What to look for in adult day care software

Choosing software for an adult day center is a big decision. You'll use it every day, your staff will need to learn it, and your billing may depend on it. A good demo can make almost anything look easy, so it helps to walk in with a list.

This checklist is meant to be fair to every vendor, including us. Use it to compare systems side by side, and print the short version to take into your demos.

Before you look

Spend an hour on this first. It makes every demo more useful.

• Write down how a normal day runs, from the first arrival to the last pickup.
• List who will use the system: aides, nurses, drivers, the front desk, billing, the director, and families.
• Gather last month's paperwork: sign-in sheets, the MAR, an incident report, and your DSS invoice.
• Pick your three biggest headaches. Ask each vendor to show you how they handle those first.

Care on the floor

Most of the day happens away from a desk, so the parts your aides and nurses use need to be quick and hard to get wrong.

Attendance

Check-in should take seconds per person during the morning rush. Look for a live count of who is here, a way to record absences with a reason, and meals and rides on the same screen. Attendance usually feeds billing, so ask how a mistake gets fixed and whether the change is recorded.

Medications and the MAR

Ask to see a medication with more than one scheduled time, how staff record a dose, and how a missed or refused dose shows up. Ask what happens when an order changes.

Care plans and incidents

Care plans should hold goals, approaches and review dates, with a reminder when a review is due. Incident reports should capture what happened, how serious it was, what staff did and whether the family was told, and they should print cleanly for your file.

Billing

If you bill a county DSS or Medicaid, this is where software earns its keep or creates extra work. Bring a real invoice to the demo and ask the vendor to show the same month coming out of their system.

• Does the invoice match the format your county accepts, or will you retype it?
• Can it handle your service codes, your rates, and more than one contract?
• How are corrections for a past month handled?
• Can you set a funding source per participant, and invoice private pay families too?

If you're in North Carolina, our guide to billing DSS for adult day care covers what the invoice needs.

Families

Families call when they can't see what's happening. A family portal or app can take some of those calls off the front desk. Check that families can see attendance and updates, that messages go both ways, and that you can send an announcement to everyone. Not every family wants an app, so a browser option matters too.

Privacy and security

Participant records hold health information. If your center is covered by HIPAA, a vendor that stores that information for you is a business associate and should sign a Business Associate Agreement (BAA) with you. Ask for it in writing before you enter real records.

• Encryption. Data should be encrypted in transit and at rest.
• Role-based access. An aide doesn't need billing details, and a driver doesn't need the MAR. Ask how permissions are set.
• Audit log. You should be able to find out who viewed or changed a record, and when.
• Automatic sign-out. Shared tablets get left on counters.

Your data

Getting started should not mean typing your roster in by hand. Ask whether you can import participants from a spreadsheet. Just as important, ask how you would get your records out if you ever left, in what format, and whether it costs anything. A vendor that answers plainly is a good sign.

Also ask which state forms and reports are built in. The ones you print for monitoring visits matter more than a long feature list.

Pricing, setup and support

• Pricing you can see. Is it published? Is it per center or per participant? What does each plan include, and are there setup fees or add-ons?
• Contract terms. How long is the commitment, and how do you cancel?
• A real trial. Can you try it with your own workflows before you pay?
• Onboarding. Who sets it up, who trains your staff, and is it included?
• Mobile use on the floor. Try it on the tablet or phone your staff will actually carry.
• Support. Can you reach a person by phone? What hours? Who helps when billing is due?

Printable checklist

How Senior Care Connected fits

Here is how we line up against the same list. If something matters to you that isn't here, ask us in a demo.

• Care on the floor. Attendance, meals, T1 and T2 rides and toileting on the Participants screen. Medications and MAR with scheduled times and missed doses on the dashboard. Care plans with review dates. Incident reports that print.
• Billing. The DSS invoice is built from attendance and downloads as CSV or an Excel file laid out like the DSS template, with more than one contract and retro or credit sheets. Funding sources are Private Pay, DSS, Medicaid CAP and VA. Private pay families can pay online. See DSS billing.
• Families. A family portal with attendance, activities, photos and invoices, messages both ways, and iOS and Android apps with every plan. The portal also works in a browser.
• Privacy and security. We sign a BAA with every center. Records are encrypted in transit and at rest, sensitive fields get a second layer, access is logged, roles and permissions are built in, and sessions sign out after inactivity. Details are in our Privacy Policy.
• Your data. Import participants from a spreadsheet, or send us the list and we import it. State reports and forms are included, among them North Carolina's TB and medical exam forms. Ask us to show you exports in the demo.
• Pricing. Published on our pricing page, per center, per month: Starter $299 (up to 35 participants), Professional $399 (up to 75 participants) and Enterprise $599 (no participant limit). No add-ons and no setup fee. Every plan starts with a 14-day free trial, and you don't need a credit card. Pay yearly and you get 1 month free. Just ask.
• Setup and support. Onboarding is free on every plan. Send us your participant list and we import it, then train your staff on a video call. Email support comes with every plan, phone support with Professional, and priority phone and email support with Enterprise.