Team communication app for home care agencies

A home care communication app gives your office, schedulers, coordinators and field caregivers one secure place to message, call, share files and hand off requests. It replaces personal texts and group chats. It does not replace your agency management software. Chanty is built for that internal staff job: chats, voice notes, announcements and assigned tasks, with HIPAA compliance and a signed BAA available from the Business plan. Scheduling, EVV and care documentation stay in the systems you already use.

What a home care communication app should do for your agency

The job is internal communication between the people who run and deliver care: the office, schedulers, care coordinators, HR, and caregivers working alone in clients' homes. Communication with clients, families and physicians is a separate job. It needs different tools and different rules.

Most agencies already know where their internal communication breaks down:

• Shift changes passed on by text. A caregiver texts the scheduler at 6:40 a.m. to say she can't make an 8:00 visit. The scheduler finds cover through a string of personal texts, and nobody else in the office can see what happened.
• Caregivers missing updates. A new infection-control procedure goes out by email, and many caregivers rarely check work email.
• Requests stuck on one phone. A supply request or mileage question sits in a coordinator's personal messages while she is out sick.
• No record of who agreed to what. When a missed visit is reviewed later, no one can find who confirmed the cover, or when.

A short checklist for evaluating any app:

• Mobile-first. Caregivers will use it on a phone between visits, not at a desk.
• Low training. If it feels like a familiar messenger, people adopt it without classroom time.
• HIPAA with a signed BAA, on the plan you actually buy.
• Searchable history, so the office can confirm what was agreed.
• Admin control over who can see which conversations and over removing access when someone leaves.

In-app messaging in home care software vs. a separate staff chat app

Many agency management platforms include built-in messaging between the office and caregivers, including AxisCare, AlayaCare, HHAeXchange and WellSky Personal Care, which offer secure office-to-caregiver messaging in their caregiver mobile apps. Vendors such as AxisCare describe this as general one-to-one and group chat, not threads tied to a specific visit (axiscare.com). Where it exists, it is usually tied to the schedule: messages about a specific visit, client or shift, sent inside the same app caregivers use to see their schedule and clock in.

A team chat app covers a wider set of operational work that does not belong to a single visit.

Need	Built-in messaging in agency software (typical)	Separate staff chat app like Chanty
Visit-specific notes tied to the schedule	Usually the main purpose	Not tied to your schedule
Office-to-office and branch-to-branch coordination	Varies by vendor	Channels per branch, team or role
HR, payroll and IT requests	Usually outside scope	Message, assign as a task, track to done
Company-wide announcements and polls	Varies by vendor	Announcements, scheduled posts, polls (Business and up)
Voice and video calls, screen sharing	Varies by vendor	Built in
Shared procedures and files	Varies by vendor	Pinned messages, shared files

The two work side by side. Keep scheduling, EVV and care documentation in your agency software. Use the chat app for everyday coordination: covering a shift, chasing a missing form, telling every branch about a policy change.

How to decide:

• If built-in messaging already covers your needs and staff actually use it, you may not need another tool.
• If staff still fall back on personal texting or WhatsApp groups, the built-in option is not covering the work. A dedicated staff app usually fixes that, because it handles the conversations that have nothing to do with a specific visit.
• If you are also weighing general-purpose chat tools, check whether each vendor offers a BAA and on which plan. Our team chat tools compared for HIPAA page summarizes this.

HIPAA and caregiver texting: what agencies need in place

When staff use personal SMS or consumer messengers to discuss client information, the agency usually has no BAA with the messaging provider. It also has no admin control over the data. Messages stay on personal phones, can be forwarded anywhere, and leave with the employee. HHS/OCR's Guidance on HIPAA & Cloud Computing says a service provider that creates, receives, maintains or transmits ePHI for a covered entity is a business associate, even if it stores only encrypted ePHI, and the two parties must enter into a HIPAA-compliant business associate agreement (45 CFR 164.308(b), 164.502(e), 164.504(e)) (hhs.gov). Treat this as general guidance and confirm your obligations with your privacy officer or counsel.

Here is exactly what Chanty offers:

• Business and Enterprise plans: HIPAA compliance with a signed BAA. Enterprise adds a negotiated MSA.
• Free plan: no BAA. Do not use it for PHI.
• On Business and Enterprise, the signed BAA covers all data in the team space: messages, files, voice notes, tasks and Teambook.

