Bringing Better Service to Their Community | OneCare

About One Care

One Care Home and Community Support Services is a transportation service shared by Community Support Service (CSS) agencies across the Huron and Perth Counties in Ontario, Canada. The area contains mostly rural and small communities that don’t have a sufficiently funded infrastructure to support public transportation. One Care fill the need by partnering with various smaller agencies in order to bring service to its riders, most of whom require assistance or have other special needs.

As such, One Care needs to manage, schedule and ostensibly, dispatch a great many smaller agencies to extend the depth of service they desire. Their mission is to provide home and community services to help strengthen the quality of life for individuals within the community. One of the best ways to do this is to have a strong demand response software solution that can help coordinate the many diverse agencies that they connect to.

The Problem / Challenge

Effective coordination with their clients. This can mean that information sharing was a tricky matter. Each agency might have an individual governance structure, or unique:

• Eligibility criteria
• Funders
• Funding Levels
• Values
• Interests
• Vehicle and Equipment

As a result of their then-current operation, other agencies and potential clients had difficulty knowing who to call for service. Their many transportation services were in fact too ”fragmented” and “difficult to access.” So business was suffering. One Care desperately needed a management system and software solution to keep communication strong and access to information a priority. In order to grow and yet retain the same level of quality service, demand response software was the best solution. But another part of the problem was getting consensus from their clients and partners. Because Small Community Support Service Agencies have limited staff, finding time to gather everyone around a table can be a major task unto itself.

Demand Response Software Solution

After completing a detailed overview of existing providers, reviewing issues, needs and opportunities, and looking best practices for effective service coordination, a plan was recommended and then accepted by the governing body of each agency. Before moving forward, it was important for One Care to ensure that their existing clients and partners were in favor of the change and also prepared for it. But the benefits of implementing a centralized scheduling demand response software solution were obvious enough to encourage participation of One Care’s partners.

“By using centralized scheduling we have been able to increase both efficiency and capacity.”

The Results

Local agencies employees can now have additional time to do other work, which in turn should allow reinvestment of dollars in service delivery. The major obstacle precipitated by an inefficient method of communicating has been overcome. They now have an established connection through Local Health Integration Network (LHN) sponsors. They continue to offer the best in service, enabling seniors, adults with disabilities, unique populations and those without transportation. They continue to help enable these citizens to access medical appointments, treatments, Adult Day Centers, shopping errands and social occasions. But the upside is that it is all being done faster and more efficiently. 

“[now] we can meet the current and future needs of our aging population.”

One Care uses TripSpark demand response software to establish a network of data on their clients that can easily be accessed exactly at the moment that it is needed.