Please note: The following feature is available as part of Birdie’s Starter, Core, Advanced, Plus, Care Management and Advanced Care Management packages (As well as Care Management & Rostering, Care Management, Rostering & Finance, Premium, Entry and Essentials) Please get in touch if interested in more information on this feature!
If you manage visits in runs, please see this article for regular carers and templating as the set-up will be slightly different How to template Runs using the Regular carer feature.
Regular carers are used to create your template and indicate to the Birdie Roster that this carer should always be assigned if available. This will also inform the 'auto-allocation' function of Birdie that schedules your whole rota for you.
Assigning a regular carer can be set for the whole visit schedule, or to visits on specific days of the week, so you can have a different regular carer for each visit of someone's schedule. You can use the continuity data which will indicate who has visited this client the most, but ultimately the choice of who the regular carer should be is completely up to you.
The Birdie Platform will make recommendations for the best carer for a visit based on continuity which will be marked as 'preferred' in the visit’s right-hand sidebar.
Set up before adding a regular carer
To ensure you successfully assign Care Professionals as regular carers there are a few steps you must complete beforehand.
Adding visits for your Care Recipient
Availability for Care Professionals
Care Recipients and Care Professionals are in the same group
1. Adding a visit for your Care Recipient
Start by going to your client's Visits tab and find the visit you would like to assign the regular caregiver to.
For more information on creating a visit schedule please see this article - How to add a Care Recipients Visit Schedule.
2. Availability for Care Professionals
You must also ensure a Care Professional has their availability schedule set before assigning them as a regular carer. If you do not set this, Birdie may be blocked from assigning them a visit they are available for.
For a step-by-step guide on how to do this, see this article- How to Create or Delete an Availability Schedule for Your Carers.
3. Care Recipients and Care Professionals are in the same group
You must also ensure a Care Professional and a Care Recipient are in the same group. A Care Professional can be added to multiple groups if they will be a regular carer for multiple Care Recipients. If you do not set this, Birdie may be blocked from assigning them a visit they are available for.
For a step-by-step guide on how to do this, see this article- How to create and filter by Groups in your agency
How to assign a regular carer to a new visit schedule
Click on the visit card and go to Care Team, if this is a new visit schedule you will not see any care professionals suggested to be the regular carer under the care team tab.
In order to assign a regular carer you will first need to assign a care professional to this visit only, you do not need to assign them to every visit in the schedule, this will stop the template from working properly.
You can assign them by clicking the Find alternative button. Once you have assigned them to the visit, click the three dots by their name to set them as a regular carer.
This means that when you apply a weekly template your regular carer will be assigned to this visit at a click of a button!
How to assign a regular carer to an existing visit schedule
If you click on a visit and already see a preferred carer under the Care team tab, this means that this care professional has already visited this care recipient before.
To assign them as a regular carer, click the three dots next to the preferred carer's name and select Set as regular carer on the drop-down menu.
You can then choose whether to apply them as a regular carer for 'This visit only' (meaning, a single day of the schedule, for example, every Monday) or 'Whole schedule' (meaning every day of the week in the visit schedule).
You will now see that they have a star by their name, indicating they are the regular carer.
This means that when you apply a weekly template your regular carer will be assigned to this visit at a click of a button!
Birdie tips!
You can assign multiple regular carers to each visit. However, as a general rule of thumb, the fewer carers you assign as regular for every visit, the more predictable/repeatable your templates will be.
Step-by-step guide
You may find the below regular carers flowchart helpful, click here to download the PDF!
Birdie Academy video