December 20, 2024 • 51 mins
Join us in our final Mastery Circle of 2024 where we share holiday greetings and prep for Christmas. Valerie VanBooven from Approved Senior Network kicks off with housekeeping notes, emphasizing the importance of muting lines to reduce background noise and encourages sharing stories and tips. We also discuss the significant topics of caregiver quality, operations, and experiences from Dawn Fiala and Annette Ziegler. Learn about operational efficiencies and effective documentation to enhance compliance and service quality. Discover creative leave-behind ideas for January and February to engage caregivers and referral sources. Finally, don't miss the announcement—the upcoming Mastery Circle meetings will now be held on Wednesdays starting January 15th!
00:00 Introduction and Holiday Greetings
00:38 Housekeeping and Participation Guidelines
01:43 Team Introductions
03:53 Accessing Past Meetings and Resources
06:52 Important Announcement: Schedule Change
08:24 Reviewing Yearly Performance Metrics
10:09 Compliance and Quality Improvement
24:37 Operational Efficiency Tips
26:49 Handling Quick Starts and Staffing Challenges
28:28 Effective Communication with Clients and Caregivers
31:12 Setting and Achieving Scheduling Goals
32:43 Daily Check-ins and Micro-Management Strategies
35:58 Utilizing Technology and Building Relationships
40:54 Marketing Strategies and Leave Behinds
43:10 Creative Leave Behind Ideas for January and February
48:48 Engaging Referral Sources and Caregivers
50:10 Final Thoughts and Announcements
Continuum Mastery Circle Intro
Visit our website at https://asnhomecaremarketing.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, everybody Happy.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
Friday before Christmas.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
There we go.
Hello everybody.
Okay, hopefully I grabbed theright slideshow here.
It looks like it Everybody'sready for the holiday Getting
close.
Five days, five days.
I'm ready.
I've got everything wrapped.
It's all done Pretty much I'mpretty much ready.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Just a couple little things.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
Happy holidays everybody.
We will get started.
It's December 20th.
This is our last Mastery Circleof the year.
We've got some announcementsand stuff that we'll get to as
we go through here.
Go ahead, Valerie, We'll putyou up for housekeeping.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
Okay, housekeeping, if you're new here or you
haven't been to one of these ina while, we just keep all your
lines muted unless you'retalking, so we don't hear all
the background noise.
Share stories, experiences,tips, ask questions, make
recommendations and tell us whatyou want to know.
It's really nice when you sendus a note, maybe through support
or however you want to send it,and just tell us.
I really wish we could talkmore about and sometimes we've
(01:08):
talked about it, but it's been along time ago or whatever.
So right now, if you were tolog in, which I'll talk about,
you can see everything we'vetalked about through the course
of 2024.
And it might have been a whilesince we covered that, or maybe
we haven't covered what you'rethinking of, but we love
suggestions because, believe itor not, it's a little
challenging to come up with newcool stuff to talk about two
(01:30):
times a month for an hour.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
It does get to that place where it's like we talked
about this and what could?
How could we say it different?
Or did we cover every piece ofit?
Yep, yep.
We love topics.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
Yes, okay, next slide , oh, reintroduintroductions.
Since I'm talking, I'm justgoing to say hi, I'm Valerie Van
Boeven, I'm a registered nurseand the co-owner of Approved
Senior Network and I am youronline marketing gal, and these
ladies are your in-person,although they do know a lot
about online marketing, butthey're your in-person sales
(02:03):
folks.
They're amazing and definitelyI've just I'm editing a
testimonial right now I have toand I'm just blown away by all
the kind things that this guy issaying.
It's just so nice.
They do a great job.
Believe what they say.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
I guess I'll go next.
I'm Dawn Fiella.
I've been in Approved SeniorNetworks close to three years
now.
My background is in home careclose to 20 years I've been in
operations, sales, marketing,recruiting, retention all of the
above.
I worked for a franchise and Ialso worked for an independent
home care agency.
I love growing the private payside of the business.
We help our clients with thatin our sales training class and
(02:43):
just in general.
We're very much partnering withour clients to help them with
all the things.
We get calls.
Oh my caregiver quality.
The caregiver applicants thatare coming in are just poor
quality, why?
And so we help them.
Or what would you pay amarketer?
Is it commission, is it salary?
So we get all of those kinds ofquestions and love to help.
Thank you for being here today.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
I know it's a busy time of year.
We really appreciate that.
Annette, you're up.
Okay, Hi, I'm Annette Zieglerand I teach the sales training
course classes for ASN and Ijust love what I do.
I have over 20 years experiencein home care.
Almost eight years working as amarketing manager for a home
care agency and here in upstateNew York helped grow the
business from 1 million to 4million, and I love being on the
other side of the spectrumteaching you how to get out
(03:32):
there and get those private payreferrals and succeed in your
business.
And thanks for being here onthis Friday before Christmas,
yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
And Lisa Marcellet is on vacation, so she is not here
today, but she, I'm sure,welcomes wishing you and Mary.
I think there's a slide.
I think she even made a slidefor you guys.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
We'll get there.
I had no doubt that she woulddo something like that.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
Okay, Valerie, how to watch the meetings you miss.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
All right, since you're, maybe you're going to
have a little downtime I hopeyou all do over the next couple
of weeks.
It's a great time to go backthrough and look at all the
meetings that you've missed overthe course of the year.
2024 is all in there.
After this one posts, it willbe the complete 2024.
Every single meeting we've hadall recorded, with the PDFs,
(04:19):
with everything.
So you're definitely going towant to go look, so you can go
to homecaresalesforumcom.
Put in your username that wouldbe the email address that we've
been sending you yournotifications to and then, if
you don't know your password,just use the forgot password
feature.
Keep going, you can change.
(04:39):
Oh, and if you're on a desktop,so I'm going to talk about
desktop and I'm going to talkabout cell phone or smartphone
If you're on your desktop.
Once you're on a desktop, soI'm going to talk about desktop
and I'm going to talk about cellphone or smartphone if you're
on your desktop.
Once you're in the forum, ofcourse, look around, look at all
the cool stuff going on there,but it's facebook, or if you've
ever used slack.
Anyway, we just talk about,post different things, talk
about ideas.
If you go to the learning tab,which is at the top where my big
(05:01):
arrow is, from your desktop youcan see all of the training
stuff or all of the continuumstuff.
So there you're going to seethat.
And then you go in here andhere it is.
You can see everything.
I didn't.
This screenshot only shows youthe top half, but there's
usually about two per month, soscroll through.
We try to name them, what wetalked about and there you go,
(05:25):
so that's the whole what wetalked about.
And there you go, so that's thewhole year.
All right, so if you're on yourmobile device and you're bored
and you want to look at, reviewsome of this, there's an app.
So let's go to the next slide.
It's called the Colab app,k-o-l-a-b Colab by Lead
Connector, and this is where wekeep the same exact stuff, but
(05:45):
on mobile.
So I put in here all the linksto the iPhone version versus you
can keep going Versus theGoogle one, when this
presentation and anypresentation, frankly, that
we've done for the last severalmonths.
If you click on the PDF of allthe slides, these links are live
(06:07):
.
But if you just go to your appstore and type it in correctly
CoLab by Lead Connector or justK-O-L-A-B you'll be able to find
it.
Download it.
When you get there, you'regoing to want to make sure you
join the group, if you haven'talready, and then you'll be able
to log in and see everything.
Let's go to the next slide.
So this is just somescreenshots of different things
(06:28):
that you can see once you'velogged in all the people talking
and different things that wetalk about inside there.
It's a lot of good ideas, andAnnette is very good about
hosting new things.
I try to sneak in once in awhile, but this is really good.
All right, keep going.
Oh, I thought there was onemore, but that's okay.
Here we go, I'm done.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
Yay, okay, so we have an important announcement
Starting in 2025, mastery Circlewill now be on Wednesdays
instead of Fridays.
We've had lots of people tellus that Friday's not a good day
they're out marketing or they'redealing with call-offs and
other things that might be goingon, so we have moved this
(07:11):
meeting to Wednesdays.
The next one will be Wednesday,january 15th, and so the times
for every time zone is listedthere when it says register here
.
I'm going to put that in thechat right now so you can
register.
The link is in the chat, so weneed for all of you to register.
It'll be a new link for theyear and it will be held now on
(07:34):
Wednesdays, and the first onewill be January 15th, and it's
still going to be every otherweek.
Yes, valerie, every otherWednesday still.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
Yep, and we do have an email going out to everybody
sometime after the 6th ofJanuary, like the week before,
or I don't remember what I toldyou in that but we do have an
email going out that that willremind you that you do need to
register again, even if youregistered for this one in the
past.
We need to clean the slate here, and so if you are eligible for
(08:02):
continuum or you're incontinuum, you need to register
at the new link.
You don't have to do anything.
It's just a Zoom registration,but it will be new, so you can't
rely on the old informationthat you've been using.
But anyway, we are going tosend an email out, but this,
this PDF, will also link you toit as well.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
Yeah, All right.
So we're going to finish ourthree-part series Ready Set
Succeed.
We're going to be talking aboutreviewing yearly performance
metrics and again, this is partthree of a three-part series, so
if you missed one and two,you're going to want to go into
the portal and watch those.
There's also, I remember, athree-part series on how to get
(08:43):
24-hour clients.
That was very popular, so Ithink that was like in April.
So all of that is in the portalthat Valerie showed you just a
little bit ago.
So the agenda for today iswe're going to cover compliance
and quality improvement andoperational efficiency.
But before we do that, everytime we meet we give away free
(09:03):
leave-behinds for a certainmonth.
So today we're going to begiving away customized
leave-behinds.
So the leave-behinds that youwill be taking out into the
field and marketing with we'regoing to go, we're going to show
them to you today, but we'regoing to go in and put your logo
, your colors, your contactinformation and then we will
send them all to you in a folderand you'll be able to edit them
(09:25):
if you still want to.
Most of the time, they'reperfect exactly how they are.
So if you would like to be inthe drawing for one free
giveaway.
There is a caveat you must takepictures, when you are taking
these out, of how you did it andwhere you took them, and send
them to us so we can share themwith everybody.
If you want to participate inthis and want to be in the
drawing, just type yes in thechat feature down on the bottom.
(09:48):
It's usually on the bottom, soI'm going to put the word yes in
there now so that you guys knowwhere to go and we will put you
in the drawing and then one ofyou will get a free set of
customized February leaf vines.
Great, I see some people comingin there and doing that.
Annette, will you keep track ofthose people today, since
Lisa's off?
Great, thank you, all right, sowe're going to go ahead and get
(10:10):
started.
Compliance and qualityimprovement and I'm going to
admit right from the get go,this is not my favorite thing.
I don't know anybody who reallyloves this stuff.
It's, I don't know, it's just alot.
I don't know, it's just a lot.
It's a lot of detail and finetuning, and there's so much
going on in home care that it'sreally hard to sit down and look
at this stuff, right, and so wehave to.
(10:31):
A lot of you have probablyMedicaid clients and you have to
.
You get audited regularly.
There's different states thatcome from probably come in and
audit, just to audit, and thenyou've got Medicare and there's
just a lot of different things.
So we're going to cover that.
I think it's a good time of yearbecause, starting in January,
you can take all of this andlook at all the things.
So we're going to cover.
We're going to stay currentwith our regulations.
(10:53):
We're going to monitor carestandards, train continuously,
document everything and improveprocesses.
So I'm going to go into all ofthese just a little bit.
If you guys have any questions,you can raise your hand or you
can put it in the chat featureand we will be sure to answer
them.
So, staying current with theregulations so you should be
(11:13):
regularly reviewing your stateand federal home care guidelines
to ensure your agency complieswith licensing, reporting and
safety requirements, and sothat's going to be an important
thing, like check that at leastI would think quarterly A lot of
times if you're in.
The next suggestion is tosubscribe to newsletters and
alerts from state healthservices departments.
(11:33):
That's a great way to bealerted because maybe you don't
know, maybe something haschanged, maybe there's a new
guideline or new somethingthat's come down the pike and
maybe you don't know about ityet.
