SCHEDULING
Beyond Just Filling Shifts
Unlocking the value of AI across the field employee lifecycle
By Melinda Phillips
Homecare agencies, especially in private duty and assistive care, often start their AI journey focused on one question: “How many shifts can an AI tool fill?”
It’s a fair place to start. For years, the industry has been flooded with scheduling tools that push out shift notifications and wait for caregivers to respond. Most leaders have been trained to think about staffing this way. I did too.
I remember when I was running a branch in Charlotte, North Carolina, we would measure our success the same way. At the end of the day, we looked at what got covered and what didn’t. If we filled the shifts, it felt like a win. If we didn’t, we went back at it the next day.
But what I didn’t fully appreciate at the time was how much work sat behind those outcomes. The follow-ups that didn’t happen. The caregivers we could have re-engaged, but didn’t. We ignored the partial shifts because they were harder to staff. These small decisions throughout the day ultimately determined whether we grew or not.
At the same time, not everything labeled AI today represents a real shift in capability. I think we’ve all seen this. Some tools are still doing what they’ve always done, just with a new label.
The problem is not asking how many shifts AI can fill. It’s that this question is too narrow.
Filling a shift is only one output in a much larger system. The real impact of AI shows up across the entire field employee lifecycle. That includes attraction, recruitment, credentialing, initial matching, scheduling, engagement and retention. Performance is driven by a series of decisions across that lifecycle. Many of those decisions have historically been manual, reactive or inconsistent.
So, if you only measure filled shifts, you miss most of where the value is actually created.
ONE
Higher Staffed-to-Authorized Hours
Even small improvements in staffed-to-authorized hours can create meaningful gains in revenue and margin. AI-enabled staffing systems continuously engage caregivers, not just for last-minute callouts or obvious openings, but also for:
- Partial shifts that typically go unfilled
- After-hours opportunities
- New cases that require proactive, strategic staffing for long-term success
- Situations that require more thoughtful matching based on caregiver history (i.e., Can this caregiver return to the same case?)
Because these systems are always running, they surface opportunities that are often missed in traditional workflows. They also help address everyday challenges that most agencies face, such as avoidable overtime hours, long or potentially unsafe stretches of care, schedules built for speed rather than stability and last-minute callouts.
These small wins add up quickly. Increasing the percentage of authorized hours that are staffed is still one of the fastest ways to improve performance. After all, this is revenue that can be realized without adding to client census.
TWO
Increased Caseload Capacity per Scheduler
A large portion of a scheduler’s day is spent on repetitive work, like calls, texts, follow-ups and coordination. When that work is supported by automation, it changes how the role functions.
Top schedulers historically make 70 to 80 calls per day. When automation takes on outreach, matching and coordination, schedulers can shift their focus to work that moves the business forward:
- Managing complex staffing situations
- Nurturing relationships with caregivers and families
- Planning proactively instead of constant firefighting
- Supporting new client growth
- Converting and onboarding new hires
- Building new leadership skills
The system continues working in the background, expanding overall scheduling output.
Because of this, when I implemented AI across the employee lifecycle, our schedulers were able to manage more billable hours, and I didn’t need to add to my office headcount.
I noticed a very positive shift:
- Fewer last-minute fire drills
- More consistency for families
- Less burnout on the team
- Better margins
- More capacity to take on new cases
Organizations can respond to this in one of three ways:
- Raise expectations and grow into the added capacity
- Spend more time developing or addressing performance on the team, making needed changes
- Conduct a wide-scale reorganization for success
I chose to grow into the added capacity because we had strong schedulers in the seats who chose to implement and adopt AI. We were able to add 50% to the scheduler’s caseload, increase their bonuses, and improve morale because the work was more interesting.
"If you only measure filled shifts, you miss most of where the value is actually created."
THREE
Caregiver Engagement & Retention
Most agencies have a long list of caregivers working fewer than 20 hours per week. It’s the nature of homecare, or so we have always believed. After implementing AI to support our caregivers, we noticed that the average hour per caregiver improved to greater than 30 hours per week.
That matters more than people realize. Caregivers with consistent hours are more reliable, more engaged and more likely to stay.
Improving engagement using AI comes down to a few advantages that are hard to achieve without it: speed, consistency, better matching, staying in touch and making sure the right opportunities show up at the right time.
AI-supported workflows help make that possible by keeping communication consistent, surfacing relevant opportunities more quickly, improving match quality, reducing gaps where caregivers go quiet, and ensuring caregivers remain active and working while staying fully compliant with up-to-date renewable requirements.
There is also a measurement issue that often gets overlooked. It is not enough to count only the hours directly filled through automation. You also need to account for the caregivers who were re-engaged and are now working more consistently.
If that caregiver had stayed inactive, those hours would not exist. That is where the compounding effect shows up, and it is often missed when you look at only one metric.
FOUR
Faster Time-to-Hire & More Billable Caregivers
We’ve all experienced the dramatic drop-off seen in the recruiting funnel. Candidates drop off in predictable places between application and first billable shift, when matching takes too long, when communication slows down and around the 60-to-90-day mark if engagement fades.
A lot of work goes into bringing someone into the organization, and losing them during that process is costly. AI-supported processes help stabilize this by keeping applicants engaged, moving candidates through onboarding more quickly, offering more relevant opportunities earlier through previewing intake referrals, supporting compliance and documentation, and closing gaps where candidates typically fall off.
A stronger funnel leads to:
- More hires becoming billable caregivers
- Better return on recruiting spends
- Recruiters focusing on quality applicants instead of chasing lukewarm leads
- Introduction of pending new hires, which leads to faster staffing for families
Over time, this creates a more predictable and stable growth pattern because in homecare, if you have the caregivers, you can get the cases.
A Better Way to Evaluate AI’s Impact
Filled shifts are the most visible output. They are easy to track and easy to explain. But they are also incomplete. When we want to understand the real impact of AI on our homecare business, we should look at the system and processes, not just one output.
That starts with asking better questions:
- Are we staffing a higher percentage of authorized hours?
- Are schedulers managing more volume without more stress?
- Are caregivers working more consistently each week?
- Are more applicants becoming active, billable caregivers?
- Are we improving engagement and retention over time?
- Are we staying ahead of compliance requirements?
These are the levers that drive performance. When we look at it this way, AI isn’t just helping fill shifts. It’s shaping how the entire operation runs. And that’s what drives better decisions, more consistency and a stronger experience for caregivers, clients and families.
Filling a shift doesn’t build the business. Retaining the caregivers who show up every day does.
Melinda Phillips is the leader of Arya Health’s Care@Home Center for Excellence, bringing her deep operational expertise and clinician-first perspective to help vendor solutions better serve long-term care providers. She has more than 30 years of home health care experience, most recently as president, skilled nursing services at BAYADA Home Health Care, a nonprofit provider of home health care services. Her experience includes leading office operations from start-ups to turn-arounds, as well as multi-site expansion of services in pediatrics, adult nursing, habilitation, adult home health and assistive care. She has also served as chief recruiting officer and chief people officer, focused on improving the candidate experience and optimizing the onboarding experience for new teammates. Visit aryahealth.ai.
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