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Reimagining Home Care: The Future of Caregiving with Bob Roth

The home care industry is on the verge of a major transformation. With the aging population rapidly growing and workforce shortages intensifying, innovative solutions are needed now more than ever. In this episode of Home Care Heroes and Day Service Stars, host Ken Accardi speaks with Bob Roth, an industry veteran and leader at Cypress Home Care, about the future of home care and how technology, collaboration, and new models of care can help agencies thrive.

 

The Aging Population and Workforce Crisis

The demographics of aging in America are shifting dramatically:

  • The 65+ population is expected to double by 2050.
  • The 85+ population will quadruple in the coming years.
  • The birth rate in the U.S. is declining, meaning fewer younger workers are available to fill caregiving roles.

With demand for care skyrocketing and fewer caregivers available, home care agencies must find ways to do more with less. Bob Roth emphasizes that the old model of caregiving—where one caregiver serves one client at a time—may no longer be sustainable.


Building Trust: The Key to Thriving in Home Care

Home care organizations need to establish and maintain trust with both their clients and their caregivers. Bob highlights two essential strategies for building credibility:

1. Hiring the Right People

  • Quality matters. The best caregivers provide not just personal assistance but also compassion and reliability.
  • Thorough screening is non-negotiable. A single bad hire can damage an agency's reputation.
  • Generational differences in work ethic must be understood and addressed.

2. Becoming a Recognized Expert

  • Home care providers should be active in their local communities.
  • Volunteering and joining advisory boards (such as the Alzheimer’s Association or state aging councils) establish credibility.
  • Public relations and human-interest stories can highlight success and build awareness.

Bob emphasizes that home care agencies must differentiate themselves in a crowded market by showing genuine expertise and commitment to their communities.


Embracing AI and Automation in Caregiver Hiring

One of the most revolutionary ways home care agencies can address staffing shortages is by leveraging technology. Cypress Home Care has transformed its hiring process by incorporating AI-driven automation.

How Cypress Home Care Uses AI in Recruitment

  1. Dynamic Job Postings:

    • Job listings are automatically refreshed daily on 16-18 job boards to stay at the top of search results.
  2. AI-Powered Resume Screening:

    • Machine learning filters applications based on location, experience, and skills, reducing manual effort.
  3. 10-Minute AI Interviews:

    • Applicants complete a short video interview, where AI analyzes their responses, looking for keywords related to empathy and caregiving skills.
    • The AI system summarizes and transcribes each interview for hiring managers.
  4. Automated Document Collection:

    • New hires upload their certifications, IDs, and background check documents via a mobile app.
    • AI organizes and stores these documents in the company’s HR system, eliminating hours of administrative work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73f1qTZ0czE

Results: Faster Hiring, Better Caregivers

By automating repetitive and time-consuming hiring tasks, Cypress Home Care has:

  • Reduced hiring time from 3-4 weeks to just 4-5 days.
  • Saved 120-150 hours per month in recruitment-related work.
  • Hired high-quality caregivers more efficiently, ensuring better matches for clients.

This AI-driven hiring model allows staff to focus on relationship-building rather than administrative work.


Innovations in Home Care Delivery

Beyond hiring, new models of care are emerging to address caregiver shortages and rising costs. Bob Roth highlights three major innovations:

1. AI-Powered Virtual Assistants

  • Sensei AI devices are installed in clients' homes.
  • They use speech recognition to detect falls, mobility changes, and even early signs of a urinary tract infection (UTI).
  • Alerts are sent to caregivers and families, reducing the need for round-the-clock in-person care.

2. Remote Care Planning and AI-Driven Intake

  • All client phone calls are now transcribed and summarized by AI.
  • AI automatically drafts a preliminary care plan based on intake conversations.
  • Care managers fine-tune these AI-generated plans, saving time and improving accuracy.

3. On-Demand and Fractional Care Services

  • Traditionally, home care agencies required a minimum of 4-hour shifts.
  • Cypress Home Care now offers shorter, on-demand visits, such as:
    • Morning routine assistance (1 hour)
    • Evening medication reminders (30 minutes)
    • Standby assist during showers
    • Transportation to doctor appointments
  • This model allows one caregiver to serve multiple clients, increasing efficiency.

