This article is sponsored by KanTime. This article is based on a Home Health Care News discussion with Jessica Riggs, RN, CEO at Angels of Care Pediatric Home Health, and Satheesh Nair, CTO & EVP of Engineering at KanTime. The discussion took place on September 16th, 2025 during the HHCN FUTURE conference. The article below has been edited for length and clarity.

Home Health Care News: All right, everybody, we’re going to start our next panel, so if you could slowly find your seats. I have with me Jessica Riggs, CEO of Angels of Care Pediatric Home Health, and Satheesh Nair, KanTime CTO and EVP of Engineering. Thank you both so much for being here.

Jessica, I’d love to start with you. What does compassionate care mean to Angels of Care, and how does that intersect with compliance and value-based care in the pediatric space?

Jessica Riggs: First and foremost, I think it’s important—and I say this to our teams all the time—to put patients before profits. We’re unique in that we serve pediatric clients, which really means we’re serving the entire family. We focus on meeting more than just their healthcare needs—going above and beyond and finding ways to say “yes.”

That sometimes intersects with compliance. For example, we educate families about medication adherence, plans of care, and other requirements. When you’re in a pediatric client’s home, you can encounter compliance challenges. As it relates to value-based care, we look at adding wraparound services that meet the full needs of the family and measure goal attainment to provide a higher level of care and ultimately better outcomes.

Perfect. Satheesh, how can technology be designed to support—not hinder—compassionate, human-centered care?

Satheesh Nair: Technology has to be as invisible as possible to caregivers. There are a few design principles technology providers can adopt, and we focus on three primary drivers.

First is ease of use—how easily clinicians can locate relevant information with the fewest possible clicks. If there’s an overload of information that increases the caregiver’s cognitive load, we’ve failed in our mission.

Second, we’re seeing major AI innovations. Large language models are becoming more powerful, and we’re leveraging AI in our products for functions like auto-documentation, summarization, and auto-coding. Even small language models can handle many of these tasks.

Third, automation plays a huge role. Routine tasks can and should be automated so caregivers don’t have to spend time on them manually. Together, these advances free caregivers to focus on human-centered care and strengthen their connection with patients.

Jessica, how do you balance documentation—everyone’s favorite thing—with compassionate bedside care?

Riggs: We tell our nurses: client first, documentation later. We’ve worked with KanTime for many years to make charting as easy as possible so clinicians aren’t staring at a tablet instead of engaging with the patient.

As we look to the future, we’re exploring ways to make this even better—things like charting by exception and copy-forward are helpful today, but we’re also looking at ambient listening, AI prompting, and other emerging tools. Those innovations are the future of healthcare, and home care needs to keep pace.

Satheesh, how do your workflows preserve the caregiver-patient connection?

Nair: Building on what Jessica mentioned, it’s about enabling caregiver productivity through AI. We’ve developed a full AI-assist product line that touches many stages of care, starting with patient intake.

For example, when we receive hundreds of documents from a hospital, our trained large language model summarizes the entire dataset. Using computer vision, we extract structured data from both text and images, create a patient summary, and flow that directly into the patient’s chart.

For assessments, we use natural language processing to allow caregivers to dictate voice scripts. An LLM then extracts standardized data—such as OASIS or HIS, depending on the care setting—and automatically completes the start-of-care assessment. This has reduced assessment time by more than 80%.

We’ve also developed models for plan-of-care automation and medication auto-coding. Some of these are small language models that work offline to support caregivers in low-connectivity areas. We even use NLP for sentiment analysis of caregiver-patient conversations, all with the goal of improving connection and care quality.

Jessica, how do you train staff to stay compliant without burning out?

Riggs: In pediatric home care, we benefit from continuity—one nurse with one client—which helps nurses become deeply familiar with their patients. Continuous, ongoing training is essential, but so is recognizing and rewarding compliance.

We use retention initiatives to reward nurses for turning in notes on time, documenting correctly, and following the prescribed plan of care. Ultimately, it’s about showing compassion to our nurses and celebrating them when they do the right thing.

Awesome. What innovations reduce documentation burden while ensuring compliance?

Nair: This ties back to one of our founding principles when we started KanTime over 17 years ago: Do it right the first time, managed by exception.