Chanty does not make an agency HIPAA compliant by itself. Responsibility is shared, and the agency is responsible for:

• Signing the BAA before any PHI goes into the workspace.
• Configuring roles and permissions.
• Managing user access and offboarding.
• Securing devices, including personal phones used for work.
• Writing staff policies and training people on them.

Third-party integrations, such as file storage or automation tools, are outside Chanty's BAA scope. If an integration touches PHI, you need your own agreement with that vendor.

Data is encrypted in transit with TLS 1.2+, and file storage is encrypted. See security, HIPAA and BAA details for the full list of controls. See HIPAA-compliant chat for staff for how this applies to day-to-day messaging.

How field caregivers and the office use Chanty day to day

Mobile apps that feel familiar. Chanty runs on iOS and Android, plus macOS, Windows and web for the office. The interface works like the messengers caregivers already use, so most people can start without formal training.

Voice notes between visits. A caregiver walking to her car can record a 20-second voice note instead of typing: "Mrs. K is out of gloves and wipes, can someone drop a box by Thursday?"

Messages that become tasks. Any message can become a task in one click, with an owner, a due date, status and priority. For example:

• A supply request becomes a task for the office coordinator, due Thursday.
• A schedule change to confirm becomes a task for the scheduler, due before end of day.
• A missing HR form becomes a task for the caregiver, with HR following up.

Tasks appear on a Kanban board, so the office can see what is open, in progress and done without asking around.

A record of what was agreed. Message history is unlimited and searchable on every plan. When someone asks who agreed to cover Saturday's visit, the scheduler searches for it instead of scrolling through a personal phone. Pinned messages and shared files keep procedures, contact lists and forms in one place. Teambook gathers a conversation's tasks, files, links and pins.

Calls in the same app. The Free plan includes unlimited 1:1 calls. Business adds unlimited group calls and screen sharing, which helps for a quick branch huddle or for walking a new hire through a form.

See all Chanty features for healthcare teams.

Announcements, onboarding and keeping caregivers connected

On Business and Enterprise, Chanty includes company-wide announcements, scheduled posts, polls and surveys, an employee directory and onboarding tools.

Organize channels so updates reach the right people:

• By branch: #north-branch, #south-branch
• By role: #schedulers, #care-coordinators, #all-caregivers
• By topic: #policy-updates (announcements only), #supplies, #hr-questions

A few examples: schedule a reminder about mandatory training to post Monday at 7 a.m. Run a two-question poll on which in-service time works best. Give new caregivers an onboarding channel with pinned procedures and a named contact.

Caregivers spend most of their shifts alone. A shared space where they get the same updates as the office, can ask a question and get an answer, and can see their branch team helps them feel part of the agency instead of left out. Caregiver turnover is a persistent pressure in the industry. Better internal communication is one part of addressing it, not a fix on its own.

For checklists and procedures to share in these channels, browse the operations library for clinics and practices.

Access control for a dispersed workforce

With dozens or hundreds of caregivers across branches, access control is where most risk sits.

• Roles and permissions: 120+ settings define what each person can see and do. Business includes customizable roles. Enterprise includes unlimited custom roles.
• Sign-in: one-time-code login, 2FA and SSO on Business. SAML SSO, directory sync and SCIM provisioning on Enterprise. IP allowlisting is also available.
• Retention: customizable retention settings on Business and Enterprise.
• Guests: give external contractors or vendors, such as a medical supply rep or an IT contractor, guest access limited to selected conversations. Business includes 3 free guest seats per paid member. Guest access is for business partners, not for clients or family members.

Offboarding is your responsibility, and the tool supports it. When a caregiver leaves, remove their access the same day as part of your exit checklist. In Chanty, from the browser or desktop app, click your profile photo (bottom left), choose Manage team, select Manage under Members, open the three-dots menu next to the person and choose Suspend, which logs them out of all devices, including mobile. The help center says only the team space creator can do this, while Chanty's security page refers to administrators, so confirm with Chanty. Use Suspend rather than Delete: deleting a member keeps channel history but permanently deletes their direct messages, which cannot be exported (chanty.com). On Enterprise, directory sync and SCIM let you manage accounts through your identity provider. Because conversations live in the workspace rather than on the person's phone, the history stays with the agency.

What Chanty does not do for home care agencies

Being clear here saves you a wasted evaluation.