Collaboration: The Key to Innovation

Bob emphasizes that small home care agencies must collaborate to survive in an industry dominated by large franchises.

Key Partnerships for Growth

  • Technology companies (e.g., HelloHire, Homecare Pro) help automate administrative tasks.
  • Healthcare organizations and advisory boards help agencies gain credibility.
  • Elder law firms, financial advisors, and long-term care insurance providers serve as valuable referral partners.

By working together and sharing resources, smaller agencies can remain competitive and continue providing high-quality care.


Final Thoughts: The Future of Home Care

The home care industry is at a critical turning point. With rising demand and shrinking caregiver availability, agencies must embrace innovation to thrive.

Key Takeaways:

  1. Hiring must be smarter. AI-driven recruitment can reduce hiring times and improve caregiver quality.
  2. Trust is essential. Agencies should invest in relationships, volunteer in their communities, and become known as industry experts.
  3. New care models are necessary. AI monitoring, fractional care services, and technology-driven intake can help serve more clients with fewer caregivers.
  4. Collaboration is the future. Home care agencies should partner with technology providers and healthcare organizations to stay ahead.

The demand for home care isn’t going away—but the way it’s delivered must evolve. As Bob Roth puts it:
"If we stay static, we will become obsolete."

Now is the time to reimagine caregiving and prepare for the future.


Home Care Heroes and Day Service Stars is produced and sponsored by Ankota - If you provide services that enable older or disabled people to continue living at home , Ankota can provide you the software to successfully run your agency. Visit us at https://www.ankota.com. 

TRANSCRIPT:

Bob Roth has led Cypress Home Care for 21 years, so he has a lot of history, but he also is really thinking hard about the future and he knows that in order for our industry to live, that we need to figure out how to provide services with fewer caregivers. He's done some amazing things in Cypress. I think you're really going to enjoy this. 

Welcome to the Home Care Heroes and Day Service Stars podcast. If you provide services to keep older or disabled people living at home, then this podcast is for you. Now, here's your host; Ken Accardi. 

00:29

Well, hi everybody and welcome to this episode of Home Care Heroes and Day Service Stars. Today we have a great guest. His name is Bob Roth. I've actually seen Rob around, I guess I've been in home care for 10 years and he was there like in maybe the first conference I ever went to. And I think Bob has actually been around more like 30 years if I read his bio correctly. And we're going to talk about really preparing for the future of home care. It's going to be a great topic for today. So welcome Bob Roth. How are you?

00:58

Hey Ken, thank you. It's great to join you. And I think the first time I met you was through Tim Rowan. And I think it was one of his conferences. So it was probably every bit of 10 years ago. So I've been in the industry personally 21 years. My family's been in it almost 31 years. My brother Joe ran the business for 10 years and I've been here at the last 21 years. So. Incredible. Yeah, yeah. What a tenure and what a legacy.

01:27

All right, so let's just jump right in. I would say, I mean, you know, what we were starting to, or what we were talking about right before we started recording was you were saying, like, why it's such a great time to be in home care. And, but that there's maybe a little, little tiny problem that we have to solve as a result of this great time in home care. So why don't you just kind of characterize that for everybody? So let me set the stage and say why it's a great time to be in home care, and it really is about doing the math.

01:56

And if you do the math and you really take a look at it, the 65-year-old population between now and 2050, and that's in 25 years, is going to double. The 85-year-old population between now and 2025 is going to nearly quadruple. And in order to sustain our population at 335 million in America, every child rearing female needs to have 2.1 children. And right now, we're at 1.7 and declining.

