Most software tools in home health were built to meet regulatory requirements first. Apricot meets those needs too, but that’s not where we began.

From day one, we started with the people doing the work. We partnered with individuals from every corner of home health — field nurses, QA reviewers, schedulers, coders, and clinical managers — before designing or building anything. And we didn’t just ask for feedback. We brought those perspectives directly into the process.

The result is software focused on the right problems, shaped by people who understand the reality of the work. That foundation is a big part of what got us where we are today. We built a different kind of team. One where clinicians, operators, and product leaders work side by side, shaping decisions and staying accountable to the day-to-day challenges of home health.

We Build From the Inside Out

Our team includes clinicians and operators who’ve held nearly every role in a home health agency. They’ve charted late at night, managed staff across counties, prepared for surveys, built QA processes, and cleaned up documentation that didn’t meet the mark.

They work alongside product, design, and engineering teams. Not as advisors or testers, but as full-time teammates who shape what we build. This isn’t an advisory model. It’s a team intentionally structured to understand the complexity of the work — and to respect it.

Together, we define problems, challenge assumptions, and make sure every workflow reflects the reality of clinical care. Our internal experience keeps us focused. Field testing keeps us honest. That loop — from internal expertise to real-world validation — grounds everything we ship.

Balancing Innovation and Reality

Technology moves fast, but in healthcare you can’t take off and fix the plane in the air. Every decision has to pass two tests: will it make the work better for clinicians, and will it hold up under the regulations that protect patients and agencies?

Those guardrails shape how we approach everything from interface design to AI-assisted workflows.

By combining proven product-building practices with lived clinical experience, we can explore emerging technologies without creating blind spots or compliance risks. That balance allows for steady, meaningful innovation — fast enough to make a difference, deliberate enough to respect the intricacies of the work our users do every day.

The outcome is software that’s modern and intuitive, yet grounded enough to withstand audits, support survey readiness, and hold up under the real pressures of patient care.

What That Looks Like in Practice

Medication Reconciliation

We recently updated our medication reconciliation review flow. Before deciding this area needed refinement, we shadowed nurses in the field, reviewed hundreds of usage replays, and gathered insights from QA teams and clinical managers across multiple agencies. That fieldwork didn’t just inform what we built — it gave us a benchmark to test against once the redesign was ready.

As we shaped the new experience, our internal team — including clinicians — worked through the details together. We considered how to facilitate appropriate physician notification, and how to surface clinical concerns like duplicate therapies or high-risk interactions without overwhelming nurses with noise. We addressed common field realities, like determining whether a handwritten list says “pm” or “prn,” and capturing a held medication with enough context for QA and audit.

Every detail had to balance speed, clarity, and downstream clinical accuracy. These aren’t theoretical discussions. They’re grounded in the realities of the visit, the patient, the chart, and the back office. And they’re possible because we’ve built a team that understands all sides of that equation.

Why We Work This Way

AI can make documentation faster, but speed doesn’t matter if the output isn’t trustworthy — or if the process makes nurses feel even more invisible than they already do. And in this space, there are no low-stakes environments. The work is real, the people are busy, and the consequences matter.

We believe the only responsible way to build software in healthcare is with the people who do the work. Not occasionally. Not just as testers. As core members of the team.

That’s what we’ve built at Apricot — and that’s why the tools we ship work differently.