• No scheduling, shift management, EVV, time tracking, payroll or HR suite. Keep using your agency management software for these. EVV obligations stay with that system; Section 12006(a) of the 21st Century Cures Act requires states to implement EVV for Medicaid personal care services (from 1 January 2020) and home health services (from 1 January 2023), and states pass these requirements on to providers (medicaid.gov).
• Not for clients or families. Chanty is not a client, patient or family messaging tool and not a portal.
• Not clinical software. It is not telehealth, an EHR or EMR, care-plan software, or clinical documentation.
• Not urgent clinical alerting or a validated clinical handoff system. Emergencies follow your existing escalation protocols.
• Basic task management. Tasks use a list and Kanban view, which suits operational follow-up but not complex projects.
• Smaller native integration catalog than Slack or Teams. Zapier, Make and n8n extend it. There is no native integration with home care agency software.
• AI agents are Enterprise only. BAA coverage of agent processing and external AI models is not documented. Do not route PHI to agents unless you have confirmed coverage in writing.

Getting started: a practical rollout for agencies

1. Pick the plan based on PHI.

If you need	Choose
A small trial team with no client information	Free (no BAA, not for PHI)
Caregiver and office communication that may include PHI, with a signed BAA	Business
SAML SSO, SCIM, data residency (US, EU or APAC), or governed AI agents with an audit trail	Enterprise

Check current per-user pricing on chanty.com before you budget; Enterprise is arranged through Chanty's sales team.

2. Set up before inviting staff. Sign the BAA. Define roles for caregivers, schedulers, coordinators and admins. Create branch and role channels.

3. Write a one-page policy. Spell out what goes in chat (cover requests, supplies, HR questions, announcements) and what stays in the agency software (visit notes, care documentation, EVV, client records). Include who to call in an emergency. You can start from our free HIPAA tools and templates.

4. Move off personal group chats. Announce a cutoff date, two to three weeks out. Run short mobile onboarding at in-services or by video call. Ask schedulers to answer new requests only in Chanty after the cutoff.

5. Review after 30 days. Check which channels are active, which tasks go stale, and whether anyone is still texting the office.

See how other practice types set this up in team communication solutions by practice type. For example, see our guides to team communication for physical therapy practices, team communication for therapy group practices and team communication for dental offices. When you are ready, sign up for Chanty or revisit the comparison table above.

FAQ

What is the best communication app for home care agencies?

It depends on what you need covered. Look for a mobile-first app caregivers will actually use, a signed BAA on the plan you buy, searchable history, and admin control over access. Chanty fits agencies that want a simple staff app for internal coordination next to their existing agency software. It does not fit agencies that need scheduling or client messaging in the same tool.

Is the messaging inside our home care software enough, or do we need a separate app?

If it covers your internal conversations and staff use it, it may be enough. If caregivers and the office still use personal texts for cover requests, HR questions or announcements, a separate staff chat app usually fills that gap.

Can caregivers use Chanty on their personal phones?

Yes. Chanty has iOS and Android apps. Device security remains the agency's responsibility, so set a clear policy for personal devices covering screen locks, OS updates and lost phones, and train staff on it.

Is Chanty HIPAA compliant for home care agencies?

Chanty offers HIPAA compliance with a signed BAA on the Business and Enterprise plans. The agency still has to sign the BAA before handling PHI, configure permissions, manage access and train staff.

Can we use the Free plan for caregiver communication involving client information?

No. The Free plan has no BAA and must not be used for PHI.

Does Chanty handle scheduling, EVV or time tracking?

No. Keep those in your agency management software. Chanty handles the conversations and follow-up tasks around them.

Can families or clients message caregivers through Chanty?

No. Chanty is for internal staff communication only. Use a tool designed for client and family communication for that.

Can caregivers send voice messages instead of typing?

Yes. Voice messages are available on all plans. On Business and Enterprise, voice notes are covered by the signed BAA along with messages, files, tasks and Teambook. The Free plan has no BAA, so voice notes there must not include PHI.

How do we remove a caregiver's access when they leave the agency?

An admin removes the user's access as part of your exit checklist, ideally on their last day. Chanty's help center says only the team space creator can do this (its security page says administrators, so confirm with Chanty): from the browser or desktop app, go to your profile photo, Manage team, Manage under Members, then the three-dots menu and Suspend, which logs the user out of all devices. Choose Suspend rather than Delete, because deleting a user keeps channel history but permanently deletes their direct messages (chanty.com). On Enterprise, SCIM and directory sync let you manage this through your identity provider. Conversation history stays in the agency's workspace.