Most software companies say they listen to customers. At Prasar Health we try to make that concrete: the providers who use our products help decide what gets built next. This piece explains how that works, why we think it is the right way to build software for community care, and the tradeoffs we accept to do it.
Why the people doing the work should shape the tool
Our customers are small Medicaid-funded providers: transportation companies running wheelchair vans and day centers serving older adults. The people using our software are dispatchers, drivers, program directors, and billing staff. They know things about their work that no product manager can learn from a distance: which step in the morning breaks when a driver calls out, what a state reviewer actually asked for last spring, which form a family always fills out wrong.
Software built without that knowledge forces providers to work around it. Software built with it fits the day. In a field where every extra minute of paperwork comes out of time with members, fit is not a nicety. It is the point.
How a suggestion becomes a feature
The process is simple on purpose, and it works the same way for ZeitRide and Adult Day Genie.
- A provider tells us what is not working. Suggestions come in through ordinary support channels, from the people using the product every day. No special form or account tier is needed.
- We work it through with them. The team that answers support is the team that builds the product, so the person reading the suggestion can ask follow-up questions, look at the actual workflow, and understand the real problem behind the request.
- We build it for everyone. When we ship it, it ships to every customer, not just the one who asked.
That last step is the one that matters most, and it is where we are strict.
Settings, not one-off customizations
When one provider needs something to work differently, the easy answer is a custom version just for them. We do not do that. Custom forks are how software turns into a pile of special cases that nobody can maintain, and how the smallest customers end up on the oldest, least supported version.
Instead, when providers need different behavior, we build it as a setting. The default stays sensible for everyone, and a provider whose state, contract, or way of operating calls for something else can turn it on. A rule that one adult day center needs because of its state often turns out to be what another center in a different state needed too. A dispatch option one transportation company asked for helps the next company that grows into the same problem.
Shipping to everyone also keeps us honest. A change that would help one customer and confuse ten others does not ship as is. It gets reworked until it fits, or it stays a setting that is off by default.
What we say no to
Building with customers does not mean building everything customers ask for. We say no, or not yet, when:
- a request would weaken the integrity of the record, such as silently overwriting a time or deleting history, because the record is what gets providers paid and protects them in an audit;
- it would mean claiming something software cannot promise, like guaranteeing compliance with a state or federal rule;
- it would only work for one customer and cannot be expressed as a general setting.
When we say no, we say why. Often the conversation leads to a different change that solves the underlying problem better.
Why this fits Prasar Health's mission
Prasar Health exists to help people get care and keep living at home. The providers who make that happen are stretched thin. The most useful thing a software company can do for them is remove friction they already feel, not add features they have to learn around. Letting them steer is the most reliable way we know to find that friction.
It is also how we keep two independent products, ZeitRide for transportation and Adult Day Genie for adult day centers, focused on the same principles: records captured when the work happens, honest defaults, and changes that make every customer's day a little easier. It is the same instinct behind publishing our prices for ZeitRide and Adult Day Genie: work in the open with the people you serve.
Frequently asked questions
How does Prasar Health decide what to build?
Largely from customer suggestions. Providers using ZeitRide and Adult Day Genie raise what is not working through normal support channels, the team works through the real problem with them, and the result ships to all customers.
Do customers get custom versions of the software?
No. When providers need different behavior, Prasar Health builds it as a setting available to everyone, with a sensible default, rather than a one-off custom version.
Does a provider need a special plan to suggest features?
No. Suggestions come through ordinary support channels from anyone using the product.
Are there requests Prasar Health will not build?
Yes: changes that would weaken the integrity of records, such as silent overwrites, anything that would imply software guarantees regulatory compliance, and changes that only work for one customer and cannot be a general setting.
Do ZeitRide and Adult Day Genie share data?
No. They are independent products from Prasar Health that share a way of working with customers, not data.
Prasar Health builds software for Medicaid-funded community care: ZeitRide for non-emergency medical transportation and Adult Day Genie for adult day centers. More insights.