02:25

The opportunities are boundless and it's really exciting to be here. But we have really two huge headwinds that are hitting us and they're hitting us really hard. I don't have to really go into details about workforce, but workforce is one of the biggest challenges we have. And it's surely the numbers. We don't have a number enough people behind us as I shared, but also, you know, we have a different work ethic that we're seeing and trying to develop and trying to get

02:56

let's put it this way, an understanding so we can establish culture. And that is with the Gen Zs. And I don't know if you know it or not, Ken, but the generation behind Gen Zs is called Gen A for Gen Alpha. So they're going from Z to A now. So I'm sure after that it'll be Gen B maybe, but really to get these folks really in tune with the needs of our society and really our communities.

03:24

But when you really sit down and you really think about it, there's no better time to be in the space because the need is there. We collectively need to figure out how we can reimagine home care to deliver it in a way that is very different from the way we did it yesterday. I love that. Okay, so I guess we're gonna get into some of the things you're doing and some of the things that you think we all should be doing and thinking about, but I guess.

03:51

I'm thinking ahead and I think you're, and I know because I saw you at a conference recently that you're doing some really cool things with AI and some technology, but fundamentally every home care organization, especially with the prices that people are paying today and that kind of thing, you need to establish trust. And as you're kind of changing the status quo and looking at new things, what are you doing? I mean, just in general and in light of the changes that are coming to...

04:21

establish and maintain trust, I'm sorry, establish and maintain trust with, you know, existing and potential clients. Well, I think first, none of us should ever lose sight of the caregivers. And if we have some home health people or hospice people that are listening, clinicians that we're hiring, it's our people first. We can never compromise on that. And as much as maybe, you know, I...

04:49

talked maybe somewhat negatively about this generation coming up. There are some really good people in that generation and beyond. So what we need to do is we need to be mindful of the people that we hire. We cannot at all take any shortcuts and make any exceptions because we all know that one bad review, one bad outcome can bring you down. So the quality of the people you hire,

05:19

and the training that you give them is, it's imperative. Because today, the cost, as we talked about earlier, is so exorbitantly high, people are expecting when they're paying upwards to $40 an hour, that they're gonna get concierge type service. So I think that's first and foremost. Second, I really think that people need to really understand that you really need to be establishing yourself as an expert in your community.

05:48

And being an expert's really important and it's not an easy thing. I mean, we've been doing it for almost 31 years and me almost 21 now, or I'm in my 21st year. But establishing yourself as an expert by sitting on boards, I'm on the attorney general's task force against senior abuse. I got appointed by our governor to be on the governor's advisory council on aging.

06:15

been involved with the Alzheimer's Association, I was on their board. So volunteering is really important. And I really encourage people to get involved in their community because once you get involved in your community, people can learn and who you are about the trust that you bring is really important. As far as being an expert also, I always invite people to do more public relations type activity. I mean, people really love human interest stories.

06:42

And guess what? Some great human interest stories. The clients that we care for have lived incredible lives. And each one of them is like a good book. So you know what? Creating these human interest stories, whether you have a client that is celebrating their 107th birthday, like we did last month or two months ago, or you have a client that may have decided to get married late in life. I mean, whatever those things are that can really attract people.

07:13

Those are great media stories. And guess what? It's free because the media loves human interest stories and it helps put your name out there. The last thing I'll share, and I could talk about this forever Ken, is that as far as trust, you need to really establish trust and it's not so much calling on the acute and post-acute centers, but working with some of the wealth managers and CPAs and elder law firms and...

07:40

long-term care insurance folks, foundations, establishing yourself there is really important, especially as the cost of our services have gone up exponentially. I hope that's given your listeners some really good ideas on how to establish trust in your market. Yeah, I mean, just drilling down on that for a second. So, you know, your company, your family has a 30-year legacy in the industry, you know, you're taking care of.

08:05

prominent folks, large numbers of folks. But let's say that I just started out and I have taken care of 30 clients and I'm very proud of that. I grew from 10 just a couple of years ago. But I don't have that long-term reputation. So I think everything you said with the human interest stories and all the positivity in the event and things like that make sense. But you talked about some pretty big appointments like the Alzheimer's committee, the statewide committees and things like that.