So, subscribing to newsletters,engaging with industry
associations and partner withorganizations like Home Care
Association of America or localhome care coalitions,
(11:54):
participating in webinars andconferences and forums that
focus on home care compliance,and then I think it's really
this Lisa put this in I thinkit's a really good idea to
designate a compliance officerin your office, the person who's
going to be like in charge ofthis.
Maybe someone who's notscheduling and marketing and
recruiting and doing all thethings, someone who has the time
(12:15):
and the ability to focus onthis at least quarterly and can
subscribe to the newsletters andgo to these webinars and stay
current with all of this.
So a compliance officer is areally great idea because that
person their eye's on the ballthat way.
So I think that's a great wayto stay current is have one
person in the office that'sresponsible for that.
(12:36):
Monitoring the care standards,implement routine checks to
assess caregiver performance,client satisfaction and
adherence to care plans.
What we did is we had what wecalled quality assurance
supervisors.
They would fill in shifts too.
They did more than just qualityassurance, but their job was
every quarter they had to seeall clients, all of them.
(12:58):
We had 400 clients.
It was a lot, but every quarterevery client got a pop-in visit
.
Lot, but every quarter everyclient got a pop-in visit.
We told the clients when wesigned them up.
This is how we monitor for carestandards.
We monitor our caregivers, wesupervise our caregivers.
We would tell them when we signthem up, because people don't
always like a pop-in visit andsome of them would say I want to
(13:18):
know when you're coming, but Iwon't tell the caregiver because
it is a surprise pop-in visitto make sure the caregiver is
doing what they're supposed todo, the house is clean, they're
dressed appropriately, all thethings right, they're doing,
they've got their logo wear onif that's what they're supposed
to do, and closed-toed shoes orwhatever your rules are.
So every quarter, every one ofour clients was seen by an
(13:39):
equality assurance supervisorand it was a quality check.
That's what this is.
That's a part of it.
Again, stay current with safetyrequirements like infection
control protocols, caregivercertifications and proper care
plan implementation.
Ensure safety practices alignwith OSHA and other relevant
guidelines and in-homeassessments.
(14:00):
I can't stress enough that youdo need to do an in-home
assessment.
I know that sometimes,especially during COVID, we were
doing a lot over the phone Imyself would sign clients up in
the skilled nursing facilityhaving not seen the home, and
that's really not fair to thecaregiver, not fair to the
client.
So the day of service, if Ihadn't seen the home, I would go
(14:22):
start a shift because I wantedto make sure it's not a good
idea that the caregiver be theone to see the 17 cats, right?
Or whatever the case may be.
I know you've all seen it,You've all walked into a home
with a bunch of cats or there'sa hoarding situation, or it's
not a livable situation, right.
So it's important that wealways see the home and if we're
(14:45):
signing up at the skillednursing facility which I highly
recommend we do that before theydischarge somebody.
Administrative wise, somebodyfrom the office needs to be in
the home at the first shift tomake sure everything is okay.
Annette, can you speak to that?
Did you guys also do that kindof thing?
Speaker 2 (15:02):
Yeah, what we used to do is we would go see them do
the assessments at the skillednursing facility and we tried to
get permission.
Maybe they had a neighbor letus in or a family member.
But we would try to go see thehouse prior If we had
indications from just talking tothem that we felt like this was
going to.
We have to see this first.
(15:23):
If you can try, sometimes youcan go and see it before the
first day that they start, ifyou're in.
Like I said, we didn't do thatfor everybody, but when I talked
to families or the client and Ihad felt like this was going to
be I think he's a hoarder orshe's a hoarder or I need to
check this out first and therewere times we went and it was
really unlivable and they had tohave it cleaned before we could
(15:44):
even start.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
Yeah, I would agree with that, and a lot of times
the social workers, if someone'sreferred it.
This is another reason why it'sgreat to get referrals, because
they have some experience withthis person and they will say to
you the daughter told me she'sa hoarder just a heads up.
Or the daughter said she has 10cats.
Or the daughter will not stayat her mom's house because she
(16:06):
thinks it's bad.
So you get a heads up.
If it's a referral too, whichis nice, they will tell you what
they've learned.
Or there's that APS report thatcomes with her.
Something's going on.
That's why the referrals are sogood, because you get some
background information too.
Also, if somebody has gone tothe hospital or skilled nursing
facility and they're alreadyyour client, it's really
(16:29):
important to go out and reassessthem, because things change and
you don't want to send andyou've got to change the care
plan.
If now they're using a walkerand the care plan says they walk
with assistance, that's goingto really throw things off when
the caregiver walks in the door.
So it's going to be reallyimportant if they've been.
If it was for pneumonia or fluor something, maybe not, but a
(16:52):
lot of times things change forthem when they've been in the
hospital or a skilled nursingfacility.
So having somebody come out andreassess them and just make
sure that the care plan matcheswhat's going on is going to be
really important to monitorthose care standards.
That's a piece of it.
And sending out satisfactionsurveys is always a great idea
too.
Our quality assurance personwould do that.
They would talk to the client,separate from the caregiver, to
(17:14):
see how things were going.
But I do think if you allowthem to do satisfaction surveys
anonymously, you're going to getmore honest feedback than
they're standing in front ofsomebody and they have to say
actually your service is reallyterrible.
A lot of people won't do that.
There's some that will, forsure, but there's a lot that
won't.
So an anonymous satisfactionsurvey is always a good idea too
(17:35):
.
Do we have any questions?
Everything's we're good.
I haven't really looked in thechat feature.
Okay, just let me know ifanything comes up.
Oh me.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
Oh, valerie has something.
Yes, I don't know if everybodyknows this here, but we can do
satisfaction surveys for anyclient who wants them.
I know there are companies outthere that do this, like Home
Care, pulse, and there's a wholeprogram around it.
But if you just want to sendout emails to current clients or
adult children of currentclients, we can do that for you
and I think we can make themanonymous.
I'm pretty sure we can.
But if you want to do it andknow who they are, that's
another thing we can do.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
Oh, we know who they are, but they don't know.
We know.
Is that what you're saying?
Speaker 3 (18:16):
Yeah, I don't know.
I think we can do it.
I'm not sure.
Maybe we can't have to fill intheir name, I'm not sure.
But anyway, I know that we canprobably do it anonymously
anyway, but it's an easy thingto do.
We just have to be.
You have to be diligent aboutsending out those emails in bulk
, but it's something that can beautomated so that you're always
(18:39):
aware of client satisfaction.
Good to know.
That's all caregivers.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
Caregivers too.
Yeah, the caregivers too.
We need to know how they'refeeling about.
All right.
Training continuously Provideongoing training for caregivers
and staff to make high qualitycare and compliance with latest
practices.
Some training for thecaregivers and even for admin
staff.
That are some good ideas.
(19:03):
Or safety protocols Clientengagement is a great topic.
Communication with the officeand that goes both ways.
It's good for the office toknow that they need to be
communicating very well with thecaregivers and the office and
that goes both ways.
It's good for the office toknow that they need to be
communicating very well with thecaregivers and the clients, and
the caregivers need to knowthat they need to be
communicating with the office.
We need to know what's going onin that home.
(19:23):
There are eyes and ears.
They need to understand howimportant that is, I think too
for the caregivers probablyadmin also, but mostly the
caregivers.
Time management in the homecaregivers probably admin also,
but mostly the caregivers.
Time management in the home soimportant and this is just
something I always thoughtpeople just knew.
But I started going into thehomes with the caregivers the
first day of service because wewere getting complaints, just to
(19:44):
see what they do and if theyhave dishes or laundry that need
to be done.
In my mind you get thosestarted and then you're doing
the other things while that'srunning.
I had many caregivers that weredoing the washing machine
washer right as they left, andthen the seniors left with wet
sheets, not a made bed, orclothes in the dryer and that's
(20:07):
not okay and it's a three hourshift and there really is no
excuse for that not all to bedone.
So, helping them be efficientand think about those things If
there's laundry, that's thefirst thing they need to do when
they say hi to the client, makesure they're okay, but get the
laundry going so we can get itdone before we leave.
So they do need some helpsometimes with time management.
(20:27):
If they're making a meal beforethey go or preparing meal ahead
of time, it needs to be doneand cooled so they can put it in
Tupperware right before theyleave.
So it's just some of that.
I have found that thecaregivers need some help with
some time management.
I don't know if you guys agree.
I don't know, annette, ifyou've seen the same.
Those were a lot of complaintswe got were time management.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
Yeah, same.
They would call the office andsay, oh, I have there's lawn.
Can you let the next caregiverknow that's coming tonight?
There's laundry in the dryer.
Sometimes they just don't thinkabout it.
But yeah, they need to.
If it's a three or four hourshift.
They need to start some ofthose tasks when they get there,
so it's all done before theyleave, and that'll increase your
satisfaction with your clientsand your attention, all of the
(21:09):
things.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
Because we trained that in class, we had a whole
time management in ourorientation.
Cultural sensitivity that'salso going to be really
important.
I wish we could train some ofour clients on that too, because
it goes both ways.
But cultural sensitivity isgoing to be a really important
thing too, for admin and foryour caregivers as well.
So these are just I'm sure wecould go on and on about what
(21:30):
the training should look likefor caregivers, but these are
some really good kinds of thingsto throw in there for sure.
All right, document everything.
One rule to live by and I askedAnnette right before we got on
was this like this in youroffice?
If it isn't documented, itdidn't happen.
I don't know how many times mystaff would come to me.
(21:51):
Oh, I told the daughter we'd bethere on Saturday.
No, you didn't happen.
I don't know how many times mystaff would come to me.
Oh, I told the daughter we'd bethere on Saturday.
No, you didn't.
It's not it.
I don't see it anywhere.
You did not have thatconversation.
That it's almost to that extent.
You have to be that way,because in home care.
You're flying by the seat ofyour pants, everyone is all day
long and it's just crazy.
There's so many details withclients, caregivers, staff, the
(22:15):
doctor, everybody.
It all has to be documented andwe would tell everybody.
If you did not document it, itdid not happen.
And the nurse is going to chimein and I know exactly what
she's going to say Go ahead.
Speaker 3 (22:25):
Oh Lord.
And when you go to nursingschool, this is beat into your
head until the only words are ifyou didn't document it, it
didn't happen, which can reallybe a problem.
If you said I gave them theirpain medicine, if you didn't
document it, it didn't happen.
And that is for lawsuits.
(22:46):
For everything, documenteverything, and your caregivers
need to know that is soimportant.
Now, being brief indocumentation can also be
helpful.
You don't have to be a longblah blah, blah, blah blah, less
is more sometimes.
But document it or it didn'thappen.
I live by that.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
Yeah, we got to a point where we live.
Everybody in the office startedsaying it didn't happen, you
didn't document it.
It didn't happen.
She said she's working Monday,wednesday, friday.
Everybody in the office startedsaying it didn't happen.
You didn't document it Didn'thappen.
She said she's working Monday,wednesday, friday.
Now when did she say that?
You're the only person thatknows that?
Because you didn't document it.
So I cannot stress this enough.
You may need that documentation.
Down the road, medicaid maycome in and say you didn't work
(23:28):
these hours, or you didn't dothis or you didn't do that.
It has to be documented, everydetail.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
I want to chime in.
So we also made sure that theyhad to email us that they could
not text, because they wouldtext different people in the
office and we're like no text.
You have to email us and theyhave it, so we could have a copy
of whatever was going on.
That's a good idea too.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
Yeah, all right, whatever was going on.
That's a good idea too.
Yeah, all right.
Improving processes Regularlyevaluate and refine your care
delivery, scheduling andcommunication methods to enhance
efficiency and client outcomes.
So always be focusing onefficiencies that you can make
in your office.
Communication is a really bigdeal to improve processes and
technology.
(24:12):
Think about where we are nowwith GPS and clocking in and out
.
I know it was a real pain inthe beginning, but it's so much
better now.
We know they're there, right,we know they're at the home,
they got there.
