A Local Care Network That Connects Gaps and Travel in Home Care

Many Are Certified, but Too Few Are Available to Visit

Figures released by the Ministry of Employment and Labor (고용노동부), Korea’s labor ministry, in January 2024 show that about 2.8 million people had gained care worker certification, while about 600,000 were actually working, including in family care. That means only about one in five certified workers was working in the field. In the same material, 10,700 of 151,000 people who completed care training in 2022 found employment, or 7.1%. (Ministry of Employment and Labor)

The workforce in the field is also aging. The Ministry of Health and Welfare (보건복지부), Korea’s health and social welfare ministry, put the average age of care workers at 61.7 as of December 2023. Citing a National Health Insurance Research Institute projection, it said that Korea could face a shortfall of about 79,000 workers in 2027. This is a projection based on expected demand and supply, not the current number of vacancies. (Ministry of Health and Welfare)

In home care, the work is not only the time spent providing care. Travel between homes is also a burden. A study by the Daejeon Social Service Institute (대전광역시사회서비스원), citing data from 292 home-based long-term care workers in South Jeolla Province, found that about 80% of visiting workers said they did not count travel time as working time. This is not a national figure, but it shows why nominal hourly pay and what someone earns for a full day can differ when they visit several homes. (Daejeon Social Service Institute)

From 2026, the government also expanded eligibility for the long-service incentive to people who have worked at the same agency for at least one year. It changed the scheme to pay up to KRW 180,000 a month depending on length of service. It also created a KRW 50,000 monthly allowance for areas with severe rural workforce shortages. These amounts may help cover part of a month’s phone or transport costs, but they do not turn all travel time between visits into paid work. (Ministry of Health and Welfare, National Health Insurance Service)

So the staffing problem is not only about increasing headcount. To help certified workers return to work and stay, agencies also need to solve who covers cancelled visits, how travel burden can be reduced, and how scattered work hours can be joined together.

Changing a Neighborhood Agency Manager’s Day

Imagine the manager of a neighborhood home-care agency overseeing 30 care workers and 45 care recipients. In the morning, a family caregiver asks to change a visit time, while one care worker says they are unwell and cannot make an afternoon visit. The manager moves between calls, messages, and a schedule to find a replacement.

For each candidate, the manager must explain again where the recipient is, when the visit is needed, what care is required, and whether travel is possible. If the first person declines, the same information must be repeated to a second or third person. Even after finding a replacement, the entire schedule may need to move again if the visits before and after, plus travel time, do not fit.

Here, a schedule is not just a calendar slot. Each recipient’s care plan, actual visit record, and expense claim must match. When contract details change, notification to the National Health Insurance Service (국민건강보험공단), Korea’s public health insurance administrator, may also be required. The more often a schedule change is copied across systems, the greater the chance of omissions and inconsistencies. (National Health Insurance Service long-term care notice)

A small operational service can start by receiving a change request only once. If a manager enters, “Today at 2 p.m., female recipient, three hours, replacement needed,” the service can first show people nearby who want work at that time. It should not assign someone automatically. The care worker should review the distance and care details, then accept the visit themselves.

Once the assignment is complete, the agency schedule and family notification update together. After the visit, the care worker leaves only short notes in predefined categories, such as meals, medication confirmation, and notable issues. The family sees records within the agreed scope. The agency can spend less time repeating the same information over the phone.

As records accumulate, the agency can see which neighborhoods and times repeatedly have gaps, where travel between visits becomes long, and how many hours are left open by sudden cancellations. This information becomes evidence for choosing hiring areas and grouping work in the next month. Care workers also gain a ledger showing actual care time alongside travel and waiting time.

Still, software cannot solve pay levels, unsafe home visits, or the relationship between a recipient and a care worker. Final assignments and conflict resolution also remain human work. The hard part to copy is not the scheduling feature. It is the accumulated record of who can work in which area and at which time, the relationship between agencies and workers, and operating practices that make families trust the records.

Abroad, Some Started by Reducing Travel and Empty Time

Australian Unity introduced an assignment approach with Biarri that coordinates visit times, work rules, rest, and travel routes at once. In its published case study, paid travel between visits was included in labor-cost calculations, while the software fee was not disclosed.

