CellTrak Blog

As a caregiver shortage looms over the home care industry, Millennials are increasingly filling the gap. It’s a great solution for building out an agency’s staff, but it often presents an entirely new set of challenges: Agencies now need to figure out how to manage this generation of employees.

The holidays are right around the corner. Although this may be the most wonderful time of the year for many people, for home care and home hospice agencies, the holiday season can mean stress, extra work, and lots of headaches. Staff may not be available for holiday shifts, patients may be lonely, and payroll time-and-a-half requirements can create a major dent to an agency’s bottom line.

What, then, can a busy agency manager do to survive the crazy busy holiday season – and maybe even spread a little good cheer along the way?

If your agency doesn’t yet have a plan for holding onto your most talented caregivers, you could be in trouble. With turnover rates exceeding 65 percent and a potentially disastrous caregiver shortage looming, employee retention is one of the biggest challenges the in-home care industry faces.

As a result, agencies are scrambling to figure out how to make their employees happier, without breaking the budget. And they’re increasingly finding success from a surprising source: Technology.

As the demand for home health care has skyrocketed, the need for home health aides is projected to grow more than 48% between 2012 and 2022. Agencies are struggling to keep up, and increasingly, they’re turning to immigrant workers. In fact, of the approximately 1.4 million home care workers today, nearly 550,000 are immigrants.

While this workforce segment is filling critical vacancies in the industry, it also presents a unique challenge to agency owners: How can agencies successfully manage a workforce of non-native English speakers? How can agencies integrate these diverse backgrounds into a cohesive agency culture?

As an agency owner, growing your business is always top of mind. And yet, making sure your agency stands out and gets noticed by clients and referrers is hard, even for seasoned marketing professionals.

With more seniors wanting to remain in their homes as they age — even during health challenges — emerging mobile health (mHealth) technology is making it happen. Home health agencies can leverage these new tools to improve the services they provide and help clients and their families take a proactive role in seniors’ health and safety.

Effective communication is always important in the home care industry. But when it comes to remote workers, who likely spend a lot of time in the homes of clients but very little time in the office, a solid communication plan becomes essential.

This requires some thought. Not only do you need to keep your home care workers up to speed on agency-related information, you also need to keep them informed on care plans, schedules, and other client-specific details. And yet, when communicating any sensitive personal health information, agencies must be mindful of HIPAA compliance, data ownership, and security.

In the face of these logistical challenges when trying to connect remote workers, it’s easy to let communication suffer. But it doesn’t have to. Let’s look at eight ways you can improve communication with the remote home care workers in your agency.

As the market for home care services continues growing at a rapid clip, agencies are finding it tougher to find and keep qualified caregivers. According to a recent survey by CareInHomes Caregivers, 76% of private duty agencies were looking to hire more caregivers this year, and the trend points to that continuing in 2017. But along with that opportunity come significant challenges. In that same survey, the respondents said their two greatest challenges were:

Have you ever heard someone say, “Well, there are lots of moving pieces”? That’s a typical refrain when they’re trying to describe a complex plan involving multiple groups and goals.

In home care, paperwork is everywhere – between the field and the office and between your agency and all types of third parties. Admission forms, schedules, point-of-care documentation, payroll processing, and care documentation for third parties – paper is often king.