They're clocking themselves in,clocking themselves out Most.
I know there are some that itdoesn't work or whatever, but
for the most part, technologycan be a real big piece of
(24:34):
improving processes too.
Right now we're going to talkabout operational efficiencies.
So when I was the operationsmanager, I was operations
manager for about five years ata large homestead franchise, and
so what I learned prettyquickly is you really need to
check in with every departmentor team member throughout the
day, especially if you're new asoperations manager or they're
(24:58):
new in their role, and it canseem like what is it when you're
constant micromanaging?
It can seem like that.
It can seem like that for alittle while until everybody
gets into the flow of whatyou're doing.
And when I started myscheduling team and that's the
example we're going to use todaywe're like this get out of here
.
They have their own room, theirown big office and they were
(25:18):
always just communicating hey,can someone, can Sarah, take two
o'clock Saturday?
Anybody know?
Anybody know?
It sounded like an auction inthere and they had a door and we
kept it closed 100% of the timebecause they were so loud that
they could not work without thatchaos.
It was chaos but it worked forthem and they would.
Did anyone talk to?
She's still missing an action.
(25:39):
Has anyone talked to someone?
For this client doesn't needSaturday.
I've got an open caregiver andBenny one or so like it was
crazy in there, which it workedfor them.
That's fine.
They needed their own space,they needed to be able to do
that, but they really did notlike the micromanaging.
That's how it felt to them whenthis started.
So I'm going to go through that.
So, with each department orevery person handling different
(26:00):
things in your office throughoutthe day, check in with them.
Are they on task and going tohit their daily goals?
Where are they struggling?
These are the things thatyou're thinking about when you
check in with them, and is therean easier, more efficient way
for them to complete their tasks?
So we're going to go throughthe scheduling staffing kind of
department as an example.
(26:20):
So their goals, the goals thatworked for me were they were
needed to be able to, every week, be able to start three to four
shift quick starts.
So if my marketing person's outthere and they're like we can
start same day, we can startnext day, we can start within 48
hours.
Scheduling needs to be able toback that up.
(26:41):
We need to be able to actuallydo that and Annette can probably
attest tell you this too isthis is how the social workers
test you.
They will literally give you oh, I've got one starts at seven
o'clock tonight and it's likethree.
This is how they test to see ifyou really are able to do what
you say you could do.
So your scheduling staffingteam need to be able to do and
(27:02):
this is a larger company so thismay not be right out the gate,
but as you grow three to fourquick starts a week.
In order to do that they needto be staffed ahead 48 hours
during the week, 72 hours on aFriday, 50 to 70% of the time.
So what I mean by that is whenyou're a small company, a job
comes in it's seven days a week,you sit down.
(27:24):
You just stop it because it'snot crazy busy and things aren't
like.
It's not busy yet, you're notbig yet and you have open
caregivers possibly as you getbigger.
When a seven day a week jobcomes in, usually it is staffed
Monday, wednesday, friday, andwe've got that caregiver settled
.
Then Tuesday, thursday getsstaffed usually, and then
(27:45):
Saturday, sunday gets staffed.
It's usually three differentcaregivers and it's staffed in
chunks.
And so when you look at youropen shift screen or sheet paper
, whatever it is, all of youropen shifts that
seven-day-a-week job, three daysare staffed.
But here's Tuesday and Thursdayare still open.
They're on my open shift.
So at all times there is stuffon the open shift job board
(28:09):
screen, whatever you want tocall it, you print it out.
So if they are staffed 48 hoursahead, this frees them up to
deal with call-offs and quickstarts.
So if it is and we're going togo through what that looks like
here, so I'll wait for thatslide their percent of missed
shifts should be less than 10%.
This is a language thing.
If a caregiver calls in sickand scheduling calls the client
(28:31):
and says your caregiver is outsick today, they should not say
would you like a?
Nine times out of 10, thatsenior is going to say no, I do
not, I'm fine, I do not need areplacement.
When that happens, the adultchild gets mad, your billing
goes down and they get to seewhat life is without a caregiver
and realize they're okay.
And they think they're okay andthey're probably not, because
(28:53):
they don't realize all thethings the caregiver is doing.
It's really the language isreally important that they're
using.
Instead it is your caregiver isout sick today, I will have
somebody there in an hour, orMary is on her way or whatever
it is.
They do not say would you likea replacement?
You will lose a lot of hoursdoing that.
They should be able to help youincrease client hours based on
(29:13):
needs.
This is that communication withthe caregiver.
If caregiver's in there everyother day and the day she comes
back it's a mess, a shambles.
She can tell that the clientwas struggling the day she
wasn't there.
She should be reporting that tothe office.
That gives the scheduling teama place to increase hours.
They go back to the marketer orthey call the adult child.
(29:34):
However, your team does that atyour office and suggest, hey,
those two days a week we're notcoming.
The caregiver is very concerned.
We're all concerned about yourmom.
There should be less than twoto three lost clients a week.
Now, again, this is a largeroffice but this includes deaths
and different things that aregoing on.
So the lost clients can be.
(29:56):
They do have some control.
If the caregiver is late threedays out of five, probably
somebody's upset about that.
They may not be saying it, butthey're probably upset about it.
So I trained my client servicesor scheduling department to let
the person who signed them upusually the marketer, know.
Everything seems okay, but Iwanted you to know.
(30:16):
The caregiver has been latethree days this week.
Marketer calls adult child andsays hey, how are things going
with your mom?
It doesn't say the caregiverhas been late, but the adult
daughter is going to go.
Your caregiver has been latethree days, but that's usually
what happens in thatconversation.
So it's just like a check-incall to see how things are.
You're not telling the daughterthat the caregiver has been
late, you're just checking inand number of caregiver shout
(30:38):
outs.
I was always asking myschedulers to please be looking
for the good things thatcaregivers are doing.
We need to recognize thecaregivers, the ones that are
out there saving the day in andday out.
I want to be able to shout outto them in a newsletter, on my
Facebook page call them, sendthem a card or send them
(30:58):
something, because they're doinga good job.
And it's good for theschedulers to be forced to watch
for the good things, becausethey get mad at the caregivers
because they call off andthey're upset and they're tired
of the excuses and so it's goodfor them to be watching for some
good things.
So when I'm checking in with myscheduling department a couple
of times a day, these are someof the things that I'm looking
(31:20):
at.
Are they going to hit thesegoals this week?
So are they on task to hittheir goals?
So let's pretend it's Wednesday.
Are they staffed out so theycan do a quick start?
So on Wednesday, when theyleave Wednesday night, they
should be staffed through Friday.
Everything should be staffedthrough Friday.
So Thursday and Friday arestaffed.
(31:42):
So if I come in Wednesdaymorning and there is a bunch of
jobs open on the open shift forThursday and Friday.
Those all have to be staffedbefore they go home.
So what's the goal?
How is that going to happen?
So are they missing shifts?
What language are they using?
Are there any clients needingmore hours?
Are any lost clients or upsetclients?
(32:04):
Are they working on theircaregiver?
Shout out?
So this is what I'm thinkingabout when I go in there.
So the schedulers and I don'tknow about you guys and I don't
know how that will say, but theschedulers I've ever worked with
they work really well underpressure and when it's slow not
so much.
They almost have to have thepressure of stuff coming in to
(32:26):
work really like to be on task.
I don't know what it is, but Ihave seen that over and over
again with my schedulers.
So if it's Wednesday, what aretheir daily goals look like?
If they are not staffed out tostart a quick start, what can we
do now?
So what I implemented and thisis where the micromanaging comes
(32:48):
in I would go in at nineo'clock and I would say let's
look at the open shifts sheettogether.
I printed it.
It was just easier for me toprint it.
We just have a quick powwow.
I'm like wow, there's 10 jobs,10 open shifts, not jobs, 10
open shifts for Thursday and forFriday.
And do you guys have any ideason caregivers?
Let's talk about that a littlebit.
So if this was like less thanfive minutes and some of them
like I have no idea, I tried tocall someone, I've got calls out
(33:09):
, whatever, and I would say,okay, out of the 10, do let's.
Can we get five done by twoo'clock today?
Does that sound reasonable?
And you've got to get theirbuy-in right.
We've got to get their buy-inon this, and so they would say,
yeah, by two o'clock we couldprobably get five done.
And so giving them little chunkgoals throughout the day really
helped a lot and I told themwe're not going to do this
(33:31):
forever.
This is just until we get onsome kind of, we get some
traction, we get some thingsgoing.
Are they missing shifts?
I would talk about that withthem.
Are there any clients needingmore hours?
We would go through that.
That was the first thing in themorning.
Less than five minutes.
Don't spend a ton of time withthem.
They've got stuff to do.
It's a quick little powwow, sogiving them the goals at the day
(33:53):
can help.
And so then I would come back attwo o'clock and hopefully those
five, five and when I would wewould ask them what five should
you guys work on?
First?
Of course they were the fivethat were on Thursday because
they're tomorrow.
So when I came back at twoo'clock, hopefully those five
shifts were staffed.
Sometimes they weren't.
Sometimes they staffed threefor Thursday and two on Friday.
(34:13):
That's still five, right, we'rejust trying to get through the
day and get it done.
And then I would come in at twoand they'd say so-and-so called
off for tomorrow.
Now we have more.
There's always stuff going onand that's okay and so I would
sit with them.
I think it helped them, feel Idon't know like I heard them and
understood the pressure.
I think they enjoyed that pieceof it.
(34:35):
So at two o'clock we would setmore goals for the end of the
day.
And so I did this for about twoor three weeks and I really
thought they were going to hateit.
And so I went in one day and Isaid okay, we're done now.
You guys can print thisyourself, you can go through it,
you can guide yourself.
They begged me not to stop.
They said please, let's keepdoing this, because it forced
them all to look at everything.
(34:56):
They were all on the same page.
They were focused.
They really ended up loving it.
So we did it forever Every day.
We would check in twice a daywith each other.
I think it also helped too, andwe'll go through this.
So giving them the goals helps.
Do they need help calling ortexting caregivers?
So this is the other thing thecaregivers.
They like some people in theoffice better than they like
(35:19):
others.
We had our HR person.
They loved our HR person.
They loved our HR person.
So sometimes I would say youwant me to ask Krista to call
and see if she'll do that shifton Saturday?
Yes, I would love that andKrista would call, and sure
enough they can, absolutely I'lldo that for you.
No problem.
So they like the help, theylike the support, they like
being heard, and so all of thatreally helped.
(35:40):
So be sure to come back.
If you tell them you're comingback at two o'clock, do it, and
twice a day can have a hugeimpact.
This is just one department,one team member, whatever you
want to call it scheduling how Ioperationally help them be a
little more efficient and hittheir goals every day.
Efficiency is really important.
These are things I've learnedin the net.
If you have anything to add,texting caregivers is much more
(36:03):
efficient.
I know that WellSky has a waywhere you can send out blast
texts for open shifts or thatkind of thing.
Texting them I'm not talkingabout individual people in your
office.
Texting them Like that can bevery difficult.
I'm talking about through thesystem.
We're sending a text to acaregiver or a group of
caregivers.
Do they need the open shiftsprinted or do they prefer to
(36:25):
look online, find out?
Maybe it's a struggle for themto be scrolling through the
computer screen to see what'sopen and what's going on.
Maybe they would prefer it tobe printed.
Does your scheduling softwarehave matching functions or that
they're not using or mappingfunctions?
At least when I used it, youcould put up a map and it would
show where all your caregiverswere on the map and where all
(36:46):
your clients were that were open, and so, visually, that was a
great way to be able to seewho's open they.
Also you could put inattributes about clients and
caregivers and where they lived,and it would match a little bit
for you.
If your software system hasthose capabilities and nobody's
using them, look into it.
They don't have time to figurethat out, probably, but if you
(37:07):
do, or someone who's techie onyour team does have time to look
into, that's a great thing todo.
Help them build relationshipswith the caregivers so the
caregivers are more willing todo favors.
