For home care, residential and adult day operators
Shifts and visits in one roster, not two systems
Caregiver scheduling software rosters direct-care staff — home health aides, CNAs, personal care aides and live-in carers — across the shifts and visits an operator runs. It differs from a general shift scheduler in refusing an assignment when a certification has lapsed, when rest is short, or when the person is already past their hours cap.
From $99/month per location · No sales call · No card to start
At a glance
- Caregiver scheduling covers unlicensed and certified direct-care staff — home health aides, CNAs, personal care aides, live-in carers — whose certifications, training hours and background screening still have to be current on the day they work.
- It is not all visit-based. A residential care home, a group home or an adult day programme runs shifts; a home care agency runs visits; many operators run both, and a tool that only understands one of them forces half the roster into a spreadsheet.
- Overtime is the cost that runs away, because caregiver rotas are built from long shifts and last-minute cover arranged by phone. Hours have to accumulate against a cap while you are still deciding, not at payroll.
- Continuity is worth scheduling for. The same face returning is the thing clients and families actually judge an operator on, and it is measurable rather than sentimental.
- Included from $99 per location per month for shift rosters, $149 where you also schedule visits, with a 14-day trial and no card.
What is caregiver scheduling software?
It is a roster built around the two facts that make direct care different: the workforce is certified rather than licensed, and the same operator usually runs both shift-based and visit-based work.
The certification point is the one that separates this from a generic staff scheduler. A home health aide or a CNA is not licensed in the way a registered nurse is, but she is certified, her certification expires, her training hours are recorded against a renewal period, and in most states her background screening is on its own clock. All of it has to be current on the day she works, and all of it is administered by whoever runs the office rather than by a professional body that will chase her.
The second fact is structural. An operator who started with home visits acquires a supported-living house; a care home starts an outreach service; an adult day programme adds transport runs. Within two years the same twenty people are being scheduled in two different shapes, and a tool that models only one of them means the other lives in a spreadsheet. The double-bookings are always between the two systems, never inside either.
How does it stop an assignment when a certification has lapsed?
By checking at the moment of assignment and refusing, rather than by mailing a reminder and hoping. The check runs as the scheduler drags, and again in the database before the write is allowed to land.
The difference between blocking and warning is not a matter of degree. A warning is a thing a coordinator dismisses at six in the morning while covering a call-out, because in that moment the shift is the emergency and the certificate is a note on a screen. A refusal is a control, and it is the only version that is still working on the day it matters.
MedAligna checks a credential against the END of the shift rather than its start, which is the case that catches people out — a certificate expiring at midnight makes the night shift invalid for its second half, and a check against the start time passes it. The staff member is warned at sixty, thirty, fourteen and seven days, and so is the administrator, because relying on one person's inbox is how the lapse happened in the first place. Her own copy lives in a wallet she owns: she uploads a renewal once and every operator she works for sees it.
How do you keep caregiver overtime under control?
By making the hours visible while the cover is still being arranged, rather than at payroll. Overtime in this sector is almost never a decision anybody made; it is the sum of four separate phone calls nobody was counting.
The mechanism is simple and it has to be live. Every person's accumulated hours run against their cap as shifts are assigned, so a coordinator filling a Thursday gap can see that this particular person crosses forty by taking it and that the person one row down does not. That is the entire intervention: not a report, not an alert next week, just the number being on screen at the moment it is being incurred.
The same arithmetic has to hold across sites and across both kinds of work. An operator running a care home and a community service will otherwise discover that somebody worked a full week in each, which is a thing that cannot happen inside either system and happens routinely between them. Hours are computed on real elapsed time, so a waking night across the clocks change is thirteen hours the weekend it is thirteen hours, and the number that reaches payroll is the number that was worked.
Rest between shifts
Checked against hours actually worked rather than hours rostered, which is the version that catches the caregiver who stayed ninety minutes late and is back on the board at 14:00. A short turnaround is refused rather than recorded.
Open shifts to the phone
Fill rate is mostly a function of how fast a gap reaches people who can take it. Open shifts go to everyone eligible at once, the first valid claim wins, and the contest is settled in the database rather than by whoever the coordinator managed to call back first.
Does it work for a care home as well as a home care agency?
Yes, and that is most of the point. Facility and live-in work is scheduled as shifts, community work as visits with travel time between them, and one set of rules is applied across both.
A residential or group home is shift work in the ordinary sense: a rota of days, nights and waking nights against a required staffing level for the house, with the sleep-in and waking-night distinction mattering for pay and for how hours count. An adult day programme is shift work with a fixed opening pattern. A home care round is a route. MedAligna models all three, and the credential, rest and hours rules do not care which shape the work arrived in.
Continuity is scheduled for in both. The same face returning is the thing families judge an operator on, and it is modelled as a scoring preference rather than a hard rule, because there are days when it is not possible and a system that pretends otherwise gets overridden until nobody trusts it. Where a caregiver must never return to a particular client or house, that is a hard exclusion and there is no path to assigning her by accident.
Three things that go wrong in a caregiver rota
The certificate that lapsed on Sunday
A home health aide's certification expired over the weekend. She is on the rota for Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. The renewal reminder went to an inbox nobody reads, and the first anyone hears of it is an audit.
The Monday assignment is refused when it is made, with the reason on the cell, and she and the administrator were warned at sixty, thirty, fourteen and seven days.
The double-back
A caregiver finishes a waking night at 08:00 and is on the board again at 14:00, because two different people filled two different gaps and neither could see the other.
Minimum rest is checked against hours actually worked, across every site and both shift types, and the second assignment is refused rather than flagged in a report next month.
The overtime nobody decided on
Cover for three sickness gaps is arranged by phone across a week. Nobody is tracking cumulative hours, and the payroll run is the first time anyone sees that four people went past forty.