08:35

If someone is a little bit more junior in their career, but they want to start doing that volunteering, what is there more at the local level? I mean, is there council on aging? What are the places where they could get their name out there on a more micro scale, I guess, to establish themselves? It really depends on where they are. If you're in a rural community, it's going to be really hard to get involved in some of

09:05

associations, whether it be Parkinson's or Alzheimer's Association, there may not be an area agency in your market. But if you are in those locations, volunteering is certainly a big contribution to, you know, really helping establish yourself, putting forth the time and having a seat at the table is really important. The other part is, you know, one of the things that we always need to be mindful is of advocacy.

09:32

And, you know, legislators are out there and they don't quite understand what home care is all about. And, you know, there's an old adage that if you don't have a seat at the table, you might find yourself on the menu. So I think it's really important, whether it be the the county, you know, council or the town council or the city or even the state, trying to get involved in them because you know, if legislation does come up,

09:59

they'll know who you are and they will absolutely contact you to get you content and really understand maybe the position that one might need to take as it relates to caring for an elderly person. But I think first and foremost is really getting out there and volunteering and making yourself known by the efforts that you're putting in. Yeah, perfect. I love that. All right. So let's let's kind of refocus for a minute.

10:29

demographic numbers of, you know, we're not, today we don't even have enough caregivers to fill you know, all of the requests that we have. And then we have, you know, we're doubling the population of people over 65, which I don't think is the important metric, but the one that you said of people over 85 or people over 80. I mean, you know, 65 year olds are pretty, pretty darn healthy and, you know, a lot of cases, but, you know, 80 year olds, you know, they're probably to the point where they need care. We're gonna have four times as many.

10:58

people over 80. I think I saw statistics said today we have around 12 million, we're going to go to 50 million people over 80. And I think you use the statistic over 85. So it's not going to be the exact same equation where it's like, okay, we just hire more caregivers and that type of thing. There has to be some...

11:20

some technology infusing in there. And I guess one thing that you've always, I've heard you speak in conferences, you've always said, hey, you have to keep your finger on the pulse of technology and figure out when it's the right time to apply them. So what kind of advice could you give us in that area? So on the recipient side, and I'm on the tail end of the baby boomer. So I'm gonna tell you, I won't be taking the message very kindly when my daughters tell me, hey, dad,

11:49

you need a caregiver. And I don't have to tell you, the baby boomers have reshaped all of our communities, reshaped our economy. We are much healthier than the last generation and even the generation before. But you know what, we're living a lot longer and each of us has our own set of deficits. And we all know that dementia and Parkinson's and neuromuscular disorders are growing quite.

12:17

quite substantially. And part of that's because we're living longer. The other part of it could be environmental or other reasons. But I just want to say positioning care to a baby boomer or younger, we need to sometimes think about how to position it. And I think positioning it as more of a personal assistant rather than a caregiver. Because the caregiver gives that connotation that someone's invariably doing personal care, whether it be wiping butts

12:47

Helping someone shower when, you know what? Someone like myself just needs somebody to help me stay organized. Remind me to take my medications. Help me prepare meals and making sure I'm eating my meals. You know, and maybe laundry or transportation. So there's so many things that we do that are so not clinical. So I want people that are listening, it's that mindset. And just know that the mindset of this population that we're in right now that we are caring for.

13:16

And it's crazy having done this for 30, almost 31 years, you know, everything has changed because the demographics of the care recipients are very different. So I wanna leave it at that. So talk about technology. Technology for a home care agency, it's an imperative today. You know, you and I had a conversation before we started this podcast. And that is that we need to remember that we are in the human business and relationships are everything.