Schedulers can tend to be alittle gripey and a little
impatient, and it's because theyhave a really tight window to
work with right and they justget it done Everybody's staff
(37:28):
and then a call off happens andthey're just ah right All day
long.
This is like how they'refeeling.
So they don't spend the time,not that they have a lot of time
, but they need to learn alittle bit about a caregiver,
you know what?
And if one caregiver learnsthat this caregiver has three
children and they play soccer,put it in her profile.
So now everybody knows that shehas children and they play
(37:50):
soccer.
It's a quick hey, how are yourkids Any soccer games?
Recently, anyone can ask herthat question.
And now they're going to bebest friends, so they need to be
learning how to buildrelationships with the caregiver
so the caregivers will dofavors for them.
Do they have the authority tooffer a one-time bonus?
If, in a pinch and you want tobe careful with this, because if
(38:10):
you're doing it all the timethe caregivers get wind of this
and they're like well, I'll waittill they offer a bonus before
I take that shift.
Because we had that happen wesent out a mass text to the
caregivers $20 bonus, you pickup the shift.
And then all of them started oh, they're going to get bonuses,
I'm just going to wait to thelast minute.
So be careful with it.
I would not send it out in ablast text.
I would call my favoritecaregiver and I would say hey,
(38:32):
guess what?
I have a shift for you.
You get a $20 bonus're sellinga shift, you're selling a job.
You're selling services.
We're all selling all of thetime.
Are they confirming schedulesthe day before?
So this is another thing.
Does your software and I don'tremember if ClearCare does this
(38:54):
or not will your software send atext out the day before saying
remember, you have a shifttomorrow at two o'clock or you
have this tomorrow at this time?
If not, it's not a bad idea tohave somebody call them and
remind them that they have thisshift, at least until they get
used to the schedule.
New caregivers especially, or ifit's a new client for them, are
(39:17):
they communicating with HR andmarketing about what they need?
If a bunch of 24s are coming inor clients are turning into 24s
, they need to alert whoever'srunning ads and hiring
caregivers.
Hey, we need 24s in Sun Lakes,we need 12s in Mesa, like
yesterday.
They have to be communicating.
It's really easy to get down inthat hole and just be grinding
(39:40):
and forget to tell everybodywhat's going on and what's
coming in the door.
And marketing needs to know too.
If you have no caregivers in acity like none, marketing needs
to stay out of there for alittle while until HR can build
that back up with caregivers.
Now it can happen and I'm justgoing to say this because this
was a really big struggle when Iam we would market over in the
(40:03):
east side of town market andthen somebody in a sniff in the
east side of town lives on thewest side of town where we don't
have caregivers and thenscheduling like we told you not
to market over there.
Now there's a client over there.
What are we going to do?
And we're like we didn't marketover there, they just happened
to live.
They were in a sniff, way farfrom their house, so that can
happen.
(40:23):
There's a little overlap fromtime to time, but for the most
part, if you don't havecaregivers in a certain area for
right now, start running adsand tell marketing to stay out
of that place for a little bitand that will help.
Any questions Annette in therein the chat going on no
questions okay, all right, herewe go.
(40:45):
Oh, valerie, you're up, youstill with us, valerie.
Speaker 3 (40:50):
I am, yeah, okay, annette, I guess is going to
talk about all of the leavebehind.
So if you haven't been here ina while or you haven't been here
before, we talk about costeffective, easy leave behinds,
and some are a little morecomplicated, I will give it that
.
But they require planning.
(41:11):
But most of them are supersimple and they work.
So we have, we're going to showyou January and February leave
behinds.
We try to go two to threemonths out so that you have
plenty of time to order things,plan, do whatever you're going
to do.
And for a long time people wereasking us it's great that you
give us the links to theselittle products and tchotchkes
(41:33):
that go along with the littlehandout, blah, blah, blah.
But I would love it if youwould just give me the link to
that stuff somewhere.
So we created a little storehomecaremarketingnewscom forward
slash store.
If you go there you'll seeJanuary, february, march, april.
We're going to keep a runninglist of all the different months
that we have and you can gothere.
(41:55):
And it doesn't show you thehandout, because those the lead
behind that you print, becausethose are for you guys and
continuum, but it will show youthe products that you can order
to go along with them, so youcan go there if you want and you
don't have to, you can goanywhere and order anything you
want.
We don't care, but we were justtrying to make it easier for
everybody to find what lisatypically puts these together,
(42:19):
what she's talking about.
I just put the link and thepicture of it and you can go buy
whatever you want.
You don't have to use this, buthere we go.
So what else we got on themarketing store?
Oh, that was it?
Speaker 1 (42:31):
This is from Lisa.
Oh dear, sorry, I missed you.
Happy holidays and see you nextyear.
So she did create a slide foreverybody.
So there you go and look at her.
Oh, there's Lisa.
Oh, okay, look at her play onwords there.
Oh dear.
Speaker 3 (42:42):
I missed you.
Very cute, I thought this was ahandout.
Speaker 1 (42:45):
I was like, oh, this is Lisa's message to everyone
Skip the saying happy See younext year.
All righty, you are up in it.
Speaker 2 (42:56):
All right, yeah, so I can't take the credit for these
.
Lisa's so creative at makingthese leave-behinds.
And, what's important, to usethese fun little leave-behinds
not just your facility specificbecause you want to catch their
eye.
Think of something differentwhen you drop something off.
So for January, we've got.
Let us help you bring in thenew year with less readmissions.
Have a sparkling 2025.
(43:18):
Studies show that hospitalreadmissions can be reduced by
up to 25 to 50% when patientsreceive structured home care
following discharge.
Text us stay safe homedischarge package and you leave
your number.
We've got the Canva and theGoogle links.
Really cute.
You can do this all throughJanuary and you could pair it
with some sparkling cider.
(43:39):
And, like Valerie said, you cango anywhere to get this stuff,
but we try to make it easy foryou.
If you want to just go onAmazon, but you could probably
pick them up at your Walmart orCostco.
So this is a really cute thingto do for January.
Then we've got let us make thisthe best year yet.
These are cute little resolutioncards that you can give your
(44:00):
referral sources.
Our goal is to help you reducereadmissions and ensure smoother
discharges.
Call or text Valerie about ourdischarge package with your
phone number.
And then we've got what you canpair it with these little cards
, my new year's resolution,their little goal setting cards
that you could put inside theenvelope.
She even has little cutepaperclips there with hearts and
(44:22):
these could be dropped offanytime.
And then, for those of us likeme that I'm looking out that
winter snow and we're supposedto get a snowstorm today.
So you winter folks, theweather outside is frightful.
Partnering with us for care isso delightful.
Holler text, Valerie, there'slots to snow about our
delightful patient care team.
And then you compare it withnext slide, with little
(44:44):
snowflake plans, snowflakesticky notes and our little hand
warmers.
So it's cute for the winter.
Yeah, folks love it.
And also January eat well, feelwell.
Our caregivers are trained inall types of dietary needs,
understanding the importance ofcreating nutritious, healthy
meal plans.
January, it's time, time forhealthy, fresh food.
(45:06):
And you could pair it with nextslide some cuties, little
cuties, or clementines, somehoney sticks or whatever you
like, but these are cute littleideas.
And then February we're goinginto February.
This is we want you to markyour calendar.
So February 21st is, Think, aCaregiver Day.
Just like Dawn was saying, wehave to be good to these
(45:27):
caregivers.
They're helping us.
They're running out theretaking care of our patients
taking last minute shifts.
Maybe have them come in forcookies and punch, or you can
have them stop in.
And Lisa found these cutelittle employee appreciation
keychains or these little canvaspouches.
I can't really read that itsays, can you?
Speaker 1 (45:48):
see that, Be proud of the work you do, the person you
are and the different things.
Speaker 2 (45:56):
Perfect.
You don't have to necessarilybuy them a little gift.
You can just have them come infor cookies.
But mark it on your calendar.
Do something special for yourcaregivers.
They'll appreciate it.
Don't let last-minutedischarges cast a shadow on your
day.
Our caregivers are prepared toget your patients home safe and
grounded within just a few hours.
Happy Groundhog's Day.
Speaker 1 (46:18):
Love it, and so that's for SNFs, and then the
other one is for.
Speaker 2 (46:24):
Don't let a fall cast a shadow on your day.
Our caregivers are trained toprevent falls and help keep
clients safe at home andgrounded, so we've got two
different ideas for you there,for.
Speaker 1 (46:33):
Groundhog's Day.
I love this one.
I think it is adorable.
Speaker 2 (46:38):
And then heart healthy tips.
February is American HeartMonth.
Of course, we know that Ourcaregivers can help seniors stay
healthy at home by helpingrelieve stress, prop healthy
meals, get regular physicalactivity, maintain a healthy
weight, get quality sleep, getregular blood pressure and
cholesterol checks.
Call or text Valerie for moreinformation for all your home
(47:01):
care needs.
This one, I love.
Feeling like life just turnedup the heat, don't sweat it.
We have trained caregiversstanding by to take the heat off
family and provide excellentcare at home for all situations.
Call or text Valerie for allyour home care needs.
Love this one yeah, it's.
Speaker 1 (47:17):
National Sauna Week.
Speaker 2 (47:21):
That's for Lisa, for creation.
Speaker 1 (47:22):
Yep, yep, she created this for National Sauna Week.
Speaker 2 (47:24):
When you think about it, these things.
A lot of home care agencies arejust dropping off their
brochures with a little candy orcookie.
This is going to catch theireye and it's something different
and they really do appreciateit.
Some sometimes I'd get somebodytext me or call me and say that
was the cutest thing youdropped off.
Speaker 1 (47:40):
They appreciate it and I think it really helps you
to stand out.
And I know I sat with amarketing or home care agency
with his marketers and he wasjust like, did not think this
was the thing he's just.
I just cannot believe this isgoing to do anything.
His girls went out, did it and,oh my God, it just took off.
It seems like such a littleinsignificant thing to do and
(48:03):
it's not that difficult, but thereward for it if you're doing
this and going to this length,they equate this to the services
you're providing.
That's really what it comesdown to.
Speaker 2 (48:15):
Okay, and then all these little fun things you
could pair with any of thosetags.
We have a little chapstickholder, puffy palm ball,
wristband change, little heartstress balls Everybody loves
those Shower steamer,aromatherapy, and these are all
in the store that Valerie wastalking about.
You just click on February andthen click on the picture and it
(48:36):
takes you right to the Amazonlink or wherever the link that
we're telling you to purchase it, and you can go to the dollar
store wherever, but everything'spretty cost effective and very
low price that we pick for you.
And then February do aValentine's giveaway.
Text me by February 10th andenter to win a Valentine's Day
self-care gift basket.
The reason why we love to saytext me is because then you get
(48:59):
their text and then you're on atexting basis with your social
workers or your case managers ordischarge planners.
Speaker 1 (49:06):
It changes your whole relationship to being on a
texting basis.
It's crazy.
Speaker 2 (49:10):
Yeah.
And then you could pair it withthese cute little guess how
much candy in the jar littlecards and they'll text you and
tell you how much how manyskittles are in the jar and you
put all their name in for thedrawing and pick the winner.
Post it on your social medias.
Tag the person, tag where theywork.
It's a fun thing, they enjoythat.
Okay, and then back by populardemand.
(49:34):
This was something that I didback when I worked in home care.
This is a cute little card thatyou can make coffee time on me,
redeemed by text.
I used to put it in littlethank you cards.
You can change it up.
You can say text me yourfavorite Dunkin' Donuts
Starbucks order or, if you wantto, just set a date to meet with
somebody.
But these really do work and Ihad somebody in a sales training
(49:55):
class a couple of weeks agothat she had sent 40 or 50 out
in cards and during the classshe said I just got a text from
a director of nursing that wantsto set up a time for me to
bring her coffee.
So it worked, it's easy.
Speaker 1 (50:08):
Yeah, love it, love it.
Okay, that's it, folks.
Anybody have any questions?
I haven't looked up in the chat.
Speaker 2 (50:16):
No, just remember if anybody is interested, we're
going to do a drawing for theseFebruary leave behinds Dawn.
