Breakout Across Back to Back Schedules Telephony Feature

The Breakout across Back to Back Schedules Telephony feature allows caregivers to clock in once with a Start of Visit call at the start of a sequence of back-to-back schedules and then clock out once at the end of the day's back-to-back schedule sequence. Telephony will identify this pattern and create a new E-TimeCard record for each of the completed back-to-back schedules and automatically divide the hours between the schedules.

This option is disabled by default and must be enabled in the Telephony Setup screen in the Agency Office Module.

Back-to-back schedules can be described as consecutive schedules for the same caregiver, with no gaps between the scheduled end time of one schedule and the scheduled start time of the next schedule. The sequence of back-to-back schedules can be for the same client or different clients with the same address and phone number (for example, for separate schedules for husband and wife clients in one home). If the sequence of back-to-back schedules are all for the same client, the caregiver will have to call within 30 minutes before or after the Schedule Start Time of the first visit in the back-to-back sequence for this feature to work.

This feature functions by determining for which schedule the caregiver is clocking in. HomeTrak Companion Telephony will not be able to determine a schedule for a Start of Visit call if more than one candidate schedule for the given day exists or none of the candidate schedules start within +/- 30 minutes of the clock-in.

The rules for handling Call Types, Expenses, and Tasks when breaking out E-TimeCards are as follows:

• All the E-TimeCards created from a breakout inherit the Call Type from the original call.
• The first E-TimeCard created from a breakout inherits all Tasks from the original call. The remaining E-TimeCards are assigned no tasks.
• The first E-TimeCard created from a breakout inherits all Expenses from the original call. The remaining E-TimeCards are assigned no expenses.

The rules for partitioning hours across the back-to-back schedules are as follows:
(NOTE: The total time between the Caregiver's clock-in and clock-out are called the “attributable hours”.)

• The start time applied to the first schedule in a sequence will take into account any early or late clock-in time (deviating from the schedule time) from the caregiver's original clock in.
• Each schedule except the last schedule in the sequence is given a portion of the attributable hours up to the originally scheduled length of the schedule. If there are less attributable hours than schedule hours, that schedule will be assigned the remaining attributable hours.
• The last schedule in a sequence is given any remaining attributable hours, even if this exceeds the scheduled hours. Therefore, if the caregiver clocks out earlier or later than the total length of the schedules in a back-to-back sequence, the last schedule in the sequence will reflect the over/under hours. (If the caregiver clocked out early before the scheduled start time of the last schedule, the last schedule(s) in the sequence may end up getting no actual hours assigned.)

Once the original E-TimeCard is 'broken out' into individual E-TimeCards, the E-TimeCards will update their respective schedules accordingly during the normal Schedule Matching process of Telephony.

How the Breakout across Back-to-Back Schedules Feature Affects Telephony Alerting

Telephony Alerts for schedules that occur back-to-back for the same caregiver are handled differently when this feature is enabled. When a caregiver clocks in at the start of any back-to-back schedule sequence, the system assumes that the caregiver is starting the back-to-back sequence and it will not send out any alerts for the remainder of schedules in that back-to-back sequence. This is necessary since it is not expected that the caregiver will be placing any more calls during the schedule sequence until they clock-out at the end of the sequence. Thus, when HomeTrak Companion detects a clock-in for a caregiver's back-to-back schedule sequence, the schedule(s) will appear on the screen Has Caregiver Signed in Yet? under the heading of Back-to-back Schedules: Caregiver Signed In.