Bolatito Jacobs is the Founder and CEO of Caring For Your Needs, a Support Coordination Agency based in New Jersey. Passionate about helping people in the Intellectually and Developmentally Disabled (I/DD) community, she has been supporting many IDD individuals and their families for over 7 years. She also has extensive experience as a Support Coordinator and Case Manager prior to founding her agency.
Bolatito shared with us some of the problems her agency faced as it scaled, and how FieldWorker impacted the way her team works.
“FieldWorker has transformed the way we work. I am able to track all activities, see what is outstanding for each Coordinator, see that the visits & calls are taking place with proof for any audit. I can see case notes & validate them before the creation of Monthly reports & any updates to the state’s i-record system, we have all documents in one location and I can bill for payments much faster.”
What were some of the challenges you were facing?
I wanted to reduce the time spent on managing the documents, tracking various activities, and automating billing. While scaling a growing business, there are many issues to manage, such as the increasing number of documents, tracking of activities for the Support Coordinators, case management, information for billing, and ensuring that all information is available with proof for us to be prepared for any audits. We did not have experience with technology resources. I also did not want to commit a lot of money upfront for a new system.
What was your goal before implementing FieldWorker?
As a small agency, I wanted to minimize the time taken in maintaining the records of my clients, monthly contacts and the collating billing information needed for Medicaid.
Why did you choose FieldWorker?
This is one product that we found that has been developed for keeping support coordination activities as a primary focus. The fact that several large agencies are advising on the product development of FieldWorker was also very helpful. We are looking to grow into Support Brokerage and we feel that FieldWorker will be very beneficial in that space
Did you have other criteria in mind when choosing a solution?
The low cost of the solution and proactive support were most important for us. FieldWorker also supports EVV, which will be available for us when our state makes it mandatory for Support Coordination.
How long did it take you to get up and running?
Our first client and employee were up and running on the very first day!
Who in your organization is using FieldWorker?
All my support coordinators, management and myself are all using the product.
How has FieldWorker benefitted you and your team?
All my staff are now using the same data and have access to all the updates at the same time. Their tasks are centrally managed and they have been keeping track of all outstanding requirements in one place. Having all client & service provider information in one place is also very helpful to us. Having all our documents in one place and easily accessible without having to search around in emails etc. is also very useful.
And if you hadn’t started using FieldWorker, how would your work look different?
Without FieldWorker, we would have been spending 15-20 hours every month managing information using several different tools and paper folders but there was always a concern that we may be missing out on a task or not have all documents in order.