We create them for you withyour logo, your phone number.
So if you're interested inbeing in the drawing, before we
sign off here, put yes in thechat.
Speaker 1 (50:31):
All right, we're going to.
Oh, we've got some more yeses,annette.
Make sure you get them beforewe close out for the year.
So thank you everybody forcoming Again.
There's a change.
We will be.
If you came in late, we are nowgoing to be on Wednesdays the
times we will send you emails.
You'll get all the things youneed to re-register with Zoom.
(50:52):
The link is in the chat.
That'll also be in the emailsthat we send to you.
So we will see you on Wednesdaynext time, january 15th.
Happy holidays, happy new year.
I hope everyone has a wonderfulholiday with your family,
friends, and we will see younext year.
Thank you, bye-bye everybody.
Hi, everybody Happy.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
Friday before Christmas.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
There we go.
Hello everybody.
Okay, hopefully I grabbed theright slideshow here.
It looks like it Everybody'sready for the holiday Getting
close.
Five days, five days.
I'm ready.
I've got everything wrapped.
It's all done Pretty much I'mpretty much ready.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Just a couple little things.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
Happy holidays everybody.
We will get started.
It's December 20th.
This is our last Mastery Circleof the year.
We've got some announcementsand stuff that we'll get to as
we go through here.
Go ahead, Valerie, We'll putyou up for housekeeping.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
Okay, housekeeping, if you're new here or you
haven't been to one of these ina while, we just keep all your
lines muted unless you'retalking, so we don't hear all
the background noise.
Share stories, experiences,tips, ask questions, make
recommendations and tell us whatyou want to know.
It's really nice when you sendus a note, maybe through support
or however you want to send it,and just tell us.
I really wish we could talkmore about and sometimes we've
(01:08):
talked about it, but it's been along time ago or whatever.
So right now, if you were tolog in, which I'll talk about,
you can see everything we'vetalked about through the course
of 2024.
And it might have been a whilesince we covered that, or maybe
we haven't covered what you'rethinking of, but we love
suggestions because, believe itor not, it's a little
challenging to come up with newcool stuff to talk about two
(01:30):
times a month for an hour.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
It does get to that place where it's like we talked
about this and what could?
How could we say it different?
Or did we cover every piece ofit?
Yep, yep.
We love topics.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
Yes, okay, next slide , oh, reintroduintroductions.
Since I'm talking, I'm justgoing to say hi, I'm Valerie Van
Boeven, I'm a registered nurseand the co-owner of Approved
Senior Network and I am youronline marketing gal, and these
ladies are your in-person,although they do know a lot
about online marketing, butthey're your in-person sales
(02:03):
folks.
They're amazing and definitelyI've just I'm editing a
testimonial right now I have toand I'm just blown away by all
the kind things that this guy issaying.
It's just so nice.
They do a great job.
Believe what they say.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
I guess I'll go next.
I'm Dawn Fiella.
I've been in Approved SeniorNetworks close to three years
now.
My background is in home careclose to 20 years I've been in
operations, sales, marketing,recruiting, retention all of the
above.
I worked for a franchise and Ialso worked for an independent
home care agency.
I love growing the private payside of the business.
We help our clients with thatin our sales training class and
(02:43):
just in general.
We're very much partnering withour clients to help them with
all the things.
We get calls.
Oh my caregiver quality.
The caregiver applicants thatare coming in are just poor
quality, why?
And so we help them.
Or what would you pay amarketer?
Is it commission, is it salary?
So we get all of those kinds ofquestions and love to help.
Thank you for being here today.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
I know it's a busy time of year.
We really appreciate that.
Annette, you're up.
Okay, Hi, I'm Annette Zieglerand I teach the sales training
course classes for ASN and Ijust love what I do.
I have over 20 years experiencein home care.
Almost eight years working as amarketing manager for a home
care agency and here in upstateNew York helped grow the
business from 1 million to 4million, and I love being on the
other side of the spectrumteaching you how to get out
(03:32):
there and get those private payreferrals and succeed in your
business.
And thanks for being here onthis Friday before Christmas,
yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
And Lisa Marcellet is on vacation, so she is not here
today, but she, I'm sure,welcomes wishing you and Mary.
I think there's a slide.
I think she even made a slidefor you guys.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
We'll get there.
I had no doubt that she woulddo something like that.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
Okay, Valerie, how to watch the meetings you miss.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
All right, since you're, maybe you're going to
have a little downtime I hopeyou all do over the next couple
of weeks.
It's a great time to go backthrough and look at all the
meetings that you've missed overthe course of the year.
2024 is all in there.
After this one posts, it willbe the complete 2024.
Every single meeting we've hadall recorded, with the PDFs,
(04:19):
with everything.
So you're definitely going towant to go look, so you can go
to homecaresalesforumcom.
Put in your username that wouldbe the email address that we've
been sending you yournotifications to and then, if
you don't know your password,just use the forgot password
feature.
Keep going, you can change.
(04:39):
Oh, and if you're on a desktop,so I'm going to talk about
desktop and I'm going to talkabout cell phone or smartphone
If you're on your desktop.
Once you're on a desktop, soI'm going to talk about desktop
and I'm going to talk about cellphone or smartphone if you're
on your desktop.
Once you're in the forum, ofcourse, look around, look at all
the cool stuff going on there,but it's facebook, or if you've
ever used slack.
Anyway, we just talk about,post different things, talk
about ideas.
If you go to the learning tab,which is at the top where my big
(05:01):
arrow is, from your desktop youcan see all of the training
stuff or all of the continuumstuff.
So there you're going to seethat.
And then you go in here andhere it is.
You can see everything.
I didn't.
This screenshot only shows youthe top half, but there's
usually about two per month, soscroll through.
We try to name them, what wetalked about and there you go,
(05:25):
so that's the whole what wetalked about.
And there you go, so that's thewhole year.
All right, so if you're on yourmobile device and you're bored
and you want to look at, reviewsome of this, there's an app.
So let's go to the next slide.
It's called the Colab app,k-o-l-a-b Colab by Lead
Connector, and this is where wekeep the same exact stuff, but
(05:45):
on mobile.
So I put in here all the linksto the iPhone version versus you
can keep going Versus theGoogle one, when this
presentation and anypresentation, frankly, that
we've done for the last severalmonths.
If you click on the PDF of allthe slides, these links are live
(06:07):
.
But if you just go to your appstore and type it in correctly
CoLab by Lead Connector or justK-O-L-A-B you'll be able to find
it.
Download it.
When you get there, you'regoing to want to make sure you
join the group, if you haven'talready, and then you'll be able
to log in and see everything.
Let's go to the next slide.
So this is just somescreenshots of different things
(06:28):
that you can see once you'velogged in all the people talking
and different things that wetalk about inside there.
It's a lot of good ideas, andAnnette is very good about
hosting new things.
I try to sneak in once in awhile, but this is really good.
All right, keep going.
Oh, I thought there was onemore, but that's okay.
Here we go, I'm done.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
Yay, okay, so we have an important announcement
Starting in 2025, mastery Circlewill now be on Wednesdays
instead of Fridays.
We've had lots of people tellus that Friday's not a good day
they're out marketing or they'redealing with call-offs and
other things that might be goingon, so we have moved this
(07:11):
meeting to Wednesdays.
The next one will be Wednesday,january 15th, and so the times
for every time zone is listedthere when it says register here
.
I'm going to put that in thechat right now so you can
register.
The link is in the chat, so weneed for all of you to register.
It'll be a new link for theyear and it will be held now on
(07:34):
Wednesdays, and the first onewill be January 15th, and it's
still going to be every otherweek.
Yes, valerie, every otherWednesday still.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
Yep, and we do have an email going out to everybody
sometime after the 6th ofJanuary, like the week before,
or I don't remember what I toldyou in that but we do have an
email going out that that willremind you that you do need to
register again, even if youregistered for this one in the
past.
We need to clean the slate here, and so if you are eligible for
(08:02):
continuum or you're incontinuum, you need to register
at the new link.
You don't have to do anything.
It's just a Zoom registration,but it will be new, so you can't
rely on the old informationthat you've been using.
But anyway, we are going tosend an email out, but this,
this PDF, will also link you toit as well.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
Yeah, All right.
So we're going to finish ourthree-part series Ready Set
Succeed.
We're going to be talking aboutreviewing yearly performance
metrics and again, this is partthree of a three-part series, so
if you missed one and two,you're going to want to go into
the portal and watch those.
There's also, I remember, athree-part series on how to get
(08:43):
24-hour clients.
That was very popular, so Ithink that was like in April.
So all of that is in the portalthat Valerie showed you just a
little bit ago.
So the agenda for today iswe're going to cover compliance
and quality improvement andoperational efficiency.
But before we do that, everytime we meet we give away free
(09:03):
leave-behinds for a certainmonth.
So today we're going to begiving away customized
leave-behinds.
So the leave-behinds that youwill be taking out into the
field and marketing with we'regoing to go, we're going to show
them to you today, but we'regoing to go in and put your logo
, your colors, your contactinformation and then we will
send them all to you in a folderand you'll be able to edit them
(09:25):
if you still want to.
Most of the time, they'reperfect exactly how they are.
So if you would like to be inthe drawing for one free
giveaway.
There is a caveat you must takepictures, when you are taking
these out, of how you did it andwhere you took them, and send
them to us so we can share themwith everybody.
If you want to participate inthis and want to be in the
drawing, just type yes in thechat feature down on the bottom.
(09:48):
It's usually on the bottom, soI'm going to put the word yes in
there now so that you guys knowwhere to go and we will put you
in the drawing and then one ofyou will get a free set of
customized February leaf vines.
Great, I see some people comingin there and doing that.
Annette, will you keep track ofthose people today, since
Lisa's off?
Great, thank you, all right, sowe're going to go ahead and get
(10:10):
started.
Compliance and qualityimprovement and I'm going to
admit right from the get go,this is not my favorite thing.
I don't know anybody who reallyloves this stuff.
It's, I don't know, it's just alot.
I don't know, it's just a lot.
It's a lot of detail and finetuning, and there's so much
going on in home care that it'sreally hard to sit down and look
at this stuff, right, and so wehave to.
(10:31):
A lot of you have probablyMedicaid clients and you have to
.
You get audited regularly.
There's different states thatcome from probably come in and
audit, just to audit, and thenyou've got Medicare and there's
just a lot of different things.
So we're going to cover that.
I think it's a good time of yearbecause, starting in January,
you can take all of this andlook at all the things.
So we're going to cover.
We're going to stay currentwith our regulations.
(10:53):
We're going to monitor carestandards, train continuously,
document everything and improveprocesses.
So I'm going to go into all ofthese just a little bit.
If you guys have any questions,you can raise your hand or you
can put it in the chat featureand we will be sure to answer
them.
So, staying current with theregulations so you should be
(11:13):
regularly reviewing your stateand federal home care guidelines
to ensure your agency complieswith licensing, reporting and
safety requirements, and sothat's going to be an important
thing, like check that at leastI would think quarterly A lot of
times if you're in.
The next suggestion is tosubscribe to newsletters and
alerts from state healthservices departments.
(11:33):
That's a great way to bealerted because maybe you don't
know, maybe something haschanged, maybe there's a new
guideline or new somethingthat's come down the pike and
maybe you don't know about ityet.
So, subscribing to newsletters,engaging with industry
associations and partner withorganizations like Home Care
Association of America or localhome care coalitions,
(11:54):
participating in webinars andconferences and forums that
focus on home care compliance,and then I think it's really
this Lisa put this in I thinkit's a really good idea to
designate a compliance officerin your office, the person who's
going to be like in charge ofthis.
Maybe someone who's notscheduling and marketing and
recruiting and doing all thethings, someone who has the time
(12:15):
and the ability to focus onthis at least quarterly and can
subscribe to the newsletters andgo to these webinars and stay
current with all of this.
So a compliance officer is areally great idea because that
person their eye's on the ballthat way.
So I think that's a great wayto stay current is have one
person in the office that'sresponsible for that.