13:44

You know, I always ask my people when they're talking to a referral partner or somebody out there that's an influencer. Did you establish a relationship? And what does that mean? That means, have you established something in common with them? Do you both like the Arizona Diamondbacks? Do you both like dogs? You know, do you both have children and you talked about children? So it's so important to do that. And I think people lose sight of that. So relationships are really important, but

14:12

With technology, we can do a lot of stuff that is human, but we can replace it with technology. And what do I mean? You know, there's a lot of repetitive tasks and redundancies that humans do all the time. And they do this and they do it invariably, but it really consumes too much time. And it takes time from having authentic and real relationships with people and contact with humans. So,

14:40

What we've done at Cypress, and I know others have done very similar things, I just came back from Home Care 100. I got introduced to a couple other new innovations that I'm gonna think about and bringing on at Cypress, but I'm here to share with you Ken and your listeners today. I have saved, and I am saving somewhere between 120 and 150 hours a month on my whole recruitment side. So let me explain what we're doing. So Cypress Home Care in its previous iteration,

15:10

Prior to 2020, when we were hiring caregivers, we went through the old school way of doing the phone interview, having them come in and interview in person. And then after interviewing in person, if they really met our requirements or our needs, then what we would do is we would have them come in for orientation. And then the last phase would be to...

15:37

meet with our schedulers because anyone running a home care company knows that your schedulers are the ones that run your business. They're the ones that need to know who those caregivers are so that they can take care of my fictitious client, Mrs. Abramson, and they know what Mrs. Abramson's needs are. So the scheduler has the final call. And at Cypress, what we did, the last call was you would get handed a drug screen and then you'd go to your drug screen. We would get the results almost immediately.

16:06

And then we're ready to put you out on a shift. So in the new world we live in today, I have postings on 16 to 18 job boards. You ready for this? Yeah. You're going to want to take notes. And your listeners are going to take notes too. Perfect. All right, so we list on 16 to 18 job boards every single day. We use automation to change those listings. We use automation to change those listings because anyone that knows if you're

16:34

If your listing is static, it drops. If it's dynamic and it keeps changing, it keeps rising to the top. So having a dynamic ad is so important. Then we have machines that are actually taking a look at every one of those applications. And we have criteria that are required. Obviously, you need to live in our geo. Obviously, you need to have experience. Obviously, we all know we get duplicates, especially with Indeed.

17:03

I got machines that are looking through all of that. And I have a first phase interview and that's a 10 minute video interview. I partnered and I've collaborated with a company called Hello Hire that's helped me with this. And what they're doing is they're the ones that are using machine learning, going through all those resumes, or I'm sorry, applications. They also, we built a Calendee type application so that the...

17:31

recipient of the invitation, the interview can choose what time to interview. Now ready for this? The interview is only 10 minutes, minutes long. And I want to know your why. Tell me why you want to be a caregiver, why you are a caregiver. The average length of that interview is about four minutes long. It's never, because one or two things happen.

18:00

First, we're looking to see how you look. Just like I'm looking at you, Ken, man. You're on the top of the tower, down in downtown Boston. I like the way you look. I don't believe you like the way I look. I'm looking for someone that makes a great appearance. I don't want someone to Mike Tyson tattoo and all kinds of piercings all over them and half their head shaved. And my clients who are paying concierge pricing is not gonna let you in their house. That's number one. Number two, I get to hear you speak.

18:29

And if you have a hard time with the English language, that's not going to work either. So I can dismiss you rather quickly. And my HR manager has the authorization to do that and just say, this isn't going to be a good fit, but thank you very much. If they pass the I and hearing test, then we're diving deep into your why. And we're wanting to understand. If you pass this one, by the way, the video interview is all transcribed and summarized. And in the summary,

18:59

We're looking for certain keywords, obviously, air, we're looking for compassion, we're looking for empathy, all of those things are in that summary that we're looking for. And guess what? HelloHire also makes a recommendation if they think we should move on or not. You still can override that, but you know, if you can't pass that, by the way, all that stuff, we have built an API interface with our enterprise software solution. We use AccessCare, and it starts.

19:28

it starts populating a caregiver profile that is inactive, but we start populating that. So once you get past that first interview, if you get invited to do a second, you also get a text message or an email from us requesting your documents. We're requesting your CPR, first aid, your driver's license, your background check information we're asking for. We're asking for your fingerprint clearance card.

19:58

Every single one of the caregivers today have one of these. They have a smart phone. And they're uploading it. They're uploading it to that same profile I talked about. When you get to 80% of the documents uploaded, you're invited for a second interview. Now, the second interview is far more detailed. Now we're finding out what days, what geographies you want to work in.

