Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Minnesota Assisted Living (Home Care) Licensing Changes

During the 2013 Session, the Mn Legislature passed new law that changes the way assisted living providers are licensed. The current “Classes” of licenses (i.e. Class A,B,C,F) will be replaced by two types of home care licenses: either Basic or Comprehensive. Assisted Living home care providers may be licensed under either, depending on services offered. This new rule goes into effect July 1, 2014.

PALs has reviewed 2013 Mn Statute 144a.471, paragraph by paragraph, and identified how PALs not only supports this legislation, but puts systems in place to ensure compliance. This 16 page Word document is complemented by a 3-part video showing how to setup and use PALs to comply with these new rules.

To get a copy of this package, just call PALs at 218-724-7257 - or better yet, download our free trial at www.PALsSoftware.com

Tuesday, June 17, 2014

Staff Scheduling in Assisted Living

PALs software has an even more robust and comprehensive staff scheduling component thanks to our users who offer suggestions.

 A user has recently requested a new report showing actual staffing costs based on individual staff salaries entered, rather than the average cost based on the staff person’s position, e.g. aide position = $12 per hour. This report is below.



To review; PALs puts a system in place to ensure profitable operations.

1. PALs has a  service pricing tool to compute your full cost of providing 15 minutes of service (includes staff salary, ROI, payroll fees, and Shift Productivity).

2. The cost of 15 minutes of “aide” time for example is easily figured from staff per hour salaries.

3. Shift Productivity = Total resident service hours / staffing hours from PALs scheduling component.  For example, a staff person working the AM_1 shift with 6 hours of direct care during an 8 hour shift has a 75% shift productivity (6/8=76%). The cost of the 25% non-productive time is added into pricing in step 1, so all your staffing cost is paid. This eliminates “service creep”, since staff providing additional time to residents, without reporting it, are working harder, but not costing more!

PALs will work through the above computations for you, so you can schedule staff to meet resident-needs and regulatory requirements, while ensuring profitability.

For more information on PALs, please visit our website and download our free trial.