(12:36):
Monitoring the care standards,implement routine checks to
assess caregiver performance,client satisfaction and
adherence to care plans.
What we did is we had what wecalled quality assurance
supervisors.
They would fill in shifts too.
They did more than just qualityassurance, but their job was
every quarter they had to seeall clients, all of them.
(12:58):
We had 400 clients.
It was a lot, but every quarterevery client got a pop-in visit
.
Lot, but every quarter everyclient got a pop-in visit.
We told the clients when wesigned them up.
This is how we monitor for carestandards.
We monitor our caregivers, wesupervise our caregivers.
We would tell them when we signthem up, because people don't
always like a pop-in visit andsome of them would say I want to
(13:18):
know when you're coming, but Iwon't tell the caregiver because
it is a surprise pop-in visitto make sure the caregiver is
doing what they're supposed todo, the house is clean, they're
dressed appropriately, all thethings right, they're doing,
they've got their logo wear onif that's what they're supposed
to do, and closed-toed shoes orwhatever your rules are.
So every quarter, every one ofour clients was seen by an
(13:39):
equality assurance supervisorand it was a quality check.
That's what this is.
That's a part of it.
Again, stay current with safetyrequirements like infection
control protocols, caregivercertifications and proper care
plan implementation.
Ensure safety practices alignwith OSHA and other relevant
guidelines and in-homeassessments.
(14:00):
I can't stress enough that youdo need to do an in-home
assessment.
I know that sometimes,especially during COVID, we were
doing a lot over the phone Imyself would sign clients up in
the skilled nursing facilityhaving not seen the home, and
that's really not fair to thecaregiver, not fair to the
client.
So the day of service, if Ihadn't seen the home, I would go
(14:22):
start a shift because I wantedto make sure it's not a good
idea that the caregiver be theone to see the 17 cats, right?
Or whatever the case may be.
I know you've all seen it,You've all walked into a home
with a bunch of cats or there'sa hoarding situation, or it's
not a livable situation, right.
So it's important that wealways see the home and if we're
(14:45):
signing up at the skillednursing facility which I highly
recommend we do that before theydischarge somebody.
Administrative wise, somebodyfrom the office needs to be in
the home at the first shift tomake sure everything is okay.
Annette, can you speak to that?
Did you guys also do that kindof thing?
Speaker 2 (15:02):
Yeah, what we used to do is we would go see them do
the assessments at the skillednursing facility and we tried to
get permission.
Maybe they had a neighbor letus in or a family member.
But we would try to go see thehouse prior If we had
indications from just talking tothem that we felt like this was
going to.
We have to see this first.
(15:23):
If you can try, sometimes youcan go and see it before the
first day that they start, ifyou're in.
Like I said, we didn't do thatfor everybody, but when I talked
to families or the client and Ihad felt like this was going to
be I think he's a hoarder orshe's a hoarder or I need to
check this out first and therewere times we went and it was
really unlivable and they had tohave it cleaned before we could
(15:44):
even start.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
Yeah, I would agree with that, and a lot of times
the social workers, if someone'sreferred it.
This is another reason why it'sgreat to get referrals, because
they have some experience withthis person and they will say to
you the daughter told me she'sa hoarder just a heads up.
Or the daughter said she has 10cats.
Or the daughter will not stayat her mom's house because she
(16:06):
thinks it's bad.
So you get a heads up.
If it's a referral too, whichis nice, they will tell you what
they've learned.
Or there's that APS report thatcomes with her.
Something's going on.
That's why the referrals are sogood, because you get some
background information too.
Also, if somebody has gone tothe hospital or skilled nursing
facility and they're alreadyyour client, it's really
(16:29):
important to go out and reassessthem, because things change and
you don't want to send andyou've got to change the care
plan.
If now they're using a walkerand the care plan says they walk
with assistance, that's goingto really throw things off when
the caregiver walks in the door.
So it's going to be reallyimportant if they've been.
If it was for pneumonia or fluor something, maybe not, but a
(16:52):
lot of times things change forthem when they've been in the
hospital or a skilled nursingfacility.
So having somebody come out andreassess them and just make
sure that the care plan matcheswhat's going on is going to be
really important to monitorthose care standards.
That's a piece of it.
And sending out satisfactionsurveys is always a great idea
too.
Our quality assurance personwould do that.
They would talk to the client,separate from the caregiver, to
(17:14):
see how things were going.
But I do think if you allowthem to do satisfaction surveys
anonymously, you're going to getmore honest feedback than
they're standing in front ofsomebody and they have to say
actually your service is reallyterrible.
A lot of people won't do that.
There's some that will, forsure, but there's a lot that
won't.
So an anonymous satisfactionsurvey is always a good idea too
(17:35):
.
Do we have any questions?
Everything's we're good.
I haven't really looked in thechat feature.
Okay, just let me know ifanything comes up.
Oh me.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
Oh, valerie has something.
Yes, I don't know if everybodyknows this here, but we can do
satisfaction surveys for anyclient who wants them.
I know there are companies outthere that do this, like Home
Care, pulse, and there's a wholeprogram around it.
But if you just want to sendout emails to current clients or
adult children of currentclients, we can do that for you
and I think we can make themanonymous.
I'm pretty sure we can.
But if you want to do it andknow who they are, that's
another thing we can do.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
Oh, we know who they are, but they don't know.
We know.
Is that what you're saying?
Speaker 3 (18:16):
Yeah, I don't know.
I think we can do it.
I'm not sure.
Maybe we can't have to fill intheir name, I'm not sure.
But anyway, I know that we canprobably do it anonymously
anyway, but it's an easy thingto do.
We just have to be.
You have to be diligent aboutsending out those emails in bulk
, but it's something that can beautomated so that you're always
(18:39):
aware of client satisfaction.
Good to know.
That's all caregivers.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
Caregivers too.
Yeah, the caregivers too.
We need to know how they'refeeling about.
All right.
Training continuously Provideongoing training for caregivers
and staff to make high qualitycare and compliance with latest
practices.
Some training for thecaregivers and even for admin
staff.
That are some good ideas.
(19:03):
Or safety protocols Clientengagement is a great topic.
Communication with the officeand that goes both ways.
It's good for the office toknow that they need to be
communicating very well with thecaregivers and the office and
that goes both ways.
It's good for the office toknow that they need to be
communicating very well with thecaregivers and the clients, and
the caregivers need to knowthat they need to be
communicating with the office.
We need to know what's going onin that home.
(19:23):
There are eyes and ears.
They need to understand howimportant that is, I think too
for the caregivers probablyadmin also, but mostly the
caregivers.
Time management in the homecaregivers probably admin also,
but mostly the caregivers.
Time management in the home soimportant and this is just
something I always thoughtpeople just knew.
But I started going into thehomes with the caregivers the
first day of service because wewere getting complaints, just to
(19:44):
see what they do and if theyhave dishes or laundry that need
to be done.
In my mind you get thosestarted and then you're doing
the other things while that'srunning.
I had many caregivers that weredoing the washing machine
washer right as they left, andthen the seniors left with wet
sheets, not a made bed, orclothes in the dryer and that's
(20:07):
not okay and it's a three hourshift and there really is no
excuse for that not all to bedone.
So, helping them be efficientand think about those things If
there's laundry, that's thefirst thing they need to do when
they say hi to the client, makesure they're okay, but get the
laundry going so we can get itdone before we leave.
So they do need some helpsometimes with time management.
(20:27):
If they're making a meal beforethey go or preparing meal ahead
of time, it needs to be doneand cooled so they can put it in
Tupperware right before theyleave.
So it's just some of that.
I have found that thecaregivers need some help with
some time management.
I don't know if you guys agree.
I don't know, annette, ifyou've seen the same.
Those were a lot of complaintswe got were time management.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
Yeah, same.
They would call the office andsay, oh, I have there's lawn.
Can you let the next caregiverknow that's coming tonight?
There's laundry in the dryer.
Sometimes they just don't thinkabout it.
But yeah, they need to.
If it's a three or four hourshift.
They need to start some ofthose tasks when they get there,
so it's all done before theyleave, and that'll increase your
satisfaction with your clientsand your attention, all of the
(21:09):
things.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
Because we trained that in class, we had a whole
time management in ourorientation.
Cultural sensitivity that'salso going to be really
important.
I wish we could train some ofour clients on that too, because
it goes both ways.
But cultural sensitivity isgoing to be a really important
thing too, for admin and foryour caregivers as well.
So these are just I'm sure wecould go on and on about what
(21:30):
the training should look likefor caregivers, but these are
some really good kinds of thingsto throw in there for sure.
All right, document everything.
One rule to live by and I askedAnnette right before we got on
was this like this in youroffice?
If it isn't documented, itdidn't happen.
I don't know how many times mystaff would come to me.
(21:51):
Oh, I told the daughter we'd bethere on Saturday.
No, you didn't happen.
I don't know how many times mystaff would come to me.
Oh, I told the daughter we'd bethere on Saturday.
No, you didn't.
It's not it.
I don't see it anywhere.
You did not have thatconversation.
That it's almost to that extent.
You have to be that way,because in home care.
You're flying by the seat ofyour pants, everyone is all day
long and it's just crazy.
There's so many details withclients, caregivers, staff, the
(22:15):
doctor, everybody.
It all has to be documented andwe would tell everybody.
If you did not document it, itdid not happen.
And the nurse is going to chimein and I know exactly what
she's going to say Go ahead.
Speaker 3 (22:25):
Oh Lord.
And when you go to nursingschool, this is beat into your
head until the only words are ifyou didn't document it, it
didn't happen, which can reallybe a problem.
If you said I gave them theirpain medicine, if you didn't
document it, it didn't happen.
And that is for lawsuits.
(22:46):
For everything, documenteverything, and your caregivers
need to know that is soimportant.
Now, being brief indocumentation can also be
helpful.
You don't have to be a longblah blah, blah, blah blah, less
is more sometimes.
But document it or it didn'thappen.
I live by that.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
Yeah, we got to a point where we live.
Everybody in the office startedsaying it didn't happen, you
didn't document it.
It didn't happen.
She said she's working Monday,wednesday, friday.
Everybody in the office startedsaying it didn't happen.
You didn't document it Didn'thappen.
She said she's working Monday,wednesday, friday.
Now when did she say that?
You're the only person thatknows that?
Because you didn't document it.
So I cannot stress this enough.
You may need that documentation.
Down the road, medicaid maycome in and say you didn't work
(23:28):
these hours, or you didn't dothis or you didn't do that.
It has to be documented, everydetail.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
I want to chime in.
So we also made sure that theyhad to email us that they could
not text, because they wouldtext different people in the
office and we're like no text.
You have to email us and theyhave it, so we could have a copy
of whatever was going on.
That's a good idea too.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
Yeah, all right, whatever was going on.
That's a good idea too.
Yeah, all right.
Improving processes Regularlyevaluate and refine your care
delivery, scheduling andcommunication methods to enhance
efficiency and client outcomes.
So always be focusing onefficiencies that you can make
in your office.
Communication is a really bigdeal to improve processes and
technology.
(24:12):
Think about where we are nowwith GPS and clocking in and out
.
I know it was a real pain inthe beginning, but it's so much
better now.
We know they're there, right,we know they're at the home,
they got there.
They're clocking themselves in,clocking themselves out Most.
I know there are some that itdoesn't work or whatever, but
for the most part, technologycan be a real big piece of
(24:34):
improving processes too.
Right now we're going to talkabout operational efficiencies.
So when I was the operationsmanager, I was operations
manager for about five years ata large homestead franchise, and
so what I learned prettyquickly is you really need to
check in with every departmentor team member throughout the
day, especially if you're new asoperations manager or they're
(24:58):
new in their role, and it canseem like what is it when you're
constant micromanaging?
It can seem like that.
It can seem like that for alittle while until everybody
gets into the flow of whatyou're doing.
And when I started myscheduling team and that's the
example we're going to use todaywe're like this get out of here
.
They have their own room, theirown big office and they were
(25:18):
always just communicating hey,can someone, can Sarah, take two
o'clock Saturday?