20:25

What's your experience level is? Because we got that on the application. So now we're doing a deeper dive into your dementia experience, your high lift and transfer experience, working with someone to traumatic brain injury. So we're getting all of that now. And we're really getting to know who that caregiver is. If you pass that task, then you get invited to an orientation. So the first interview is digitally, the second one is digitally, the third one is orientation. The orientation is on ground.

20:55

We do at least one a week, sometimes two. We try to keep it in small groups. And at the orientation is my recruiting manager that spends all the time with the interviews and stuff. And I have a scheduler there. Sometimes I have two, but I have at least one there. And she can't make it there for the beginning. At least she'll be there towards the end and get a chance to meet that person. And guess what? The scheduler makes the call. So here we are.

21:26

Five years later, we had a four phase interviewing process, phone call, interview in person, orientation, meet with scheduler. Now we have digital interview, 10 minute, second 20 minute interview, third orientation, and then meet with a scheduler. We still have a four phase process, but we took our company and you ready for this?

21:53

I know you knew we were on the HonorCare platform. We were on it for four and a half years. We came off of January 31st, so we're almost at our one year anniversary. And on February 1st, we had 18 caregivers. There were these radical response caregivers we had because Honor could not fulfill staffing these shifts. So we had our own caregivers. So by the end of September, we had 167 caregivers and this method helped us. Now I spoke at the very beginning

22:23

of our dialogue here today. And I talked about how we're saving 120 to 150 hours. How are we doing this? Well, not only the fact that the machine stuff is taking a look at all those applicants, not only the fact that the machine is actually going ahead and summarizing and transcribing those interviews. The other thing that we're doing is all that documentation.

22:53

It used to take my team so much time to scan, whether it be a license, first aid, we're scanning that and moving those files up to the employee file. We don't have to do that anymore. The machines do all that. So we're much more efficient and we're working on such smaller margins because of the cost being so high. So we've embraced innovation like nobody's business. So the caregiver piece and the caregiver acquisition piece,

23:22

funnel, you know, bringing caregivers in, it was full of a lot of friction in the old school and many of people might be listening here today. It used to take me two to three weeks, sometimes four weeks before I could bring a caregiver on. When you talk about background checks and all the stuff that needs to, I can get caregivers now on in four to five days by getting this funnel with the least amount of friction. So, and good quality caregiver. So I want to go back to when you said trust. I mean, you can't

23:51

You cannot compromise trust. I mean, you need to hire the best. And one thing your audience needs to remember, when you see that person on that screen for the first time and you see them in person, that's the best they're gonna look. And if you're not happy with the way they look, then just know that that's probably someone you don't wanna hire. Yeah, fantastic. I love the fact that, you know, here we are, we're talking about, you know, modern technology and artificial intelligence, and you're not.

24:21

You're not doing it in a way that is dehumanizing what you're doing and in your approach. As a matter of fact, what you're doing is you're taking away the mundane repetitive tasks as you said, that we're taking a lot of your time and preventing you from having that human interaction. You're actually getting more human interaction because it's not like you guys aren't working that 120 to 150 hours a week. You're just reapplying that 120 to 150 hours a week to do more of the things we talked about in the beginning.

24:51

personal human relationships and being able to go into that orientation day where you're really there and you're committed to meeting those people and really making a great call and all that kind of thing. I think that's wonderful. Now, having said that, I mean, you kind of downplay yourself, but I mean, you are getting the upwards of $40.

25:16

clients, you can afford to hire people who have the experience with traumatic brain injury and have the experience with various things. And so I'd imagine that a lot of the candidates you're seeing have been there and done that before and that sort of thing. And even if you're taking somebody who hasn't had the formal experience, you're probably looking definitely for the fact that they've provided care for a family caregiver and

25:45

and those types of things. So I'm sure that you're doing all that well. But I guess like in this big question of, we do have a future where we're gonna have, let's say, let's take the above 80 year old folks where this can be four times the number of people to hire. And there's this declining population of the US in general, but of people who are gonna be of caregiver age and that sort of thing. I could definitely see the efficiency in hiring and that keeps you ahead of the game,

26:15

Like, do you see any technologies that are going to be able to have you care for multiple people with fewer people? Or maybe some sensing technologies in the home? Or what are your thoughts on any of those types of approaches looking forward? So first and foremost, I think it's important for us to remember, especially as small home care agencies, in order to innovate, we have to collaborate.

