Hey everyone. Steve “The Hurricane” here. And with today’s episode of “A Drink With The Hurricane,” we’re gonna talk about managing our caregivers so that they stay with us for the long-term. Cheers!
So by now, I’m sure you’ve heard about Momentum. Momentum is the hottest thing since sliced bread when it comes to the home care industry. It is a course where I partnered up with Anne-Lise Gere from Gere Consulting. Six modular lessons, six weeks of classroom hours, and a certification certifying you and/or your recruiter as a recruitment and retention specialist. Sign up for that course right now. For the price of what it costs you to acquire two caregivers, you can be certified and solve the biggest issues revolving around the home care industry. Click the link below, sign up for it right now and blow away the competition.
Now, with that said, the reason why we have such a hard time retaining our caregivers is because of our practices. The industry as a whole, it is a problem because we don’t manage our caregivers. We remotely manage them. Meaning we send them text messages, we send them emails, we might even occasionally do a Zoom call with our caregivers. But the biggest problem that we have with the industry and our ability to retain caregivers is the simple fact that we don’t manage our caregivers properly.
When you think about every single position in home care and think about every other business pretty much on the planet, aside from being an independent contractor, the employer, the boss, the supervisor, the manager, whoever is the person overseeing entry-level position, entry-level workers, sees their workers all day, every day, all shift, every shift, every time they arrive at work and when they leave. But home care is very unique in the sense that we don’t really see our caregivers. The caregiver comes in for an interview. The caregiver comes in for orientation. The caregiver then probably never really steps foot in the office ever again from that point forward because we do everything virtually and digitally. Direct deposit, so they don’t need to come to the office to pick up their check. Supplies, we can drop over at the house, but maybe they’ll come into the office.
When we start up a case, the caregiver meets us at the house. They don’t meet us at the office. Though that’s its own issue. And in Momentum, I go through starting up a case properly to overcome that. We don’t really see our caregivers except for every 60 to 90 days, whatever our state says we have to is when we go out and we do a field visit and we might see the caregiver then. This is the reason why caregivers walk off cases.
This is the reason why caregivers disappear and stop answering calls and they take a job somewhere else. You may not realize this, but most caregivers that work at home care, this is their first job after getting certified. So, think about it from that perspective for a moment. Right? Caregiver spends two weeks, 40 hours a week getting certified as a caregiver. Now, they as a certification, they pass the test that says that they know how to take care of somebody, but do they really know how to take care of somebody? Because what do we do? We then get somebody who has a stroke, has dementia, had a hip replacement.
And all of a sudden that two weeks of training that certified this caregiver is thorough and they were shown what to do. But then by us, the home care company, we meet the caregiver at the house. We create a care plan for them and go over it. Spend 30 minutes in the house. And then we leave and expect this caregiver who just got out of school to know exactly what to do for this patient who has a lot of needs and expect her to show up every single day at the beginning of her shift, take care of the patient and contact us if she has an issue with it. That’s why caregivers walk off cases. That’s why caregivers leave the industry because they’re not given support. It really is as simple as that. Now, how do we overcome this?
Well, it’s interesting, in the “Home Care Pulse,” I think it was 2019, I actually wrote an article for “Home Care Pulse.” If you have the 2019 edition, I wrote it called “It’s All About The Touches.” And I talk about how often you should visit your caregivers in the field, how you should start up a case by having the caregiver meet you at the office and you drive to the case together, you build them up, you should see your caregivers, I’m gonna give it to you right now, here’s the answer, every seven to 10 days. Every seven to 10, not business days, seven to 10 days. So, that could be every week. And then every third week, it’s every other week, right?
So, it’s like three times a month in a four-week month, you should see your caregivers at the house with the patient. That’s the right amount of supervision. Now, this is a position that you create in your organization. And in Momentum, I go over all of this. How much should you pay the person? Who should they be? All this is in that course Momentum. This is why I’m telling you to up for it. It’s a no-brainer to sign up for this course. We’ve literally sold like 80 of them at this point. 80 people have invested the $1,500 sale price of getting this course because it’s worth it, right? But again, I’m telling you that you gotta create a position. I call it a care coordinator. It’s a supervisory role. And their role is to be the liaison between the business, the office, and the caregiver in the field and give the support to the caregivers.
When you look at the top 10 complaints that caregivers have, six out of the top 10 complaints have to do with communication breakdowns. They don’t feel supported. And I can’t blame a caregiver. I really can’t. Like I said, it’s a two-week certification to caregiver then they go. And then they go through your orientation. The first time they physically touch an actual patient in many instances is that first patient that we assign them to. So, do your homework. Take a look at your numbers.
When you got… I had a person telling me a couple of weeks ago, who signed up for Momentum, but before they signed up for Momentum, they told me they hired and started up four caregivers in the month of November and three out of those four caregivers are no longer working for them already. And I said, “Yeah, it’s because of the lack of support.” Those caregivers came right out of school, went right to work on a case, were set up initially in somewhere on the first two or three days on the job, decided, “I can’t do this. I’m not in there.” And then they asked for help and we don’t go out there and see them. We call them trying to solve it over the phone. Care coordination. It’s a position that I had in my company Care Choice.
I came on in ’05 and I wanna say we brought a care coordinator in 2006, end of the year, beginning of 2007, all the way up until I sold the company in 2011. We always had care coordinators. That helped us not only maintain our caregivers and keep them, it helped us to provide a better level of service for our patients, which is the best part of it. And when we took good care of our caregivers and gave them the support that they need, they felt confident to do the job. They wanted to stay with our company. So, our retention rate went through the roof. And because all caregivers talk to each other, they felt more comfortable referring their friends to work for us. And word got out that this is the agency to work for.
And so, if you wanna have those kinds of results from everything that I just said here, sign up for Momentum. It’s the best thing you can do. Get the certification and then dominate your market. Make 2020 your best year yet. I love you guys. Have a happy and safe holiday. This is my last video for 2020. And I’ll talk to you in ’21. I’m gonna continue to give you everything you need to blow away the competition. Mwah. God bless.
