Caring for the Caregivers
Pediatric care provider easily manages complex employee pay structures with PrimePay, leading to increased staff satisfaction and retention.
“I’d recommend PrimePay to any organization whether they have 10 or 100 employees. If they’re looking to grow, they’ll get all the help they need from PrimePay,” says Carlos Collado, Owner
Home nursing and therapy services for pediatric patients
Nova Care Agency is a home health agency that provides customized nursing and therapeutic services to children and young adults. Patients vary from those with disabilities who need around-the-clock nursing care to those requiring fewer hours of nursing or therapy per day or week.
To meet these varying needs, Nova Care Agency’s cohort of 150 skilled pediatric nurses and therapists fan out across Miami on a daily basis to care for those who need support in caring for themselves. Each specialist has their own unique skills and their own schedule, but their hourly pay rate fluctuates depending on these and several other factors, like when they work, how long they work, and the type of work they are doing.
“We don’t just differentiate between nurses and therapists,” explains Nova Care Agency Owner, Carlos Collado. “Within the nursing group, rates differ by individual, by contract, and even by the length or timing of a shift. And within the therapy team, a single therapist will be paid one rate for treatments and another for evaluations.”
With so much variety, ensuring each employee is correctly remunerated at the end of each pay period is no small feat. About 90% of Nova Care Agency employees are nurses and independent 1099 contractors. Therapists, who are typically W-2
employees, make up the other 10% of the staff. When Nova Care Agency’s previous payroll provider withdrew from the payroll business, the company needed an alternative solution that was flexible enough to accommodate a uniquely complex payment structure — and easy for a single administrator to manage single-handedly.
One salary administrator, a multitude of hourly rates to manage
Payroll administration for the diversified workforce of Nova Care Agency employees on irregular schedules at varying hourly fees requires nerves of steel — and immaculate record-keeping.
Nova Care Agency needed the flexibility to be able to assign three or more separate hourly rates to an individual employee within a single pay period. Doing so efficiently and accurately was also a top priority.
Says Collado: “We have a big payroll and we need the flexibility to be able to record personalized rates, attribute varying hours, and calculate individualized payments that are precise in every detail. And since our payroll administrator is just one person, we need a system that makes it as quick and easy as possible for her to input those hours and to get it right the first time, every time.”
Collado had another, very compelling reason for prioritizing efficiency and accuracy: business survival.
“When we’re efficient,” he explains, “my nurses get paid on time and my business goes forward. If nurses don’t get paid on time, they won’t refer patients or other nurses. The result: I get a bad reputation here in Miami and business shrinks.” With PrimePay, Collado found the functionality and the efficiency he was looking for in a user-friendly system.
“With PrimePay we know we’ll have all our bases covered in every conceivable combination!”
Seamless payroll processing, payments on-time
Having made the transition to PrimePay, Collado was immediately struck by the clean, intuitive user interface and by how easy it was to onboard both 1099 and W-2 employees.
“I definitely like the website,” he says. “It’s user-friendly, as is the whole system.”
PrimePay also meets all of Nova Care Agency’s specifications regarding flexibility. The system can accommodate the attribution of an unlimited range of hourly rates to one employee during any payment period. This makes it easy to assign different rates to different blocks of time for the same service, if necessary.
Equally, different services offered by the same individual at varying rates can also be captured and appropriately processed.
The icing on the cake? PrimePay is simple to use. After aggregating a list of the hours worked by each employee over each pay period and the rates to be applied to those hours, Nova Care Agency’s payroll administrator can simply input the information into PrimePay, and the system does the rest.
In cases where employees are unable to present timesheets before the specified deadline, they receive ad hoc check payments to ensure their personal cashflows are unaffected. PrimePay then integrates the disbursed amounts into the calculations for the following pay period.
To further ensure there is no obstacle to Nova Care Agency employees receiving full and timely payment, PrimePay reacts quickly to assist the payroll administrator that has questions or needs support with the system.
Says Collado: “I love that you have excellent client support. When we call, we actually get someone on the phone that can help us deal with the issue. We don’t send an email and wait for two days to be contacted. We need help, we have someone to talk to right away, and we get the salaries paid on time every time.”
A reputation for reliability, healthy business growth
For businesses like Nova Care Agency, paying employees on time is fundamental to financial success. Now that he has armed Nova Care Agency with a solution for its payroll administration challenges, Collado is confident his organization will reap the
rewards.“Being able to pay people on time is number one,” explains Collado. “If you don’t pay people on time, you can forget about your business.”
Collado says that his reputation as an efficient and flexible employer increases the likelihood that staff members will continue to work with his company and recommend it to other pediatric nursing professionals.
“At the end of the day, pediatric therapy is a small world. When my nurses know they will be paid on time even when they can’t send in their hours for some reason, they feel secure and they tell their friends how reliable and flexible we are. And they happily refer other nurses to us.”
Reduced staff turnover is not the only benefit for Nova Care Agency. Collado says the power of word of mouth also extends to patient referrals.
“Once your nurses are happy, they’ll tell your customers how much they like working for you. Parents talk to parents. And indirectly, my nurses bring me more business when they speak well of the Nova Care Agency.”
PrimePay has given Nova Care Agency important capabilities that form the bedrock of employee satisfaction. With payroll administration optimized, Collado has the freedom to concentrate on other aspects of management — such as new business development and ensuring Nova Care Agency continually increases its contribution to the Miami community.
“We looked at other systems,” says Collado, “but the flexibility PrimePay offered — and the user-friendliness — made it the obvious choice, particularly since we’re still on a growth path. I’d recommend PrimePay to any organization whether they have 10 or 100 employees. If they’re looking to grow, they’ll get all the help they need from PrimePay.”
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