26:43

I mentioned the company HelloHire, it's helping me with the digital interviews and the summaries and exporting and going through all those applications. I also have a partnership with a company called Homecare Pro and I was talking about the data, all that information that's coming through and we're uploading it. I think it's important for us to find collaborating partners that really help us deliver and help us.

27:11

expand the care that we're doing. So there are a couple things that we're doing really differently, Ken. And that is first and foremost, every single one of the phone calls that comes in now today, and this is evolving right now. I'll have this thing finalized before we start Q2 here in this year. But the beginning phase is already working. So I am transcribing and summarizing every single inbound and outbound call for us. Any intake that comes in,

27:39

Kind of like what we're doing on the interviewing side. And it's actually the technology that we're using is enabling us to begin a care plan before the care coordinator goes out into the home. We're using that automation again to eliminate redundancies, repetitive tasks, but also to get it really clear. I mean, the humans make mistakes. Humans aren't able to...

28:05

100% may be transcribed with what the client or prospective client is saying. So we're able to capture everything from that phone call. The second phase that we're doing, so we're beginning a preliminary plan and my care coordinators get that right now and they augment that. But we're working with a company now right now to utilize our devices when we go into the home and have the device actually be listening. We're going to ask for permission from the client to be able to have that and turn it

28:35

and be able to turn it on and be able to have that session transcribed and building that care plan. Don't get me wrong, there's going to be human intervention on doing this. And I'm suspecting at the end of the day, we'll have about 70 to 80% of it right. And then my care coordinators will be able to tweak it and evolve it. The thing about it is when we go into the home can.

29:01

And I can tell you from experience doing this work, when I used to do it on paper, there were 16 pieces of paper that I had to have the client sign. I had to fill it in and I would be in on a client's homes on average about an hour and 15 or an hour and 20 minutes. Sometimes it would be less, sometimes it'd be more, but half the time they'd be looking to the top of my head. And I wanna go back to really talking about being intentional, being authentic and being real and being relational.

29:31

in the way we do our business. So this affords us that opportunity. It affords us the opportunity to capture everything. And certainly today, a lot of times we go into the homes and they have not made their final decision yet. They're interviewing other home care companies. And if you're able to look at them in their eyes and you're able to be intentional with them, how cool is that? So I wanted to take that piece first. So we also partnered with a company called Sensei AI. So Sensei AI has

30:00

these virtual care assistants that we install in the home. Because care now is so expensive, people are trying to figure out how to do more with less. And how do we establish that doing more with less? Well, there are some clients that may be able to sleep through the night that we really don't need to provide care during the non-day parts, but day part is something that's really important. My family has invested in this.

30:29

It's cost us a lot of money. I'm talking right now, we're two years into it and we probably have 50 or 60 K into it. But what we do is we offer this to our clients for free. We say, look, we know our cost of our services are really high, but you know, and I know you want to do more with less, but we're going to install this in the home. It is HIPAA compliant. It's PHI compliant.

30:54

It is listening and it is using artificial intelligence to discern changes in one's condition. So if somebody, you know, is frequently going to the bathroom and an alert is sent and possible UTI, we need to intervene. If someone's gate changes, yes, these virtual care assistants can hear their footsteps and can hear their gate changing. We're going to get an alert. God forbid someone falls. We've had that happen and nobody's there.

31:24

Cause care is not there 24 seven, we can respond. So it's innovations like that. So the last piece I'll share with you is we're re-imagining care. Now we're providing care in communities. I was not that big a home care agency in communities. I mean, we never went after these CCRCs. And for our listeners, they may not know what CCRC stands for, but it's continuing care retirement communities.