Anybody know?
Anybody know?
It sounded like an auction inthere and they had a door and we
kept it closed 100% of the timebecause they were so loud that
they could not work without thatchaos.
It was chaos but it worked forthem and they would.
Did anyone talk to?
She's still missing an action.
(25:39):
Has anyone talked to someone?
For this client doesn't needSaturday.
I've got an open caregiver andBenny one or so like it was
crazy in there, which it workedfor them.
That's fine.
They needed their own space,they needed to be able to do
that, but they really did notlike the micromanaging.
That's how it felt to them whenthis started.
So I'm going to go through that.
So, with each department orevery person handling different
(26:00):
things in your office throughoutthe day, check in with them.
Are they on task and going tohit their daily goals?
Where are they struggling?
These are the things thatyou're thinking about when you
check in with them, and is therean easier, more efficient way
for them to complete their tasks?
So we're going to go throughthe scheduling staffing kind of
department as an example.
(26:20):
So their goals, the goals thatworked for me were they were
needed to be able to, every week, be able to start three to four
shift quick starts.
So if my marketing person's outthere and they're like we can
start same day, we can startnext day, we can start within 48
hours.
Scheduling needs to be able toback that up.
(26:41):
We need to be able to actuallydo that and Annette can probably
attest tell you this too isthis is how the social workers
test you.
They will literally give you oh, I've got one starts at seven
o'clock tonight and it's likethree.
This is how they test to see ifyou really are able to do what
you say you could do.
So your scheduling staffingteam need to be able to do and
(27:02):
this is a larger company so thismay not be right out the gate,
but as you grow three to fourquick starts a week.
In order to do that they needto be staffed ahead 48 hours
during the week, 72 hours on aFriday, 50 to 70% of the time.
So what I mean by that is whenyou're a small company, a job
comes in it's seven days a week,you sit down.
(27:24):
You just stop it because it'snot crazy busy and things aren't
like.
It's not busy yet, you're notbig yet and you have open
caregivers possibly as you getbigger.
When a seven day a week jobcomes in, usually it is staffed
Monday, wednesday, friday, andwe've got that caregiver settled
.
Then Tuesday, thursday getsstaffed usually, and then
(27:45):
Saturday, sunday gets staffed.
It's usually three differentcaregivers and it's staffed in
chunks.
And so when you look at youropen shift screen or sheet paper
, whatever it is, all of youropen shifts that
seven-day-a-week job, three daysare staffed.
But here's Tuesday and Thursdayare still open.
They're on my open shift.
So at all times there is stuffon the open shift job board
(28:09):
screen, whatever you want tocall it, you print it out.
So if they are staffed 48 hoursahead, this frees them up to
deal with call-offs and quickstarts.
So if it is and we're going togo through what that looks like
here, so I'll wait for thatslide their percent of missed
shifts should be less than 10%.
This is a language thing.
If a caregiver calls in sickand scheduling calls the client
(28:31):
and says your caregiver is outsick today, they should not say
would you like a?
Nine times out of 10, thatsenior is going to say no, I do
not, I'm fine, I do not need areplacement.
When that happens, the adultchild gets mad, your billing
goes down and they get to seewhat life is without a caregiver
and realize they're okay.
And they think they're okay andthey're probably not, because
(28:53):
they don't realize all thethings the caregiver is doing.
It's really the language isreally important that they're
using.
Instead it is your caregiver isout sick today, I will have
somebody there in an hour, orMary is on her way or whatever
it is.
They do not say would you likea replacement?
You will lose a lot of hoursdoing that.
They should be able to help youincrease client hours based on
(29:13):
needs.
This is that communication withthe caregiver.
If caregiver's in there everyother day and the day she comes
back it's a mess, a shambles.
She can tell that the clientwas struggling the day she
wasn't there.
She should be reporting that tothe office.
That gives the scheduling teama place to increase hours.
They go back to the marketer orthey call the adult child.
(29:34):
However, your team does that atyour office and suggest, hey,
those two days a week we're notcoming.
The caregiver is very concerned.
We're all concerned about yourmom.
There should be less than twoto three lost clients a week.
Now, again, this is a largeroffice but this includes deaths
and different things that aregoing on.
So the lost clients can be.
(29:56):
They do have some control.
If the caregiver is late threedays out of five, probably
somebody's upset about that.
They may not be saying it, butthey're probably upset about it.
So I trained my client servicesor scheduling department to let
the person who signed them upusually the marketer, know.
Everything seems okay, but Iwanted you to know.
(30:16):
The caregiver has been latethree days this week.
Marketer calls adult child andsays hey, how are things going
with your mom?
It doesn't say the caregiverhas been late, but the adult
daughter is going to go.
Your caregiver has been latethree days, but that's usually
what happens in thatconversation.
So it's just like a check-incall to see how things are.
You're not telling the daughterthat the caregiver has been
late, you're just checking inand number of caregiver shout
(30:38):
outs.
I was always asking myschedulers to please be looking
for the good things thatcaregivers are doing.
We need to recognize thecaregivers, the ones that are
out there saving the day in andday out.
I want to be able to shout outto them in a newsletter, on my
Facebook page call them, sendthem a card or send them
(30:58):
something, because they're doinga good job.
And it's good for theschedulers to be forced to watch
for the good things, becausethey get mad at the caregivers
because they call off andthey're upset and they're tired
of the excuses and so it's goodfor them to be watching for some
good things.
So when I'm checking in with myscheduling department a couple
of times a day, these are someof the things that I'm looking
(31:20):
at.
Are they going to hit thesegoals this week?
So are they on task to hittheir goals?
So let's pretend it's Wednesday.
Are they staffed out so theycan do a quick start?
So on Wednesday, when theyleave Wednesday night, they
should be staffed through Friday.
Everything should be staffedthrough Friday.
So Thursday and Friday arestaffed.
(31:42):
So if I come in Wednesdaymorning and there is a bunch of
jobs open on the open shift forThursday and Friday.
Those all have to be staffedbefore they go home.
So what's the goal?
How is that going to happen?
So are they missing shifts?
What language are they using?
Are there any clients needingmore hours?
Are any lost clients or upsetclients?
(32:04):
Are they working on theircaregiver?
Shout out?
So this is what I'm thinkingabout when I go in there.
So the schedulers and I don'tknow about you guys and I don't
know how that will say, but theschedulers I've ever worked with
they work really well underpressure and when it's slow not
so much.
They almost have to have thepressure of stuff coming in to
(32:26):
work really like to be on task.
I don't know what it is, but Ihave seen that over and over
again with my schedulers.
So if it's Wednesday, what aretheir daily goals look like?
If they are not staffed out tostart a quick start, what can we
do now?
So what I implemented and thisis where the micromanaging comes
(32:48):
in I would go in at nineo'clock and I would say let's
look at the open shifts sheettogether.
I printed it.
It was just easier for me toprint it.
We just have a quick powwow.
I'm like wow, there's 10 jobs,10 open shifts, not jobs, 10
open shifts for Thursday and forFriday.
And do you guys have any ideason caregivers?
Let's talk about that a littlebit.
So if this was like less thanfive minutes and some of them
like I have no idea, I tried tocall someone, I've got calls out
(33:09):
, whatever, and I would say,okay, out of the 10, do let's.
Can we get five done by twoo'clock today?
Does that sound reasonable?
And you've got to get theirbuy-in right.
We've got to get their buy-inon this, and so they would say,
yeah, by two o'clock we couldprobably get five done.
And so giving them little chunkgoals throughout the day really
helped a lot and I told themwe're not going to do this
(33:31):
forever.
This is just until we get onsome kind of, we get some
traction, we get some thingsgoing.
Are they missing shifts?
I would talk about that withthem.
Are there any clients needingmore hours?
We would go through that.
That was the first thing in themorning.
Less than five minutes.
Don't spend a ton of time withthem.
They've got stuff to do.
It's a quick little powwow, sogiving them the goals at the day
(33:53):
can help.
And so then I would come back attwo o'clock and hopefully those
five, five and when I would wewould ask them what five should
you guys work on?
First?
Of course they were the fivethat were on Thursday because
they're tomorrow.
So when I came back at twoo'clock, hopefully those five
shifts were staffed.
Sometimes they weren't.
Sometimes they staffed threefor Thursday and two on Friday.
(34:13):
That's still five, right, we'rejust trying to get through the
day and get it done.
And then I would come in at twoand they'd say so-and-so called
off for tomorrow.
Now we have more.
There's always stuff going onand that's okay and so I would
sit with them.
I think it helped them, feel Idon't know like I heard them and
understood the pressure.
I think they enjoyed that pieceof it.
(34:35):
So at two o'clock we would setmore goals for the end of the
day.
And so I did this for about twoor three weeks and I really
thought they were going to hateit.
And so I went in one day and Isaid okay, we're done now.
You guys can print thisyourself, you can go through it,
you can guide yourself.
They begged me not to stop.
They said please, let's keepdoing this, because it forced
them all to look at everything.
(34:56):
They were all on the same page.
They were focused.
They really ended up loving it.
So we did it forever Every day.
We would check in twice a daywith each other.
I think it also helped too, andwe'll go through this.
So giving them the goals helps.
Do they need help calling ortexting caregivers?
So this is the other thing thecaregivers.
They like some people in theoffice better than they like
(35:19):
others.
We had our HR person.
They loved our HR person.
They loved our HR person.
So sometimes I would say youwant me to ask Krista to call
and see if she'll do that shifton Saturday?
Yes, I would love that andKrista would call, and sure
enough they can, absolutely I'lldo that for you.
No problem.
So they like the help, theylike the support, they like
being heard, and so all of thatreally helped.
(35:40):
So be sure to come back.
If you tell them you're comingback at two o'clock, do it, and
twice a day can have a hugeimpact.
This is just one department,one team member, whatever you
want to call it scheduling how Ioperationally help them be a
little more efficient and hittheir goals every day.
Efficiency is really important.
These are things I've learnedin the net.
If you have anything to add,texting caregivers is much more
(36:03):
efficient.
I know that WellSky has a waywhere you can send out blast
texts for open shifts or thatkind of thing.
Texting them I'm not talkingabout individual people in your
office.
Texting them Like that can bevery difficult.
I'm talking about through thesystem.
We're sending a text to acaregiver or a group of
caregivers.
Do they need the open shiftsprinted or do they prefer to
(36:25):
look online, find out?
Maybe it's a struggle for themto be scrolling through the
computer screen to see what'sopen and what's going on.
Maybe they would prefer it tobe printed.
Does your scheduling softwarehave matching functions or that
they're not using or mappingfunctions?
At least when I used it, youcould put up a map and it would
show where all your caregiverswere on the map and where all
(36:46):
your clients were that were open, and so, visually, that was a
great way to be able to seewho's open they.
Also you could put inattributes about clients and
caregivers and where they lived,and it would match a little bit
for you.
If your software system hasthose capabilities and nobody's
using them, look into it.
They don't have time to figurethat out, probably, but if you
(37:07):
do, or someone who's techie onyour team does have time to look
into, that's a great thing todo.
Help them build relationshipswith the caregivers so the
caregivers are more willing todo favors.
Schedulers can tend to be alittle gripey and a little
impatient, and it's because theyhave a really tight window to
work with right and they justget it done Everybody's staff
(37:28):
and then a call off happens andthey're just ah right All day
long.
This is like how they'refeeling.
So they don't spend the time,not that they have a lot of time
, but they need to learn alittle bit about a caregiver,
you know what?
And if one caregiver learnsthat this caregiver has three
children and they play soccer,put it in her profile.
So now everybody knows that shehas children and they play
(37:50):
soccer.
It's a quick hey, how are yourkids Any soccer games?
Recently, anyone can ask herthat question.
And now they're going to bebest friends, so they need to be
learning how to buildrelationships with the caregiver
so the caregivers will dofavors for them.
Do they have the authority tooffer a one-time bonus?