At the implementation site, the company reported that cost per visit and average travel time each fell by 15%, while the rate at which planned visits were actually delivered rose from 60% to 90%. That suggests a plan that had been disrupted in roughly four out of ten visits fell to around one out of ten, but the results were published by the supplier and need independent verification. (Biarri)

One Bien Chez Soi site in Quebec, Canada, began with a problem of many short visits contracted through public institutions, creating open visits and substantial travel time. Using AlayaCare’s visit assignment tool, it matched distance, traffic conditions, required skills, and preferred working hours. Where possible, it grouped work into blocks of at least three continuous hours.

In the company’s published comparison of July and October 2024, open visits fell by 42% and scheduling staff work fell from 84 hours to 30 hours a week. That is a reduction of 54 hours a week. These figures are also from a service provider’s customer case study. (AlayaCare)

The Domiciliary Care Workforce Programme in western England redesigned travel and assignments in home care delivered under local-government contracts from 2021 to 2024. It optimized assignments and travel across participating care providers, and considered directing cost savings toward improved conditions for care workers.

An independent evaluation reported improved worker satisfaction with workload and time between visits, reduced travel distance in the first month, and fewer instances of shortening visit times. Calculations by two participating organizations suggested potential savings of GBP 3.58 for every GBP 1 invested, but this was a value calculated through a programme model, not confirmed returns. (Health Innovation West of England)

Things You Could Build Now

1. A Same-Day Vacancy Board

• What the service does: When an agency posts a sudden vacancy, it alerts care workers in sequence whose distance, available time, and care experience fit.
• Who uses it: Neighborhood home-care agencies where the manager adjusts schedules directly, without a dedicated replacement-staff coordinator.
• Why now: Many people are certified, but links to actual employment and continued service are weak. One cancellation can lead to several calls for the agency and a gap in income for a care worker.
• What to put on the first screen: A list of “today’s open visits,” with the time, neighborhood, estimated travel time, and care details for each visit.

2. A Work Ledger That Shows Travel Time

• What the service does: It records actual care time alongside travel and waiting time between visits, showing daily income and unfilled time.
• Who uses it: A home-care worker who travels between two or three households a day but cannot easily tell how much travel affects their income.
• Why now: A regional survey found travel time excluded from working time, and a new rural allowance has been introduced. That makes it more important to measure travel burden first.
• What to put on the first screen: A single sentence over today’s route: “Care: 6 hours · Travel: 1 hour 20 minutes · Waiting: 40 minutes.”

3. Visit Handover for Families Living Far Away

• What the service does: It sends families a set-format update on visit completion, meals, notable issues, and the next item to check.
• Who uses it: An adult child who lives in a different area from their parent and calls the agency after every visit to ask how they are doing.
• Why now: Schedules and visit records are already needed for agency operations. Separating the items that can be shared with families can reduce repeated calls.
• What to put on the first screen: Under “Today’s visit complete,” show only four items: meals, medication confirmation, notable issues, and the next visit time.

4. A Return-to-Work Guide for Inactive Certified Workers

• What the service does: A person who is certified but not working enters their preferred distance, hours, and tasks they want to avoid. The service then connects them first to short shifts at suitable agencies.
• Who uses it: A certified care worker returning after a break for family care or health reasons, seeking around three hours of work a day near home.
• Why now: The gap between about 2.8 million certified workers and about 600,000 active workers signals a need for services that match return-to-work conditions, not only for training new workers.
• What to put on the first screen: Three fields—“available days,” “daily working hours,” and “travel distance”—plus three visits that match those conditions.

Why this matters where you are

Korea’s figures, incentives, long-term care rules, and agency structure are Korean conditions, so they may not transfer directly to your market. But you can check the same operating facts locally: how often visits are cancelled on the day, how much unpaid travel or waiting sits between visits, and how many people must be contacted to fill one gap. If these patterns exist, a simple workflow for posting and accepting an open visit may be more useful than a full scheduling system.

What to Check Today

Call one neighborhood home-care agency and ask only how many same-day cancellations or vacancies it had in the last seven days, and how many people it contacted to fill each one. If there are three or more changes a week and each requires calls to three or more people, it may be worth building two screens first: “post an open visit” and “accept a visit,” rather than a complex system.