Staffing shortages, unforeseen events, and changing compliance requirements can all contribute to longer client wait times. These delays make it more difficult for clients who rely on services to navigate challenges and access the help they need.
Agencies like The Mississippi Department of Rehabilitation Services (MDRS) Office of Vocational Rehabilitation (OVR) have come to Sara to help reduce client wait times. By equipping MDRS and other agencies with communication, scheduling, and compliance automation, Sara maximizes their most precious resources: human power and time.
Alleviate administrative burden on caseworkers
Sara automatically creates case notes for every client interaction and sends them directly to your agency’s CMS, saving hours of manual data entry for each case.
Reducing administrative workload frees up more time for caseworkers to meet with clients and move their cases forward. This leads to faster closures and more successful outcomes.
Provide new communication options for hard-to-reach clients
Clients, especially those across different generations, have different communication preferences. This creates delays in reaching them which, in turn, increases their wait times to receive services. Clients also have varied schedules which often extend beyond the caseworker’s workday.
Sara offers additional text and email options to reach clients based on their preferences and without the need for a state-issued phone. It also makes your agency available 24/7 so that clients can provide updates and communicate their needs any time of day — even when staff is off duty. More cases move forward when clients are given flexible options to match their lifestyles.
Reduce no-shows with reminders and self-service capabilities
Caseworkers spend substantial time in the back-and-forth of appointment scheduling. Clients can also forget about appointments resulting in no-shows and fewer available appointment slots.
Sara’s appointment management tool includes a caseworker calendar integration as well as client self-scheduling and reminder options.
Empowering clients with appointment scheduling, rescheduling, and reminders reduces no-shows and creates more available appointments.
Prioritize critical cases and rapidly respond
Growing caseloads make it hard for caseworkers to prioritize tasks and give clients the attention they deserve.
Sara identifies the next steps for counselors based on the urgency and importance of the tasks across their entire caseload.
This helps caseworkers hone in on the most important deliverables to meet important compliance and eligibility deadlines so clients don’t need to wait or reapply.
After seamlessly integrating Sara with their CMS, MDRS OVR saw an increased response rate from their 7,612 active clients, especially from their youth demographic. This resulted in over 2,000 successful outcomes while helping over 11,000 Mississippians with Disabilities get the assistance they needed.
Staff vacancies, unanticipated events, and changing requirements are inevitable in Human Services, but these changes don’t need to result in longer wait times for clients. Sara equips your agency with the automation, communication, and integration capabilities to reduce delays and serve more clients, without having to add more staff.