That means compliance guardrails are built into every step of the care delivery process. At the point of care, for example, when a caregiver checks out, we automatically validate rules required by specific payor programs or lines of business. If mandatory interventions are missing, the system alerts the clinician immediately.

We’ve implemented similar guardrails across the platform, along with automated data capture. For example, EVV compliance is automatically recorded based on state requirements. These features ensure each visit is both clinically and operationally compliant—without creating extra burden for the caregiver.

Since FUTURE is all about innovation, let’s talk about value-based care. How do you see it evolving in pediatrics, and how are you preparing? Jessica?

Riggs: There’s a real shift happening. Payors are starting to recognize that when staffing utilization is high, outcomes improve. When we have strong clinical staff in the home, hospitalizations, ER visits, and readmissions go down.

We’re working with our value-based partners to build wraparound services that enhance staffing and coordination. But it’s truly a partnership—between the nurse, the family, the physician, and the hospital. When everyone collaborates toward better outcomes, the client benefits most.

Nair: Value-based care in pediatrics differs from adult populations. For adults—especially in home health and hospice—the primary focus is often immediate cost savings. In pediatrics, particularly with medically complex children, outcomes are long-term. It takes time to collect and demonstrate those results to payors.

That requires strong accountability and data tracking—monitoring growth charts for deviations, tracking vitals, suction logs, and ventilator alarms. Many of these metrics, which Angels of Care already uses effectively, feed into value-based care dashboards.

Through secure messaging—features like click-to-text and click-to-call—clinicians and care teams receive real-time alerts for timely interventions, supporting better outcomes.

How do you address care continuity and interoperability challenges? Jessica?

Riggs: Continuity of care is life-saving for our clients. When the same nurse provides consistent care, they can immediately spot when a child’s condition is changing.

Equally important is care coordination—with therapists, schools, specialists, and others. Continuity in the home supports better coordination across all providers.

Then there’s the data challenge. Everyone uses different systems, so pulling and normalizing that data into a single source of truth—whether from hospitals, payors, or KanTime—is critical to improving outcomes.

Perfect. Same question to you, Satheesh.

Nair: At KanTime, we’ve implemented all major interoperability protocols, starting with ADT exchanges. When a homebound child is discharged from a hospital, we receive ADT data that flows into intake and the patient chart. We can also generate ADT-out data when discharging from KanTime to external systems.

We’re ONC-certified for FHIR, supporting both requestor and responder workflows. For instance, after receiving an ADT notification, a KanTime agency can query external systems—like Epic or Cerner—to retrieve patient documents. Our AI engine then generates a structured summary that flows into the chart.

We also enable clinical direct messaging for care coordination through the HISP network and support LMR—the longitudinal medical record—which compiles data across care settings into a single, cumulative record.

Additionally, we’re building secure SMS functionality. For example, if a child is transitioning to school, caregivers can send a secure link displaying a PDF summary—diagnosis, medications, and compassion cue cards—even if the recipient doesn’t use an EMR. It’s a simple yet powerful way to support care continuity.

Thank you. Jessica, how do you measure and improve family experience?

Riggs: Several ways. We conduct Net Promoter Score surveys twice a year and take that feedback very seriously. We track responses, implement two or three operational changes based on what we learn, and monitor subsequent surveys to see if sentiment improves.

We also track staffing utilization, missed visit percentages, our ability to fill open shifts, and how quickly we deliver on key outcomes—all of which reflect family satisfaction.

What digital tools support family engagement? Satheesh?

Nair: We offer several features, but the most important is the family portal. It gives families a real-time view of their child’s progress toward goals. They can see schedules, visit notes, and upcoming appointments, and they can share observations or report condition changes directly through the portal.

We also include “compassion cue cards” to capture what makes a child happy or upset—going beyond clinical data to understand the “why,” not just the “what.” This helps improve adherence and outcomes for medically complex children.

Families can also participate in care planning—sharing social conditions, preferences, and insights on how they want care managed at home. It’s a true partnership between the care team and the family.

KanTime streamlines all aspects of your agency from beginning to end. From patient intake to scheduling, billing, and payments, our solutions allow you to do what you do best – deliver quality care to your patients. To learn more, visit: https://kantime.com/.