Health & care
Route planner for home health and caregivers
Put a day of patient visits in the shortest driving order from home, label every stop with a code instead of a name, and keep the scheduling and charting where they already live.
Free plan, no credit card. Works on your phone and computer.
- HomeStart
- Pt 4417INR draw0.7 mi
- Pt 3982Wound check, dressing change0.9 mi
- Pt 4520Hospice comfort visit0.3 mi
- Pt 4633IV antibiotic, timed dose1.5 mi
- Pt 4108Weekly med setup0.4 mi
- + 6 more stops
EZRoutePlanner for home health & caregivers
A route planner for home visits puts a day's patients in the shortest driving order. In EZRoutePlanner, add each visit address with a patient code or initials as its label, never a full name, then press Optimize Route. It orders the drive only: scheduling, charting and EVV stay in your agency's software. The free plan fits 30 visits a route, more than a typical clinician's day.
- Typical day
- 4–7 skilled visits, or 2–5 longer aide visits
- Labels
- Patient codes or initials, never full names
- Records
- Stay in your EMR, scheduling and EVV apps
- Mileage
- Distance of every leg, for reimbursement logs
An example day
Saturday coverage visits
This example is 11 stops on real roads in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In the order the list had them, the round trip is 19 mi and 1 hr 21 min of driving. Optimized, it's 9.6 mi and 46 min: 9.3 mi and 35 min less, 49% shorter.
Weekend and PRN nurses often get a list of patients they've never visited, spread across the agency's whole service area. That's when the order matters most. Optimize from home, then drag any visit with a set time, like an IV dose or a family member who's only home at noon, into place.
Stops are example points on real streets, not real customers. Distances and times are driving figures for each order.
- HomeStart
- Pt 4417INR draw0.7 mi
- Pt 3982Wound check, dressing change0.9 mi
- Pt 4520Hospice comfort visit0.3 mi
- Pt 4633IV antibiotic, timed dose1.5 mi
- Pt 4108Weekly med setup0.4 mi
- Pt 3871Post-op check, vitals0.8 mi
- Pt 4295Catheter change1.1 mi
- Pt 4701Insulin teaching1.2 mi
- Pt 4176Wound vac check0.9 mi
- Pt 4349Ostomy check, supplies0.6 mi
- Pt 4562Vitals, med review0.5 mi
Where the day goes
What makes routing hard for home health workers and caregivers
The schedule isn't built on a map
Visits are assigned by need, discipline and who's available. The day arrives as a list in no driving order, and tomorrow's list is different.
Some visits are timed, most aren't
An IV antibiotic, an insulin teaching session or a caregiver who's home only at lunch fixes a few visits in place. The rest can move, and that's where the drive time is won or lost.
Every mile gets logged
Many agencies reimburse mileage between visits, and someone checks the log. Writing it up from memory at the end of the week means short-changing yourself or getting it questioned.
Start from your list
Bring the spreadsheet you already keep.
Keep visit notes, orders and verification in your EMR and EVV app. EZRoutePlanner stores only the address and one label per stop, so export just a code and an address, and leave names and clinical details out of the file.
- 1
Add today's visits with codes
Paste the visit addresses, or import the day's schedule export, and label each stop with a patient code or initials. Keep names, diagnoses and notes out of it.
- 2
Start from home
Save home as your base. Most field clinicians start the day from home, not the office, and that's where the route should begin.
- 3
Optimize, then place the timed visits
Press Optimize Route, then drag any visit with a fixed time to where it needs to be. The rest stay in the shortest order.
- 4
Navigate visit to visit
Between patients, the Navigate button opens Google Maps, Apple Maps or Waze. The leg distances on the route go straight into your mileage log.
| Patient code | Discipline | Street | City | ZIP |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4417 | RN | 3921 Bryant Ave S | Minneapolis | 55409 |
| 3982 | RN | 2816 Johnson St NE | Minneapolis | 55418 |
| 4520 | RN | 4532 Chicago Ave | Minneapolis | 55407 |
| 4633 | RN | 3315 Cedar Ave S | Minneapolis | 55407 |
| 4108 | LPN | 5312 Penn Ave N | Minneapolis | 55430 |
An example sheet. Columns can be named anything and in any order; street, city and ZIP can be one column or several. Pick one column, like the customer name, as each stop's label.