Hours accumulate live against each person's cap as shifts are assigned, so the cost of covering a gap is visible while it is still a decision.
How to choose caregiver scheduling software
Six questions worth asking any vendor in this category, including us. Two of them are questions we do not answer well, and they are here rather than left out.
01Does it schedule shifts AND visits, or only one of them?
Most operators eventually run both — a care home plus outreach, or an agency that also staffs a supported-living house. A tool that models only one pushes the rest onto a spreadsheet, and the spreadsheet is where the double-bookings live.
Where MedAligna lands: Both, in the same roster. Shifts for facility and live-in work, visits with travel time between them for community work, and one set of rules applied across the two.
02Will it stop an assignment when a certification has lapsed, or only warn you?
A warning is a thing somebody dismisses at 06:00 while covering a call-out. The difference between blocking and warning is the difference between a control and a note.
Where MedAligna lands: It refuses the assignment and says why. The check runs in the browser as you drag and again in the database before the write lands, so it cannot be raced.
03Does it track hours against overtime thresholds as you schedule?
Caregiver rosters are built from long shifts and last-minute cover, which is exactly the shape that produces unplanned overtime. Finding out at payroll is finding out too late to have made a different choice.
Where MedAligna lands: Cumulative hours accrue against each person's cap while you assign, so the cost is on screen at the moment it is being incurred.
04Can caregivers pick up open shifts from a phone without an account you have to buy?
Fill rate is mostly a function of how fast an open shift reaches people. A system that requires the office to ring round is a system that fills gaps at office speed.
Where MedAligna lands: Open shifts go to the phones of everyone eligible; the first valid claim wins, settled in the database rather than by whoever the coordinator called back first. Staff seats are not charged for.
05Does it do EVV?
Medicaid-funded personal care requires Electronic Visit Verification through a state aggregator. If your funding requires it, nothing else on this list matters until it is answered.
Where MedAligna lands: We capture clock-in and clock-out at the visit with optional geofencing, and we do not integrate with state EVV aggregators today. If your Medicaid funding requires EVV submission, we are not a complete answer for you yet, and you should know that before you trial us rather than after.
06Does it handle a family-caregiver or self-directed programme?
Consumer-directed programmes have a different shape entirely: the client picks the worker, and the agency's job is verification and payment rather than assignment.
Where MedAligna lands: Not well. We schedule and verify, but we are built around an operator who assigns work. If your programme is genuinely consumer-directed, most of what we do is beside the point for you.
What is a direct care worker, a live-in rota, or a waking night?
- Direct care worker
- The umbrella term for the paid workforce providing hands-on personal care: home health aides, certified nursing assistants, personal care aides and home care workers. Largely unlicensed but usually certified and always screened.
- Home health aide (HHA)
- A certified aide providing personal care and limited health-related tasks, typically under a nurse's supervision. Certification requirements and renewal periods are set at state level and are what a scheduler has to keep current.
- Live-in rota
- A pattern in which a caregiver stays at the client's home for a period of days rather than attending for a visit. Scheduled as a block rather than as a shift or a visit, with its own rest and sleeping-time rules.
- Continuity
- Sending the same caregiver back to the same client or house. Modelled as a scoring preference rather than a hard rule, because there are days when it simply is not possible and a system that pretends otherwise gets overridden into uselessness.
- Waking night
- An overnight shift where the caregiver is required to stay awake and available, as distinct from a sleep-in. The distinction matters for pay and for how the hours count toward rest and overtime.
Questions people actually ask
- What does caregiver scheduling software cost?
- MedAligna is $99 per month per location for shift rosters with credential blocking, rest and overtime rules, and $149 where you also schedule visits with travel time and client records. Enterprise is $249 for unlimited staff and an API. Three or more locations get 20% off. The trial is 14 days and takes no card, and caregivers are never charged for a seat.
- Who sets it up, and how do caregivers get on it?
- A coordinator sets it up in an afternoon: import the staff from a CSV, add the houses or the clients, build the recurring pattern, publish. Caregivers are invited by email or phone number and clock in from the shift or the visit. There is nothing to install and no sales call in front of the trial. If the import gives you trouble, send us the file and we will map it.
- Is this for home care agencies or for care homes?
- Both, and for operators who are quietly running both without meaning to. Visits carry an address, a duration, a task list and travel time between them; shifts carry a required staffing level for the house. The credential, rest and hours rules run identically across the two, which is the part that stops the gaps between systems.
- How is this different from home care scheduling software?
- It is the same product viewed from the workforce rather than from the route. If your central problem is planning a driveable day between clients' houses, the home care page describes that directly and is the better read. If your central problem is that twenty certified people have to be legally and safely placed across several kinds of work, this is the page for that.
- Does it export hours to payroll?
- Hours are captured at the clock and export in Gusto's and ADP's own layouts. If your provider uses a different template, paste its header row in once and every download after that is in exactly those columns, with your spelling and order preserved. We capture and export hours; we never calculate net pay, withhold anything or move money to an employee, because that would make us a payroll processor and we are not one.
- What does it not do?
- It does not submit to state EVV aggregators, so Medicaid-funded personal care that requires EVV is not fully served by us today. It is not a billing or invoicing system. And it is a poor fit for genuinely consumer-directed programmes, where the client chooses the worker and there is no assignment for us to check.
- How is client information protected?
- Client records are the one part of MedAligna that holds protected health information, and they are treated accordingly: tenant-isolated at the database level, encrypted, and every read of a client record is logged separately rather than only every change. If you are evaluating us with client data in mind, talk to us and we will walk you through exactly how it is held.
Related
One roster, and a certificate that cannot lapse onto a shift
Shifts and visits together, rules that refuse rather than warn, and overtime you can see while it is still a decision.