Case Study
Reliable Home Care
A custom healthcare platform developed specifically for business requirements.
Healthcare & Social ServicesNew Zealand14 monthsTeam: 4Live — 300+ Clients
60%
Admin Time Reduction
Care coordinator administrative workload
90%
Billing Cycle Time
From 3 days to 3 hours per pay cycle
98%
Compliance Reporting
Time reduction for Ministry of Health reports
18%
Travel Cost Savings
Through intelligent roster optimization
94%
Worker Adoption
Active weekly users after 60 days
The Problem
Reliable Home Care provides in-home support services across New Zealand. Their operations ran on a patchwork of spreadsheets, paper rosters, a legacy scheduling tool that could not handle their complex care models, and a separate billing system that required manual reconciliation every pay cycle.
Systems in Use
- Legacy scheduling tool (custom-built 2008, no longer supported)
- Paper-based rostering with manual matching
- Separate billing system with manual reconciliation
- Spreadsheets for compliance and reporting
Pain Points
- Care coordinators spent 60% of their time on administration
- Rosters changed daily — matching workers to clients by skills, availability, location, and preferences was entirely manual
- Billing errors were frequent due to manual data entry across systems
- Compliance reporting for Ministry of Health audits took weeks to compile
- No off-the-shelf platform supported their specific funding and compliance model
Business Impact
- Business could not scale without hiring administrators at a 1:5 ratio to care coordinators
- Customization quotes from vendors started at $200k+ with 18-month timelines and ongoing license fees
- Care quality suffered as coordinator time was consumed by administration
The Solution
We built a custom care management platform tailored to Reliable Home Care's exact operational model. The platform replaced four separate systems and runs the entire operation: client management, intelligent rostering, worker mobile app, billing automation, and compliance reporting.
- Centralized client profiles with care plans, funding sources, and risk assessments
- Version-controlled care plans with approval workflows
- Mixed funding stream support (ACC, Ministry of Health, Private)
- Constraint-based scheduler optimizing for continuity of care, cultural matching, and travel time
- Worker qualification, preference, and fatigue rule enforcement
- What took coordinators 3 hours now takes 15 minutes with manual override capability
- Offline-capable progressive web app — no app store distribution needed
- Shift viewing, GPS-verified check-in/check-out, voice-to-text care notes
- Incident reporting and timesheet confirmation from personal devices
- Rule engine converting completed shifts into payroll lines and client invoices
- Handles split shifts, travel time, sleepovers, and penalty rates
- Exports to Xero and MYOB — reconciliation reduced from days to hours
- Pre-built Ministry of Health reports (SIP, CAP, incident registers) generated on demand
- Audit trail on every record with document retention policies
- Real-time utilization, revenue per client, worker hours, and compliance status
- Drill-through from dashboard to individual shift level
Technology Stack
Next.js 16Node.jsTypeScriptPrisma ORM
PostgreSQLRedis (caching, sessions, queues)
AWS ECS FargateRDSS3CloudFrontTerraform
React Hook FormZodTailwind CSSPWA (Workbox)
NextAuth.jsStripeSentryPostHog
CSP HeadersRate LimitingRBACEncryption at Rest
BullMQEvent-Driven ArchitectureGitHub Actions CI/CD
Pino LoggingCloudWatchBusiness Metric Dashboards
Architecture Overview
Architecture Overview The platform is a modular monolith deployed on AWS ECS Fargate with a PostgreSQL database (RDS) and Redis (ElastiCache) for caching, sessions, and background job queues (BullMQ). Key Architectural Decisions: Modular Monolith over Microservices — Single deployable unit with clear module boundaries (rostering, billing, clients, workers, reporting). Enables independent development and testing while avoiding distributed system complexity at this scale. Modules communicate via internal TypeScript interfaces; extraction to services is deferred until team size or scaling demands it. Event-Driven Internally — Domain events (ShiftCompleted, CareNoteSubmitted, InvoiceGenerated) published to in-memory event bus with BullMQ persistence. Enables loose coupling between modules (e.g., billing reacts to ShiftCompleted without importing rostering code) and provides audit trail. Optimistic UI with Server Authority — Mobile app uses React Query for optimistic updates. Mutations hit API routes that validate, persist, and publish events. Conflict resolution for offline edits uses last-write-wins with server timestamp authority. Multi-Tenant Ready — Schema includes organization_id on all tenant-scoped tables. Row-level security policies in PostgreSQL enforce isolation. Current deployment is single-tenant; multi-tenancy enabled via feature flag for future licensing. Security — NextAuth.js with JWT sessions, short-lived access tokens, refresh token rotation. API routes protected by middleware. Rate limiting on auth endpoints. CSP headers. Database encryption at rest. Secrets in AWS Secrets Manager. Observability — Structured JSON logging (Pino) to CloudWatch. Sentry for error tracking with release tracking. PostHog for product analytics. Custom business metric dashboards (roster fill rate, billing accuracy, compliance readiness). Deployment — GitHub Actions pipeline: type-check → lint → unit tests → integration tests → build → deploy to staging → manual approval → production. Blue-green via ECS service deployment with health checks. Rollback < 2 minutes. Data Model Highlights: - Clients, CarePlans, FundingStreams (polymorphic: ACC, MoH, Private) - Workers, Skills, Qualifications, Availability, Preferences - Shifts, RecurringPatterns, Exceptions, Swaps - Invoices, InvoiceLines, PayrollLines, PayRuns - Documents, Audits, Incidents, ComplianceReports
Outcome
60%
Admin Time Reduction
Care coordinator administrative workload
90%
Billing Cycle Time
From 3 days to 3 hours per pay cycle
98%
Compliance Reporting
Time reduction for Ministry of Health reports
18%
Travel Cost Savings
Through intelligent roster optimization
94%
Worker Adoption
Active weekly users after 60 days
0
Billing Disputes
In first 6 months post-launch
2.5x
Client Growth
Scaled from 120 to 300+ clients without admin hires
99.9%
System Uptime
Since production launch
Qualitative Impact
- 60% reduction in coordinator admin time
- Billing reconciliation: 3 days to 3 hours per cycle
- Compliance report generation: 2 weeks to 30 minutes
- Roster optimization reduced travel costs by 18%
- Worker adoption: 94% active weekly after 60 days
- Zero billing disputes in first 6 months post-launch
- Scaled from 120 to 300+ clients without adding admin headcount
- Platform now supports 3 additional home care providers under license
“InovoSync understood our operations better than we did. The platform transformed how we work—our coordinators can focus on clients instead of spreadsheets.”