From The Production Line To Five Minutes: How Humber Meadows Modernized Invoicing With Engage⁺

Introduction

Humber Meadows is a 320-bed long-term care home located in Toronto, Ontario. With a large and active resident population, the home relies on efficient, reliable communication with families and their authorized representatives to support quality care and day-to-day operations.

Octavia Roach, Office Manager at Humber Meadows, has been in office management in long-term care for over ten years. Managing resident invoicing and financial communications is a central part of her role. For years, that meant doing it the hard way.

The Challenge

For most of her career, sending monthly statements to residents' families meant printing, folding, and mailing hundreds of physical invoices. With 320 residents, that process consumed roughly half a day each month — as not everyone could commit to doing it all at once — and required four staff members. Octavia described it plainly as "a production line."

The cost added up. Each print run was approximately $1.23 per resident. Monthly and trust statements were sent every month, and the summary of accommodations was sent separately once a year. Add in invoices for discharged residents and residents with multiple billing contacts, and the monthly cost of paper-based invoicing was significant.

Before making the switch to Engage⁺, Humber Meadows had tried a different electronic invoicing platform. That platform appeared functional at the start, but within two months, problems emerged. Emails were not reaching families due to a cap on outbound volume. A technical bug then prevented emails from being sent for approximately three months. Support response times were slow, and the issues were never fully resolved.

Octavia recalls:

The Solution

When the financial invoicing situation reached a breaking point, the timing was right to extend the platform. Engage⁺ integrates directly with PointClickCare, meaning invoices can be uploaded and distributed through a single, familiar workflow.

Rather than jumping straight to a full rollout, Octavia requested a trial period first. She wanted to test the platform herself before inviting families in.

After the trial in December, Humber Meadows officially invited all families to activate their financial portal access in January.

Implementation

The implementation was managed almost entirely by Octavia. The setup was straightforward. The team had already been working through PointClickCare for clinical access, so the foundation was in place. A key configuration step involved setting up Office of Public Guardian and Trustee (PGT) contacts in PointClickCare to ensure invoices were routed correctly. Octavia noted that this was not burdensome, as the formatting change was something the home had been working toward independently.

The social workers at Humber Meadows played a supporting role in onboarding families to the broader platform, briefing families on what to expect and helping build initial buy-in. For new residents and families arriving after the initial rollout, word of mouth has taken over. The home's active family council has become an informal channel for promoting the portal.

The Result

Activation And Reach

Of Humber Meadows' 320 residents, 216 families have activated and are actively receiving financial invoices through the portal. An additional 34 have been invited but have not yet activated their accounts. Approximately 40 residents are managed without portal access, typically those without a designated billing contact or whose families prefer printed statements. For those families, Octavia continues to print and deliver invoices as needed.

The overall activation rate for the financial portal is approximately 90%.

Time Savings

What once took Octavia and her colleagues half a day each month, including printing, sorting, folding, stamping, and mailing for over 300 households, now takes approximately five minutes.

Cost Savings

At approximately $1.23 per printed invoice, the previous approach cost the home hundreds of dollars monthly in printing and postage alone, before accounting for duplicates, re-sends, or discharged residents. That cost has been substantially eliminated for the majority of the resident population, now receiving invoices digitally.

Reliability and Family Experience

The switch to Engage⁺ has been one of several new systems implemented at Humber Meadows, and the results have been clear. Since switching, Octavia has not experienced email delivery failures or ongoing technical issues. Families are receiving their invoices, and PGT representatives are opening them and paying on time.

During tax season, when families typically call looking for financial documents, Octavia has been able to redirect them to the portal.

Beyond Invoicing

Though the primary focus of this case study is financial communication, the impact of Engage⁺ at Humber Meadows extends further. Octavia has also used the platform's mass messaging feature to communicate directly with families about service updates, such as a hairdressing price change or yearly tax information, without manually extracting and managing email lists.

The home has also seen consistent use of the employee recognition feature. Families and residents regularly submit kudos for staff, with the home receiving several each month. What surprised Octavia was that some of these recognitions were coming from residents themselves, not just family members.

When asked what she would tell another office manager still mailing paper invoices, Octavia's answer was straightforward: