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 matchingSeparate billing system with manual reconciliationSpreadsheets 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

01

Business could not scale without hiring administrators at a 1:5 ratio to care coordinators

02

Customization quotes from vendors started at $200k+ with 18-month timelines and ongoing license fees

03

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.

Client & Care Plan Management

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)

Intelligent Rostering Engine

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

Worker Mobile App (PWA)

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

Automated Billing & Payroll

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

Compliance & Reporting

Pre-built Ministry of Health reports (SIP, CAP, incident registers) generated on demand
Audit trail on every record with document retention policies

Management Dashboard

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.

General Manager
General Manager, Reliable Home Care

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