From the route
Routing tips for home health workers and caregivers
Label with codes, not names
Whatever you type as a label appears on the map, in the stop list and on a shared link. A patient code means nothing to someone glancing at your phone in a driveway, and it still matches your schedule.
Know which miles count
Some agencies don't reimburse the drive from home to the first patient or from the last patient home. The route shows each leg separately, so you can log exactly the legs your policy pays. See mileage for multiple stops.
Hand the scheduler a map
If you see the same patients every week, show your scheduler where they sit. Visits grouped by area by weekday shorten every drive that follows. More on planning weekly routes.
Pin the door you actually use
Many homes are entered from the alley, a side door or the back of a building. Drag the pin to that entrance once, and the next clinician on coverage parks in the right place.
Plan around winter parking
In snow country, parking bans and unplowed side streets change how you reach a house. Plan a little slack after visits on narrow streets, and check the approach on the map before the first visit.
Share coverage, then revoke it
When a PRN nurse covers your patients for the weekend, share your route as a link. It opens on their phone with no login, and you revoke it on Monday.
Honest fit
What it handles, and what it doesn't
EZRoutePlanner is built for putting a day of stops in the right order and getting them to whoever drives. Here's where that fits home health workers and caregivers, and where you'd want something else alongside it.
Good fit
- A day of home visits for nurses, aides, therapists or hospice staff in driving order
- Weekend and PRN coverage lists in unfamiliar parts of the service area
- Patient codes or initials as labels instead of names
- Leg-by-leg distances for mileage reimbursement
- Sharing a day's route with a covering clinician by a link you can revoke
Not built for
- Not an EMR, EVV or scheduling system; visit verification stays in your agency's app
- No visit times or time windows for timed doses
- No GPS tracking or visit check-ins
- Doesn't assign patients to clinicians
- Keeps only an address and one label, and shouldn't be given clinical details
Last reviewed October 21, 2026.
Home health & caregivers: questions
What is the best route planner for home health visits?
Your agency's scheduling and EVV software decides who sees which patient and records each visit. The part left over is the order you drive them in, and that's what a route planner does. EZRoutePlanner takes the day's addresses, optimizes them from home, and hands each visit to Google Maps, Apple Maps or Waze.
Is it safe to put patient addresses in a route planner?
Check your agency's policy first. EZRoutePlanner is a route planner, not a medical records system, and an address can identify a patient on its own. If your policy allows it, use codes or initials as labels and keep names, diagnoses and notes in your EMR.
Does it replace our EVV app?
No. Electronic visit verification records when and where each visit happened, and your agency's EVV app keeps doing that. EZRoutePlanner only decides the order you drive the visits in.
How many home visits can a nurse do in a day?
Commonly 4–7 skilled visits, depending on visit type and how spread out patients are. An admission can take as long as three routine visits. Aides doing longer personal care visits often see 2–5 clients. Try your own visit lengths in the stops per day calculator.
Can I use it to log mileage for reimbursement?
Yes, as a planned figure. You get a distance for each patient-to-patient leg plus a daily total, and a CSV or PDF export to hand in with the claim form. It doesn't GPS-track your driving, so add any detours yourself.
Is it free for a private caregiver or a small agency?
A private caregiver can usually stay free: 30 saved addresses covers a regular client list, each route takes up to 30 stops, and there's no end date. An agency planning for several clinicians needs a route per person, which means paying for Starter ($20 a month) or a larger plan.
More for your business
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- IndustryRoute planner for cleaning businessesA cleaning business route planner for maid services: map your recurring clients, put each team's homes in order, and share the route to their phones.
- GuideHow to calculate mileage for a trip with multiple stopsCalculate mileage for a trip with multiple stops: the total in Google Maps (up to 10 places), every leg from a route planner, and why the order matters.
- GuideHow to plan weekly and recurring service routesPlan weekly and biweekly service routes for lawn, pool, pest or cleaning customers: give each area a day, run A/B weeks and reuse each day's saved route.
- Free toolStops per day calculatorHow many stops fit in a working day, given time at each stop and driving between them.
Plan tomorrow's visit route tonight.
Import your customer list, optimize the order with one click, and open it on your phone in the morning. Free to start, no credit card.
Free plan. No credit card. Works in any browser.