BrightStar Care: Better Homecare Comes Automatically

About 12 million Americans receive homecare, and the workers who serve them drive an estimated 5 billion miles a year. They also track dozens of medications and shifting health conditions, where even a small oversight can have serious consequences. Aware of the stakes, Illinois-based BrightStar Care says it’s found an answer in automation.

The company began building its Athena Business System (ABS) around 2010 to keep better track of patients and the employees caring for them. Chief Technology Officer Jim Kearns says ABS has removed potential inefficiencies and human error, while letting employees clock in and out electronically and report on patient conditions with the press of a button.

BrightStar says it’s one of the few homecare companies with a custom-built customer system, and the only one that requires every location to be accredited by The Joint Commission and have a registered nurse on staff. Those standards, along with the software, have helped it grow into an international franchise with 330 locations across the U.S. and Canada.

Introducing Athena Business System

In traditional paper-based homecare, caregivers hand over stacks of care notes to administrators, who then sort through them in a process that can take days. That lag affects the quality and timeliness of care. With ABS, BrightStar gets instantaneous alerts, and nurses can manage by exception—focusing first on the patients who need help.

The impact matters. The CDC reports that preventable deaths from falls and medication complications are among the top causes of death for elderly Americans, often because patients, caregivers, and supervisors can’t communicate quickly enough.

Built in-house, Athena is customized to transmit information between field employees and the office. When registered nurses conduct clinical assessments on new patients, they enter data directly into the system through a mobile device. ABS guides them through identifying the care needed, then generates an electronic plan of care on the spot. Patients, family members, and nurses can review it, give feedback, and tailor it to the patient’s exact needs. Because the information is encrypted and stored in a private cloud, not on the mobile device, it stays secure and HIPAA-compliant.

“In homecare, it’s often the case that your patients are on a path where their capabilities could diminish over time,” Kearns says. “So it’s extremely important to be able to see and quickly react to a change in the patient’s condition.”

If a patient asks for a service not on their care plan, ABS makes it easy for a nurse or caregiver to confirm the request with the family and make the change. In a paper-based system, that kind of adjustment can be a bureaucratic nightmare.

The system also works as a mobile time clock. Caregivers punch in and out electronically. If they’re more than ten minutes late, or try to clock in from the wrong location, the office is alerted automatically.

Staking Their Ground

BrightStar will soon analyze its patient outcome data to see what each franchise location is doing well and where it can improve; a kind of high-level analysis that’s impossible with paper records. Opening 330-plus locations takes more than software, though. To keep pace with its expansion, the company has turned to recruitment agencies to bring in the construction talent needed for new locations.

The company is also exploring ways to leverage its 330-plus locations. Through a national accounts program, corporate headquarters will establish accounts with major healthcare providers, then offer individual franchise owners the chance to sign on and execute orders. For example, a nationwide infusion company could use a BrightStar location to provide infusion services in a specific region.

Even as the company grows in many directions at once, Kearns stays grounded.

“These efforts aren’t necessarily about trying to solve every problem within the whole industry,” he says. “But it’s about differentiating BrightStar from other companies and about being able to provide the highest quality of care for our customers. We have put a stake in the ground to say we’re not the cheapest, but we’re the best.”