Home Health 2022
Exploring Technology Satisfaction in a Dynamic Market

Homecare Homebase Is the Vendor of Choice for Large Independent Organizations, Despite Lagging Development

Despite near-average satisfaction among Homecare Homebase customers, 90% of respondents say the product is part of their long-term plans. This is driven largely by perception among large independent agencies (1,501+ ADC) that Homecare Homebase is the only vendor whose technology meets the needs of agencies their size. This technology includes robust platform integration, interfacing with third-party solutions, and a broad technology suite with strong financial functionality, clinical functionality, and granular data analytics. Indeed, all large independent agencies in this research sample are Homecare Homebase customers, and large health system–owned agencies also frequently select the vendor. Middling customer satisfaction stems from a sense that the vendor’s near monopoly among large independent agencies has stifled innovation, particularly in regard to improving clinician workflows and documentation. While the vendor provides documentation capabilities optimized for use on a touch screen, customers would like to see those capabilities improved.

Customers of Go-Forward Netsmart Solution Suffer from Similar Support & Functionality Challenges as Predecessors

Three Netsmart offerings are included in this research: Homecare, Homecare Advisor, and the go-forward solution, myUnity Enterprise. (A fourth product targeted to small agencies, myUnity Essentials, is not included in the data). Across the platforms, customers note that Netsmart struggles to proactively engage with them, preventing the vendor from identifying issues before they become larger problems and leading to development that doesn’t match customers’ functionality needs. Customers of myUnity Enterprise want additional development that will allow for easier integration with third-party solutions, such as lab and pharmacy systems. They note that previous commitments from Netsmart regarding integration have gone unfulfilled. Some Homecare and Homecare Advisor customers are concerned the vendor doesn’t devote enough resources to enhancing their solutions, and some are hesitant to move to myUnity Enterprise due to concerns about a lack of partnership in delivering key functionality. Several customers have noticed that as WellSky has made acquisitions and expanded their solutions, the quality of support has decreased, and the vendor has been less proactive about communicating future plans.

Problem Areas Differ Across Vendors

Across vendors, home health agencies most commonly want improvement in support, ongoing training, and product usability. However, each vendor has unique opportunities for improvement. The table below provides transparency around common challenges agencies may run into while working with each vendor.

About This Report

Each year, KLAS interviews thousands of healthcare professionals about the IT solutions and services their organizations use. For this report, interviews were conducted over the last 12 months using KLAS’ standard quantitative evaluation for healthcare software, which is composed of 16 numeric ratings questions and 4 yes/no questions, all weighted equally. Combined, the ratings for these questions make up the overall performance score, which is measured on a 100-point scale. The questions are organized into six customer experience pillars—culture, loyalty, operations, product, relationship, and value.

Sample Sizes

Unless otherwise noted, sample sizes displayed throughout this report (e.g., n=16) represent the total number of unique customer organizations interviewed for a given vendor or solution. However, it should be noted that to allow for the representation of differing perspectives within any one customer organization, samples may include surveys from different individuals at the same organization. The table below shows the total number of unique organizations interviewed for each vendor or solution as well as the total number of individual respondents. Some respondents choose not to answer particular questions, meaning the sample size for any given vendor or solution can change from question to question. When the number of unique organization responses for a particular question is less than 15, the score for that question is marked with an asterisk (*) or otherwise designated as “limited data.” If the sample size is less than 6, no score is shown. Note that when a vendor has a low number of reporting sites, the possibility exists for KLAS scores to change significantly as new surveys are collected.

Product Designations Used in This Report

• Not Primary [NP]: Product that is not the vendor’s lead product in the market segment but can still be purchased and is still supported. In some cases, the product may not be actively sold in the listed market segment. Netsmart Homecare and Netsmart Homecare Advisor are both marked as Not Primary in this research since Netsmart myUnity Enterprise has been announced as the vendor’s go-forward platform.