If, in a pinch and you want tobe careful with this, because if
(38:10):
you're doing it all the timethe caregivers get wind of this
and they're like well, I'll waittill they offer a bonus before
I take that shift.
Because we had that happen wesent out a mass text to the
caregivers $20 bonus, you pickup the shift.
And then all of them started oh, they're going to get bonuses,
I'm just going to wait to thelast minute.
So be careful with it.
I would not send it out in ablast text.
I would call my favoritecaregiver and I would say hey,
(38:32):
guess what?
I have a shift for you.
You get a $20 bonus're sellinga shift, you're selling a job.
You're selling services.
We're all selling all of thetime.
Are they confirming schedulesthe day before?
So this is another thing.
Does your software and I don'tremember if ClearCare does this
(38:54):
or not will your software send atext out the day before saying
remember, you have a shifttomorrow at two o'clock or you
have this tomorrow at this time?
If not, it's not a bad idea tohave somebody call them and
remind them that they have thisshift, at least until they get
used to the schedule.
New caregivers especially, or ifit's a new client for them, are
(39:17):
they communicating with HR andmarketing about what they need?
If a bunch of 24s are coming inor clients are turning into 24s
, they need to alert whoever'srunning ads and hiring
caregivers.
Hey, we need 24s in Sun Lakes,we need 12s in Mesa, like
yesterday.
They have to be communicating.
It's really easy to get down inthat hole and just be grinding
(39:40):
and forget to tell everybodywhat's going on and what's
coming in the door.
And marketing needs to know too.
If you have no caregivers in acity like none, marketing needs
to stay out of there for alittle while until HR can build
that back up with caregivers.
Now it can happen and I'm justgoing to say this because this
was a really big struggle when Iam we would market over in the
(40:03):
east side of town market andthen somebody in a sniff in the
east side of town lives on thewest side of town where we don't
have caregivers and thenscheduling like we told you not
to market over there.
Now there's a client over there.
What are we going to do?
And we're like we didn't marketover there, they just happened
to live.
They were in a sniff, way farfrom their house, so that can
happen.
(40:23):
There's a little overlap fromtime to time, but for the most
part, if you don't havecaregivers in a certain area for
right now, start running adsand tell marketing to stay out
of that place for a little bitand that will help.
Any questions Annette in therein the chat going on no
questions okay, all right, herewe go.
(40:45):
Oh, valerie, you're up, youstill with us, valerie.
Speaker 3 (40:50):
I am, yeah, okay, annette, I guess is going to
talk about all of the leavebehind.
So if you haven't been here ina while or you haven't been here
before, we talk about costeffective, easy leave behinds,
and some are a little morecomplicated, I will give it that
.
But they require planning.
(41:11):
But most of them are supersimple and they work.
So we have, we're going to showyou January and February leave
behinds.
We try to go two to threemonths out so that you have
plenty of time to order things,plan, do whatever you're going
to do.
And for a long time people wereasking us it's great that you
give us the links to theselittle products and tchotchkes
(41:33):
that go along with the littlehandout, blah, blah, blah.
But I would love it if youwould just give me the link to
that stuff somewhere.
So we created a little storehomecaremarketingnewscom forward
slash store.
If you go there you'll seeJanuary, february, march, april.
We're going to keep a runninglist of all the different months
that we have and you can gothere.
(41:55):
And it doesn't show you thehandout, because those the lead
behind that you print, becausethose are for you guys and
continuum, but it will show youthe products that you can order
to go along with them, so youcan go there if you want and you
don't have to, you can goanywhere and order anything you
want.
We don't care, but we were justtrying to make it easier for
everybody to find what lisatypically puts these together,
(42:19):
what she's talking about.
I just put the link and thepicture of it and you can go buy
whatever you want.
You don't have to use this, buthere we go.
So what else we got on themarketing store?
Oh, that was it?
Speaker 1 (42:31):
This is from Lisa.
Oh dear, sorry, I missed you.
Happy holidays and see you nextyear.
So she did create a slide foreverybody.
So there you go and look at her.
Oh, there's Lisa.
Oh, okay, look at her play onwords there.
Oh dear.
Speaker 3 (42:42):
I missed you.
Very cute, I thought this was ahandout.
Speaker 1 (42:45):
I was like, oh, this is Lisa's message to everyone
Skip the saying happy See younext year.
All righty, you are up in it.
Speaker 2 (42:56):
All right, yeah, so I can't take the credit for these
.
Lisa's so creative at makingthese leave-behinds.
And, what's important, to usethese fun little leave-behinds
not just your facility specificbecause you want to catch their
eye.
Think of something differentwhen you drop something off.
So for January, we've got.
Let us help you bring in thenew year with less readmissions.
Have a sparkling 2025.
(43:18):
Studies show that hospitalreadmissions can be reduced by
up to 25 to 50% when patientsreceive structured home care
following discharge.
Text us stay safe homedischarge package and you leave
your number.
We've got the Canva and theGoogle links.
Really cute.
You can do this all throughJanuary and you could pair it
with some sparkling cider.
(43:39):
And, like Valerie said, you cango anywhere to get this stuff,
but we try to make it easy foryou.
If you want to just go onAmazon, but you could probably
pick them up at your Walmart orCostco.
So this is a really cute thingto do for January.
Then we've got let us make thisthe best year yet.
These are cute little resolutioncards that you can give your
(44:00):
referral sources.
Our goal is to help you reducereadmissions and ensure smoother
discharges.
Call or text Valerie about ourdischarge package with your
phone number.
And then we've got what you canpair it with these little cards
, my new year's resolution,their little goal setting cards
that you could put inside theenvelope.
She even has little cutepaperclips there with hearts and
(44:22):
these could be dropped offanytime.
And then, for those of us likeme that I'm looking out that
winter snow and we're supposedto get a snowstorm today.
So you winter folks, theweather outside is frightful.
Partnering with us for care isso delightful.
Holler text, Valerie, there'slots to snow about our
delightful patient care team.
And then you compare it withnext slide, with little
(44:44):
snowflake plans, snowflakesticky notes and our little hand
warmers.
So it's cute for the winter.
Yeah, folks love it.
And also January eat well, feelwell.
Our caregivers are trained inall types of dietary needs,
understanding the importance ofcreating nutritious, healthy
meal plans.
January, it's time, time forhealthy, fresh food.
(45:06):
And you could pair it with nextslide some cuties, little
cuties, or clementines, somehoney sticks or whatever you
like, but these are cute littleideas.
And then February we're goinginto February.
This is we want you to markyour calendar.
So February 21st is, Think, aCaregiver Day.
Just like Dawn was saying, wehave to be good to these
(45:27):
caregivers.
They're helping us.
They're running out theretaking care of our patients
taking last minute shifts.
Maybe have them come in forcookies and punch, or you can
have them stop in.
And Lisa found these cutelittle employee appreciation
keychains or these little canvaspouches.
I can't really read that itsays, can you?
Speaker 1 (45:48):
see that, Be proud of the work you do, the person you
are and the different things.
Speaker 2 (45:56):
Perfect.
You don't have to necessarilybuy them a little gift.
You can just have them come infor cookies.
But mark it on your calendar.
Do something special for yourcaregivers.
They'll appreciate it.
Don't let last-minutedischarges cast a shadow on your
day.
Our caregivers are prepared toget your patients home safe and
grounded within just a few hours.
Happy Groundhog's Day.
Speaker 1 (46:18):
Love it, and so that's for SNFs, and then the
other one is for.
Speaker 2 (46:24):
Don't let a fall cast a shadow on your day.
Our caregivers are trained toprevent falls and help keep
clients safe at home andgrounded, so we've got two
different ideas for you there,for.
Speaker 1 (46:33):
Groundhog's Day.
I love this one.
I think it is adorable.
Speaker 2 (46:38):
And then heart healthy tips.
February is American HeartMonth.
Of course, we know that Ourcaregivers can help seniors stay
healthy at home by helpingrelieve stress, prop healthy
meals, get regular physicalactivity, maintain a healthy
weight, get quality sleep, getregular blood pressure and
cholesterol checks.
Call or text Valerie for moreinformation for all your home
(47:01):
care needs.
This one, I love.
Feeling like life just turnedup the heat, don't sweat it.
We have trained caregiversstanding by to take the heat off
family and provide excellentcare at home for all situations.
Call or text Valerie for allyour home care needs.
Love this one yeah, it's.
Speaker 1 (47:17):
National Sauna Week.
Speaker 2 (47:21):
That's for Lisa, for creation.
Speaker 1 (47:22):
Yep, yep, she created this for National Sauna Week.
Speaker 2 (47:24):
When you think about it, these things.
A lot of home care agencies arejust dropping off their
brochures with a little candy orcookie.
This is going to catch theireye and it's something different
and they really do appreciateit.
Some sometimes I'd get somebodytext me or call me and say that
was the cutest thing youdropped off.
Speaker 1 (47:40):
They appreciate it and I think it really helps you
to stand out.
And I know I sat with amarketing or home care agency
with his marketers and he wasjust like, did not think this
was the thing he's just.
I just cannot believe this isgoing to do anything.
His girls went out, did it and,oh my God, it just took off.
It seems like such a littleinsignificant thing to do and
(48:03):
it's not that difficult, but thereward for it if you're doing
this and going to this length,they equate this to the services
you're providing.
That's really what it comesdown to.
Speaker 2 (48:15):
Okay, and then all these little fun things you
could pair with any of thosetags.
We have a little chapstickholder, puffy palm ball,
wristband change, little heartstress balls Everybody loves
those Shower steamer,aromatherapy, and these are all
in the store that Valerie wastalking about.
You just click on February andthen click on the picture and it
(48:36):
takes you right to the Amazonlink or wherever the link that
we're telling you to purchase it, and you can go to the dollar
store wherever, but everything'spretty cost effective and very
low price that we pick for you.
And then February do aValentine's giveaway.
Text me by February 10th andenter to win a Valentine's Day
self-care gift basket.
The reason why we love to saytext me is because then you get
(48:59):
their text and then you're on atexting basis with your social
workers or your case managers ordischarge planners.
Speaker 1 (49:06):
It changes your whole relationship to being on a
texting basis.
It's crazy.
Speaker 2 (49:10):
Yeah.
And then you could pair it withthese cute little guess how
much candy in the jar littlecards and they'll text you and
tell you how much how manyskittles are in the jar and you
put all their name in for thedrawing and pick the winner.
Post it on your social medias.
Tag the person, tag where theywork.
It's a fun thing, they enjoythat.
Okay, and then back by populardemand.
(49:34):
This was something that I didback when I worked in home care.
This is a cute little card thatyou can make coffee time on me,
redeemed by text.
I used to put it in littlethank you cards.
You can change it up.
You can say text me yourfavorite Dunkin' Donuts
Starbucks order or, if you wantto, just set a date to meet with
somebody.
But these really do work and Ihad somebody in a sales training
(49:55):
class a couple of weeks agothat she had sent 40 or 50 out
in cards and during the classshe said I just got a text from
a director of nursing that wantsto set up a time for me to
bring her coffee.
So it worked, it's easy.
Speaker 1 (50:08):
Yeah, love it, love it.
Okay, that's it, folks.
Anybody have any questions?
I haven't looked up in the chat.
Speaker 2 (50:16):
No, just remember if anybody is interested, we're
going to do a drawing for theseFebruary leave behinds Dawn.
We create them for you withyour logo, your phone number.
So if you're interested inbeing in the drawing, before we
sign off here, put yes in thechat.
Speaker 1 (50:31):
All right, we're going to.
Oh, we've got some more yeses,annette.
Make sure you get them beforewe close out for the year.
So thank you everybody forcoming Again.
There's a change.
We will be.
If you came in late, we are nowgoing to be on Wednesdays the
times we will send you emails.
You'll get all the things youneed to re-register with Zoom.
(50:52):
The link is in the chat.
That'll also be in the emailsthat we send to you.
So we will see you on Wednesdaynext time, january 15th.
Happy holidays, happy new year.
I hope everyone has a wonderfulholiday with your family,
friends, and we will see younext year.
Thank you, bye-bye everybody.
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