I’m helping a business that provides caregivers for the elderly to keep them safely at home as long as possible. We need to track two groups: employees (caregivers) and clients (people receiving care). Right now, they’re using free tools:
Homebase for scheduling
GroupMe for visit notes, arrival/departure times, and shift swaps
Google Sheets for tracking hours, billing, and contact info (they have a long-running spreadsheet that starts over every year)
This setup is causing a lot of errors and wasted time. Since we can’t afford a custom database yet, can anyone recommend a good free or subscription-based online database product? I’m not super tech-savvy, but I know this system isn’t cutting it.
Like everything else, this really comes down to money and willingness to change. Does your employer have the budget to pay for a custom solution? And are they even open to changing their current system?
I could develop something for a reasonable fee, but those two questions need to be answered first.
As for free or open-source options, my take is that you usually get what you pay for.
That’s actually a lot of functionality. I’d start by figuring out where the errors are and where the cutting and pasting is wasting time. You might want to try Notion or AirTable, though it might stretch things a bit. Also, check out cursor or Anthropic Projects.
There are some reviews of caregiver management software out there. I have a customer using a web-based service that I don’t remember the name of, but it seemed to handle everything they needed in one place.
Sandata,I don’t know about the pricing since you have to request a demo, which probably means it’s on the pricey side. But their focus is exactly what you’re looking for, and they work with a lot of state governments, so you might already have access. If you’re handling Medicare billing, you might be required to use them or one of their big competitors.
since we’re a private company and don’t offer medical services, thankfully we don’t have to jump through all those hoops that Medicare deals with. But this whole thing is pretty interesting and I’m definitely going to dig into it more."