manager is paged only about a call-off the caregiver actually voiced. The call-off is matched to the visit synced from AlayaCare, and your decision applies: ask the on-call manager first (the default), start finding a replacement right away, or let the on-call manager handle it.

Outreach goes to two groups: the client’s preferred caregivers (set on the client page), then every caregiver whose availability covers the whole shift. The skills AlayaCare lists on the visit go into the match, and a blocked caregiver is never texted. Before the first text and before each wave, the visit is checked in AlayaCare; if someone else has been assigned, texting stops. On approval, the replacement gets a confirmation text, on-call hears the shift is covered, and the visit is reassigned to the replacement in AlayaCare.

Missed clock-ins

Each 15-minute sync brings every visit’s AlayaCare status, and a visit is judged only on a sync that came after its start time plus your grace period. When a caregiver still hasn’t clocked in, they hear first, by default with a text carrying a clock-in link (reply 1 if you’re there, 2 if you can’t make it) and then an automated call. Only after that (at 20 minutes by default, and you can remove the step), the client (if they agreed to texts) or an authorized contact you added on the client page is asked to confirm the caregiver is there.

A “2” can create a call-off, and your call-off rules take over. If the caregiver made it after all, everything reverses and they aren’t charged with a call-off. If the AlayaCare sync falls behind or fails, HeyHomeCare stops chasing clock-ins rather than act on old data, and tells on-call once a day.

New-client inquiries

The agent captures the caller’s details first, in case the call drops, then transfers the call live to your on-call, sales or client-care person at any hour. If nobody answers, the details go to the people you chose. The inquiry lands on HeyHomeCare’s Intake page with a first-response target; nothing is written to AlayaCare. Every scenario, emergencies and caregiver questions included, is on the after-hours home care agency software page.

AlayaCare after-hours answering usually means someone picks up, takes a message and pages your on-call manager, and the follow-up waits for a person. HeyHomeCare answers too, then does the follow-up your business rules allow, with your AlayaCare schedule in hand once the connection is switched on.

AlayaCare stays your system of record, and HeyHomeCare doesn’t replace your on-call manager: they hear what matters, emergencies always go to a person, and the agent never gives clinical advice. You keep your number by forwarding it after hours or porting it in, and HeyHomeCare signs a BAA with your agency before any client information flows.

Among the other after-hours home care solutions for AlayaCare agencies, Staffingly and SS Support Network are staffed services whose own sites name AlayaCare. See how the options compare with HeyHomeCare in the 10 best after-hours home care solutions, and everything included in HeyHomeCare plans.

Related pages

• AlayaCare integration
• After-hours coverage for AxisCare agencies
• Caregiver call-out management
• EVV clock-in by phone and text
• Security and HIPAA