After-hours coverage for AxisCare agencies

AxisCare holds your schedule, your caregivers and your clients. When the office closes, the calls keep coming: weekday nights from 5 pm to 8 am, and the weekend from Friday evening to Monday morning. Whoever covers those hours has five jobs, and each one leans on what is in AxisCare:

• Call-offs and replacement coverage. The caregiver’s visit, the client’s preferred caregiver and the notes about who not to send all live in AxisCare. Someone has to confirm the call-off, decide whether to look for a replacement, ask the right caregivers in the right order and tell the on-call manager.
• Missed clock-ins. AxisCare knows whether the caregiver clocked in. The first contact should be the caregiver, not the client.
• New-client inquiries. A family calling at 9 pm is new business. The details should be captured and the call transferred to a person, and the inquiry can become an AxisCare lead.
• Emergencies. A fall, an injury, an animal bite or a threat goes to a person on your team at once.
• Caregiver questions. “What time is my visit tomorrow?” can be answered from the synced schedule; payroll and HR questions wait for the office.

Two more things separate coverage from a message pad: no gap in coverage when a 24-hour or back-to-back shift loses its caregiver, and a record the office reads at 8 am. These jobs are the same on any system; the four kinds of solution that cover them are compared on after-hours home care solutions.

HeyHomeCare reads AxisCare as the source of truth and keeps its own synced copy of your schedule, so an answer never waits on a live AxisCare call. What it reads:

• Visits and clock-insEach visit’s client, caregiver and times, with its clock-in and clock-out, synced every 15 minutes.
• CaregiversYour roster with phone numbers, so the agent knows who is calling, and gender for matching caregivers to clients.
• ClientsAddresses, languages and gender, and each client’s one preferred caregiver.
• Responsible partiesFamily and other authorized contacts, saved on the client and recognized when they call.
• Client notesClient notes and priority notes, checked every six hours for instructions not to send a caregiver. A clear one that names the caregiver in full blocks that pairing; a weaker one waits in Needs review on the client page.

AxisCare’s API has no blocked-caregiver list, which is why blocks come from your notes and from the client page. What HeyHomeCare writes back is short:

Nothing else is written: no visit notes and nothing to EVV. If your AxisCare account requires a modification reason, HeyHomeCare uses the one named like “Caregiver change”; if there isn’t one, it writes nothing rather than pick an unrelated reason, and the record says so. A write that doesn’t go through never undoes coverage: the shift stays covered, the attempt is on the record, and on-call’s text says what to change in AxisCare by hand. More on the AxisCare integration.

Once an AxisCare admin has made the token, connecting takes about two minutes. You need your AxisCare site address (your site number followed by .axiscare.com) and the API token.

1. Create the API token in AxisCare
   An AxisCare admin creates it under Admin → API Tokens; if that page is missing, AxisCare Support turns it on. Grant Clients (read), Caregivers (read, including sensitive fields, for phone numbers), Visits, Call Logs and Leads (read and write) and Expiring Tokens (read). Tokens expire, so set the expiry as far out as your policy allows.
2. Paste the site address and the token
   On the Integrations page in HeyHomeCare. The token is encrypted before it is stored and is never logged. Your caregiver roster comes in right away, and the first visit sync starts.
3. Read the access check
   Connecting checks every area the token can reach, one small read each, and the Integrations page lists them under “What the API token can reach”. Fix a missing permission in AxisCare, then press Check again. Writes aren’t tested ahead of time: if AxisCare refuses one, the first real change fails and its record says so.
4. Confirm clock-ins are arriving
   Visits then sync every 15 minutes. Before your Playbook starts chasing missed clock-ins, we check with you that AxisCare clock-ins are coming through.

Call-offs

The greeting is neutral, and HeyHomeCare never assumes a call is a call-off: 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 AxisCare, then 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 in your order: the client’s preferred caregivers, including the one set in AxisCare, then that day’s bench, the same office, and everyone else who is available and allowed. A caregiver blocked for that client is never texted, including blocks found in AxisCare notes. Before the first text and before each wave, HeyHomeCare checks the visit in AxisCare again; if someone already reassigned it there, texting stops. When a replacement accepts and the office approves, the visit is reassigned to them in AxisCare, as long as that switch is on (it is by default).

Missed clock-ins

Clock-ins come from AxisCare with each 15-minute sync, and a visit is judged only on a sync that came after its start time plus your grace period, so a caregiver who clocked in at 9:02 isn’t chased at 9:05. 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, and only if you allow it, the client (if they agreed to texts) or an authorized contact from AxisCare’s responsible parties 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 AxisCare 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, and an optional text or email sends the caller your agency’s link. With the lead switch on, the person who needs care is added to AxisCare as a lead, with the family member who called as the responsible party and the call summary as a note. Every scenario, emergencies and caregiver questions included, is on the after-hours home care agency software page.

AxisCare 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 Playbook allows, with your AxisCare data in hand.

What it isn’t: a replacement for AxisCare or for your on-call manager. Your on-call manager hears 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. A BAA is in place before any client information flows, and texts to caregivers and staff name clients by initials only.

Among the other after-hours home care solutions for AxisCare agencies, Staffingly, The BOSS System and SS Support Network are staffed services whose own sites name AxisCare. See how the options compare with HeyHomeCare in the 10 best after-hours home care solutions, and what each HeyHomeCare plan includes in the plans.

Related pages

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