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Picture a normal work day for yourself. You head in and have most of your home healthcare therapy sessions and tasks for the day planned out for you. And then, upper management calls for an unplanned town hall. The subject of the day is that the entire organisation is moving to new software to track appointments, patient progress, medication, and more.

For teams who are used to legacy systems or manual processes, the announcement of new software being onboarded very rarely feels like good news. While some team members will naturally become advocates and champions of change, most people will struggle with the transition, and some may never agree to adopt it at all.

A successful changeover to new software requires factoring in the needs of all employees – the advocates and the resistors. Regardless of where they stand as adopters of new home healthcare software, the entire team needs help in fully utilising all features that can help them utilise all functions properly.

This is a job for company leadership to take on, in tandem with the software service team. Today, we’re glad to share some tips we’ve picked up along the way and we hope they can make the transition to your new software easier for you and your team.

One of the best ways to make a smooth transition from legacy software to a new one is to start the process long before the change actually happens. Talk to your teams and try to understand their pain points. Are they tired of a pen-and-paper approach? Are they overwhelmed by manual note-taking? Do they need more transparency between team members so everyone understands a patient’s care plan? The objective is to solicit as much feedback as possible about their working process so that everyone feels heard and accounted for.

One of the most helpful ways is to schedule tiered learning sessions for small groups of people at a time. And nothing works better than actual proof in numbers. For example, we lead our training sessions by showing administrative staff how fast they can register new patients. Or how quickly they can update their notes from a home visit.

Help your team understand how the new software can help them lighten their current load or at least manage it better.

What do you want your new software to help you accomplish with your teams? Do you need more clinical support for faster decisions to be made? Do you need to quantify your patient outcomes? Do inventory and revenue reports need to be made available quickly? What new features does your home healthcare facility require and in what time frame, for example, tiered access for staff members? Setting clear and actionable goals with your team members will help them get aligned with the organisational objectives requiring new software.

4. Communicate. Communicate. Communicate. And then communicate some more.

When your organisation is transitioning to new software, you have to remember to talk to your product service team. Help us understand your business processes and the varied needs of your organisation, so we can put you on the fast track to success. In working with more than 25 clients across India, we have come to realise that different teams have different ways of doing things, and we’re more than happy to work alongside you to accommodate your specific requirements. But the long and short of it is, we need you to keep talking to us. And while you’re at it, remember to go back and talk to your teams as well. Instead of expecting people to “just understand the new software,” work with them to get on the same page by demonstrating the different features and general usability.

As an industry, healthcare is still catching up with technological innovation, but the urgency for the transition is growing more and more apparent every day. Whether we’re early adopters or stragglers, healthcare facilities will need to turn to technology very quickly so they can scale their growth in a manageable way.