Generations Homecare System
The Premier Choice for Global Homecare Providers

Who wouldn’t remember these poetic lines by The Beatles? Reading this may even have gotten you humming to its tunes. While ‘The Long and Winding Road’ may be a classic rock gem for many of us, for Lisa Ferden, Vice President of IDS, the parent company to Generations Homecare System and for her business partner and husband Lance, the lines describe the niche that their company has carved for itself in its many years of operation and the way the company will continue to evolve for the years to come. Lance comments, “What began back in 2002 as a locally installed Microsoft Access database, was subsequently migrated to the cloud-hosted solution. Today Generations is used by several hundred homecare agencies and thousands of users on a daily basis. The service we provide will continue to evolve; we are committed to meeting the needs of our clients and helping them succeed in providing the best care possible.”

Seventeen years into the business, one must wonder what the company has been up to and what differentiates it today in the home healthcare space. As husband and wife partners, Lance and Lisa utilized their professional backgrounds in both homecare and IT to create a software service that would revolutionize the private duty landscape. Educating users on the importance of data security and empowering them with the tools and best practices has always been a core principle of their endeavor. As their SaaS product evolved from a locally installed scheduling system to a cloud-hosted, enterprise-level management system, the team behind Generations has paid careful attention to the ease-of-use and intuitiveness of their offering. Lisa mentions, “We’ve experienced exponential growth over the last 17 years, all while remaining a privately owned, bootstrapped company. One of our earliest milestones was when we developed a cloud-hosted version of Generations and then successfully migrated our hundreds of agencies from the desktop version to the cloud.” The company has achieved many other landmarks as well. It has passed TrustArc’s privacy certification for five consecutive years, and, in addition, Lance and Lisa have earned the Entrepreneurs of the Year award from Central Michigan University. Overall, it has been a rewarding and exciting journey for Generations as they have continued to focus on creating quality services for a growing homecare industry. Today, Generations are used by providers throughout eight international markets with thousands of care coordinators, caregivers, and clinicians who rely on the company’s accurate, accountable, and compliant platform.

Meeting Market Demand

Currently, several nations are witnessing rapidly growing segments of the aging population. This is substantiated by recent statistics which reveal that more than 20 percent of the U.S. residents are projected to be aged 65 and above by 2030. Not to mention the aspect of delivering treatments to people with disabilities. This propagates the need for top-tier investments and innovations toward homecare solutions and services. Foreseeing this demand curve, Generations continues to evolve their professional experience and technical expertise in homecare services.

When using Generations Visit Verification, care recipients and their families along with state payers and long term care insurance companies rightfully know care will be delivered in accordance with authorized levels of service

Among the challenges that homecare entities face, recruitment and retention of caregivers is a major one. In an effort to equip employers with a tool for finding and keeping good caregiving staff, Generations offers a systematic recruitment process wherein it alerts agency managers upon receipt of a job application. It also allows them to move the applicants through the entire hiring process from initial phone interview to the subsequent in-person meeting. Once caregivers are alive in the workforce “We help homecare providers with flexible electronic billing and payroll tools that ensure accurate billing and payroll by tracking overtime, holiday pay, and approved service hours,” says Lisa. Generations also delivers real-time service order compliance and electronic signature tools that enable them to automate billing to different payers.

Leading the Way with Mobility

For caregivers, Generations provides a robust mobile application that enables them to securely access their schedules, inquire about new opportunities, check in and out of each visit, review care plans, and complete care notes and tasks lists after each visit. This helps to eliminate the legacy pen and paper method which is a primary concern for homecare providers who are responsible for keeping their customers’ personally identifiable information private.

Widening the scope further, Generations’ Electronic Visit Verification (EVV) tool—accessible through the company’s mobile app or traditional phone-based technology—verifies if a caregiver is at a client’s place of residence and sends out missed visit alerts in case the caregiver fails to log in. Lance adds, “Generations, with EVV, ensures service is provided as ordered. Through the EVV feature, as caregivers clock-in and clock-out, schedules are confirmed and updated in real time, billing is seamlessly exported to QuickBooks or the clearinghouse of your choice, and payroll can be sent to ADP, Paychex, or any third party vendor.”

The feature enables agencies to note real-time arrivals and departures, and prevents exceptions around time, location, and duration of service without written authorization, bringing accuracy into operations. Additionally, the company offers unlimited free-of-cost support through LiveChat or phone with a one-on-one on-boarding specialist.

"We help homecare providers with flexible electronic billing and payroll tools that ensure accurate billing and payroll by tracking overtime, holiday pay, and approved service hours"

Focus on client satisfaction and data security has enabled Generations to position itself as a premier choice for homecare providers throughout the U.S. and abroad. The company has helped many large multi-site as well as state area agencies on aging with data in older legacy systems, migrate to their cloud hosted service.

Evolving with the Industry Requirements

As the home healthcare industry continues to make significant strides in replacing paper files with electronic records, for each case, and with every hire, Generations continues to sharpen its solutions’ capabilities and features. With the addition of the electronic claim form 837, providers using Generations for Medicaid services can rest assured that their data already meets the federal standards. Lisa mentions, “We’re on track to have integrations with many state Medicaid systems and we will be rolling them out throughout the remainder 2019, well ahead of the deadline of January 1, 2020.” In an effort to keep communication between the care team secure, Generations users now have a secure way to message caregivers. Messages reside and remain within Generations, virtually eliminating the risk of data exposure that can occur inadvertently with email or text. This secure messaging functionality has already proven to be the best way to communicate with a remote workforce. When a caregiver calls off from work, or alternatively, when a caregiver offers to pick up last minute assignments, the entire record of communication is saved on the individual profiles of each care provider. That kind of information is invaluable for employee reviews and when considering future work assignments. Office teams can manage discussions in the Message Center with one or more caregivers and communicate in real-time. “We’re excited to offer this secure messaging platform and will continue to build upon it in future releases,” mentions Lance.

As the industry continues to evolve so too will the needs and expectations of homecare providers. Care coordination among payers will be the next major focus for the team at Generations. “In the coming years, Generations will continue to support the vital roles caregivers and clinicians play in and shaping modern home healthcare. We are proud to help our clients become and remain leaders in their respective communities.” concludes Lisa. Aging-in-place, at home, with extended family or wherever that may be, is safer than ever when providers and their care teams use Generations Homecare System.