Home Care Heroes Blog

Monday Moore Mantras - Conversations about Home Care's Responsibility and Opportunities in the Era of COVID-19

sara2 (2)-pngAnkota COO, Sara Moore, has created a few initiatives to spark conversations about community in the home care industry.  Among other efforts, she created AHomeCareCommunity.com to provide a place online for folks in home care to share ideas, offer Best Practices and resources, and to promote events. She has also started "Monday Moore Mantras." She recently sent an email introducing this initiative, to Ankota customers, but I thought it would be helpful to share some of her Mantras here as well:
 
I want to share a personal story with you.  A story about how Covid-19 has personally affected my family. I started thinking about this while working on a community project called A Home Care Community, a space designed to share thoughts and best practices about home care.
 
Our newly updated Covid-19 resource page (that you can find here), also inspired me to tell my story.  While this story is personal, it speaks to the challenges that the home care community faces daily and will continue to face. So here we go...
 

A Story to Share

On May 1, my dad lost his battle to Covid-19. April 13th he went to the local hospital in Southern Illinois and by the end of the day he was moved to a large hospital in St. Louis, MO. They were monitoring his breathing - breathing that he described as pieces of glass in his chest. The next evening he went on a ventilator, after a few weeks of unwavering hope from my mother, brother and I, my dad lost his battle.
 
During these long, treacherous weeks of my dad's hospitalization, some of our seemingly biggest concerns were what would dad's recovery look like after the prolonged use of the ventilator and the long term effects of the virus we learn more about daily.
 
The questions we didn't get answers to, were, what is the road for his muscles to recover? What assisted devises would he be on short term/long term? Would my mom be able to take care of him on her own or would he need to be in a rehab facility? We personally didn't get the opportunity to answer these questions, but the home care community that I am part of will be deeply involved with these answers.

My family's story is not unique and unfortunately more and more families will experience the same story as Covid-19 continues to develop. I have spent the last several months struggling to understand my dad's fate with Covid-19. To be honest, it has incapacitated me for a while - conversations about him happen daily, but reality never sets in.  I may never fully comprehend the outcome, but I'm now ready to end my silence.

I do not have the solution to what home care will look like in the post-Covid era.  A step towards the solution, however, is to fully understand the problem and the ramifications.  If we have been preparing to support the large Baby Boom generation for general home care needs with a limited pool of caregivers before the pandemic, how are we going to support this same problem with the challenges brought upon by Covid?
 
The growth opportunities of home care has been a passion of mine for the last several years. The pre-Covid opportunities were large, but the current and post-Covid needs will escalate the home care industry. What questions are you facing as a home care agency? How will you provide support for "recovered" Covid patients? How will this effect your Adult Day Centers, your general home care, your ability to provide enough care?
 
My team and I have built a platform for the home care community to engage together. To discuss things such as:

- What changes have you made since the onset of Covid?
- What changes are you still implementing?
- What additional technology is needed?
- How does this effect your staff?
- How does this effect your client's care?

The questions are overwhelming, but it’s time to make sure we are prepared to answer the difficult questions in order to find the solutions needed.
 
Please join me in conversations of how we tackle Covid-19 as Home Care agencies, both now and in the future.
 

Today's Call to Action

 Check out A Home Care Community and if you feel inspired, become a member! The conversation pages are for you as well.  Dig into previous conversations or start your own. You can also share your solutions to the questions listed above in this conversation.
 
Also, please Save the Date: September 28th at noon EST for our upcoming webinar featuring Home Care experts who will share how to save on office expenses.
 
With hope and gratitude,
 
Sara Moore, Chief Operating Officer
Ankota
 
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Ankota provides software to improve the delivery of care outside the hospital, focusing on efficiency and care coordination. Ankota's primary focus is on Care Transitions for Readmission avoidance and on management of Private Duty non-medical home care. To learn more, please visit www.ankota.com or contact us.

 

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