Case Studies

Case Study

A Workforce Compliance Platform Replacing Spreadsheets and Make.com

A home health agency was running caregiver compliance the way most agencies do: a Google Sheet, a Make.com automation that broke every other week, and an admin manually following up on missed clock-ins twice a day. State-mandated documents were tracked in another sheet entirely. We replaced the entire stack in four weeks.

Industry

Home Health

Caregivers

100+ Field

Timeline

4 Weeks

Channels

SMS via GHL

The Challenge

The agency was paying an admin to do nothing but chase missed punches twice a day, and was still missing them. State-mandated documents like TB tests, level-2 background checks, and HHA certifications lived in a separate spreadsheet that nobody updated reliably. When a caregiver missed a punch or let a credential lapse, the agency had two options: catch it manually, or get caught by the state. Both ended up costing money.

The owner put it directly: "We were paying an admin to do nothing but chase missed punches. And we were still missing them."

What We Built

We replaced the Make.com workflow and the spreadsheets with two purpose-built services on Node, Drizzle, and PostgreSQL.

The Missed-Punch Service scans for missed clock-ins twice a day, on weekday schedules tuned to the agency's operating windows, and sends SMS notifications through GHL directly to the caregiver and to the assigned admin. Test mode routes everything to ownership before go-live, so nobody got an angry text by accident.

The Credential Expiry Service ingests the credential sheet, watches every document's expiration date, and walks each caregiver through a tiered SMS escalation when something is about to lapse. It solves a subtle bug that Make.com could not: when an admin manually resolves an expiration and the underlying date has not changed, the workflow does not re-fire and re-spam the caregiver. Both services share an admin dashboard and were built to be operated by a non-technical office manager.

Credential lifecycle

Day 0

Credential ingested

TB test, level-2 background, HHA cert all tracked.

T-30

30-day reminder

Friendly SMS to caregiver. Admin notified for visibility.

T-14

14-day escalation

Tone shifts firmer. Specific document required.

T-7

7-day final notice

Caregiver and admin both pinged. Status flagged on dashboard.

Done

Resolved

On admin resolve, the workflow does NOT re-fire if the date hasn't changed.

Caregiver SMS thread

Auto-sent via GHL

Hi Maria, your TB test renewal is due in 7 days (Mar 14). Reply with a photo of the new result or stop by the office. We need it on file before your next shift.

Auto-sent T-7

Got it, going Tuesday.
Perfect, thanks. I'll check back if we don't have it on file by Mar 12.

Logged. No re-fire if resolved.

Results

The dedicated 'missed-punches admin' role was eliminated, freeing roughly 15 hours per week of manual chase work. Document compliance moved from a reactive scramble to a proactive 30-, 14-, 7-, and 1-day cadence, automatically. State audit prep time dropped meaningfully because every credential and every punch event is now timestamped and queryable. Caregiver experience improved as well: the reminders are bilingual, friendly, and consistent, not the panicked 9 PM 'hey can you send me your TB test?' text from a stressed admin. Total cost of ownership is lower than the old Make.com bill plus the admin's wages.

Why This Matters

Home health margins are thin and getting thinner. The agencies that win are the ones who can run more caregivers per administrator without sacrificing compliance. That is not a software problem you can solve with another off-the-shelf SaaS, it is a workflow problem that has to be modeled to your specific state, payer mix, and field workforce. Every new caregiver added to the roster gets the full compliance scaffolding for free. That is what operational leverage looks like in home care.

Running compliance on spreadsheets and Make.com?

We build workforce compliance platforms for home health, staffing, and field-service agencies. 30 minutes, free.

Meet with Hedgestone