31:53

And in those communities, you have independent living, you have assisted living, you have a skilled nursing, and you have lastly, memory care in a lot of these locations. Every executive director will tell you today, the ones that have been around for a long time, will tell you that people that are admitting into their independent living side are at a much higher acuity level than they've ever been before. They all have deficits. They're waiting too long.

32:19

And also just know that 70% or more are solo aging. Their widows are widowers or maybe they never got married. So you have a lot of solo agers that are going to these communities. The other thing you need to know is that's the part of these CCRCs that they make the most money. They don't have to provide a whole lot of services to them. You know, there are some housekeeping food service and that's really about it. They're not providing any care. So today they're accepting.

32:49

more of these people and they'll tell you one of the biggest challenges they have is I have one executive director referred to all these independent caregivers that come into their communities as fleas. The fleas, these independent community, these independent contractors, they are not bonded insured. They're not vetted on check. They don't have workers comp. And they, meaning the executive directors, feel like they're at risk every single day because

33:18

every one of those residents in their communities of vulnerable adult. And liability will definitely call them as something bad were to happen. And they can't really vet them out. So why not partner with a home care agency like ours? So what we're doing now is we're doing on demand fractional care, and we're doing care by the way. In the old time we used to live in, we would try to get at least four hours of care. That was a minimum for caregivers to make it worth their time. That's too hard today.

33:48

Who, you know, these people that live in these communities don't necessarily need four hours all at once. They may only need an hour in the morning and a half an hour in the evening, or they may just need transportation to the doctor's appointment. Or many of them have really poor hygiene because they're scared to take a shower or bath by themselves. God forbid something were to happen. We'll send a caregiver up to do a standby assist or just be in the apartment or condo to be there to be supportive of them. So

34:16

We have to reimagine care. I know I went on probably a lot longer than you were expecting, but these are the innovations that we need to do to be able to keep up with the demand. Demand's not going to change. We have to change. If we stay static, we're going to be obsolete. All right. Well, what a great note to close on. And I guess, I mean, just to summarize, we've really hit a lot of ground. I mean, we talked about technology, but keeping it human, getting the best caregivers, I mean, so many things. And then just

34:45

redefining models of care. I love the idea of being able to not have just one person providing for one, for one caregiver providing for one client in one home at a time. I mean, when you're able to do this, and I guess maybe an evolution of that would be proximate neighbors. It's like, okay, it's easier in a CCRC when they're all there, but if you could deploy a caregiver who is

35:15

dealing with multiple people in the neighborhood, then that's a way of having one caregiver, work with multiple clients and kind of grow your base and provide for the needs. And so really, this has been very, very eye-opening. I think you guys are doing some very innovative things. I did know at one point, I think I saw a video that you had moved to the Honor platform and I wasn't aware that you had moved off and that you rebuilt, but it sounds like you've rebuilt. And in one year you've...

35:43

You've had incredible growth and you've really also put together the back office that you've really dreamed of. And so kudos to you on that. And thank you so much for being here on Home Care Heroes and Day Service Stars. You know, I just want to leave your listeners with us. You know, it's collaboration that's going to really solve for the future. It's collaborating with other home care agencies, but it's collaborating with people like Ancoda Software too. I mean.

36:12

These other partners I talked about, I mean, you know, we can't do what we do without partnerships like with you and others that are out there. That's the only way we're going to get through this, especially small companies like us who, you know, really up against these big franchise orders that have a lot of money that they can throw out and do a lot of, you know, really fancy marketing and stuff. But, you know, for us, we need to think smarter. We need to think what the future is going to look like. And we need to make sure.

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that we understand that what's new today more than likely will be old tomorrow. So we've got to be on top of our game. Ken, thank you for the opportunity. It was great to see you. All right, thanks everybody. You bet. 

Thanks for joining us today on the Home Care Heroes and Days Service Stars podcast, produced by Ankota. You can listen to back episodes by visiting 4 That's the number four, then the words, 4HomeCareHeroes.com.

 

 

 

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