August 19, 2024 • 33 mins
In this episode, Jeff Salter, the innovative founder and CEO of Caring Senior Service, returns to the podcast to discuss the future of AI in home care and how automating tedious tasks can free up staff for more impactful activities and critical decision-making. From enhancing admissions processes and optimizing caregiver scheduling to utilizing predictive analytics for personalized care planning, Jeff shares how implementing AI-powered tools can dramatically improve agency operations, increase efficiency, reduce costs, and help deliver better client outcomes and business growth. Jeff shares his experience navigating the integration of AI solutions and recommendations for adopting these new tools, plus practical advice on experimenting with AI technologies to grow your business and stay competitive.
Episode resources
- Podcast with Jeff Salter: Closing the Gap in Senior Care with a bike ride
- Webinar: 4 revolutionary use cases for AI in home-based care
- Podcast: Tackling home care staffing challenges with AI technology
- Blog: How AI and optimization tools are impacting home care delivery
- Blog: Embracing AI technology to recruit and retain caregivers
- Blog: Home Care Software with AI Scheduling – 5 Key Features
- How AlayaCare is revolutionizing home care with AI-based solutions to address top industry challenges
- AlayaLabs: Transforming healthcare with AI-powered predictive tools
If you liked this episode and want to learn more about all things home-based care, you can explore all our episodes at alayacare.com/homehealth360.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
So we're really looking at that low-hanging
fruit.
What can we automate?
Where can we really use AI tohelp achieve the outcomes that
really don't require a lot ofdecision-making, don't require
someone to make a decision aboutwhat's the right thing to say
or the right thing to do, butsimply moving things from one
thing to the next?
That's an area where I think AIcan really empower a lot of
(00:20):
agencies.
I've been trying to championthat every agency, regardless of
their tech awareness or theirtech prowess, every agency can
do things that can make smallchanges that can lead to big,
big impacts.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Welcome to another episode of the Home Health 360
podcast, where we speak tohome-based care professionals
from around the globe.
I'm your host, Erin Valliere,and today I am joined by someone
I respect and admire in theindustry, and that's Jeff Salter
.
Jeff is the founder and CEO ofCaring Senior Service when he
(01:07):
had the audacity to start thiscompany when he was just 20
years old, and has grown it towhat it is today, and that's
over 50 locations spanningacross 20 states.
That is impressive, Jeff.
He is also heavily involved ina few associations the National
Association for Home Care andHospice, the Private Duty Home
Care Association of America and,to scratch his itch for his
(01:30):
passion for technology, he'sinvolved in the Home Care
Technology Advisory Council.
Welcome to the show, Jeff.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Thanks.
I appreciate the chance to beon with you.
And just to clarify, we're onlyin 18 states, so not 20, but
it's been a long journey.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Okay, well, maybe 20 states by the end of the year,
right?
Well, I'm so excited to haveyou on the show today to talk
about technology and,specifically, artificial
intelligence and how it's beingapplied in the home care space.
I think it's coming and we allgot to be prepared for how to
use it, so I think you are theright man to talk about it.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
Obviously it's a topic on everyone's mind.
There's lots of discussion.
I'm at a consumer experienceconference and it's interesting
that it's a lot of CEOs, CTOsand CMOs, chief marketing
officers, so they're kind of allover the place with this
technology and I thought thatgroup would have a lot more
influence and be up to speed onit.
But I'm finding that peoplejust aren't as up to speed as
(02:27):
you might think.
So it's a good topic to keeptalking about.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Interesting.
Yeah, let's bring someawareness to this topic.
So, as CEO of one of theleading healthcare home care
providers in the US and a hugetechnology advocate, what role
do you see AI playing in thefuture of the industry?
I'm curious, like what areasare ripe for disruption, how?
Speaker 1 (02:51):
can we prepare for all that?
They're calling it the fifthindustrial revolution.
Much like, automation came tothe automobile and allowed it to
get created on top of steamengines, and then we went to
cars, then we had the advent ofmore microcomputers and then the
internet was considered part ofthe fourth step of the
industrial revolution.
I think that what we're goingto be seeing is continued
(03:12):
challenges, with companiestrying to understand where it
fits in, and for me, I thinkthat there's a lot of disruption
available, primarily in theoffice setting in this early
wave.
If you will Think about, howcan I make someone's job?
It's a tedious job already.
How can I make it a littleeasier?
How can I make their role andgive them time back?
And that's what we're reallyfocusing on.
How do I give time back to thepeople I have?
(03:34):
I'm not trying to eliminateanyone, maybe trying to keep
from expanding and adding staffunnecessarily, so we're really
looking at that low hangingfruit.
What can we automate?
Speaker 2 (04:01):
no-transcript, so they can actually use their
brain for more important tasksinstead of clicking buttons.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
It may not seem exciting.
There's a few of us out therethat get all giddy about this
kind of stuff and excited aboutit.
I've been trying to championthat every agency, regardless of
their tech awareness or theirtech prowess, every agency can
do things that can make smallchanges that can lead to big,
big impacts.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
I think we're going to talk about some of those
small changes or I hope so inthis conversation.
I know that you're involved ina couple of AI projects now, so
what can you tell me at highlevel?
Speaker 1 (04:40):
What are you doing?
Two things we're focused onheavily, and both are using AI,
high level.
What are you doing?
Two things we're focused onheavily, and both are using AI.
But the first was trying tounderstand how we could impact
our location's growth, andgrowth comes, as we all know,
from admissions.
Admissions start almost alwayswith a phone call, Even if it's
a form submission from theinternet, that leads to us
picking the phone up and callingsomeone.
Or our advertising leads to acaller calling us.
(05:04):
Either our marketing effortswe're out there talking to
referral sources All of thatleads to a phone call.
As I expanded more and morelocations, I long suspected that
it's a challenge for theaverage worker in a home care
office to stop what they'redoing and focus on that caller
to give them all the informationthey need to make that decision
, because consumers just don'tknow what's going on.
(05:26):
So we focused on a callingsoftware that's helping us to
better understand that.
So that was one area.
The second area of focus thatwe're doing is really trying to
automate the scheduling process,which there's some fantastic
schedules out there and whenyou've got one, they're worth
their weight in gold.
They're not as common as we alllike and we need to look at how
can we use technology to helpin the scheduling.
(05:48):
And we're finding that there'snot just scheduling but there's
a lot of other activities thatrely on human decision-making
that we can actually helpaugment through some AI
technology.
Interesting.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
So you've got a calling tool or a call logging
tool and a sort of a personalassistant scheduler.
Let's talk a little bit moreabout that.
I think your calling tool isInkey Scrub.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
Yeah, we call it Inkey Scrub.
What we're doing is we're ableto capture the incoming phone
calls and when those calls arehappening, we're recording the
call, which is pretty common.
Many people might be recordingcalls and they have that
recording for quality andtraining purposes, but we found
that no one's actually doinganything with those calls.
They might be getting recordedand putting into a bucket
somewhere, but no one's actuallyprocessing them.
(06:34):
Unless you're a big call centeror you've got a real big agency
that has a massive amount ofcalls, you can leverage the use
of other technologies.
We found that we just weren'tdoing enough with it, and those
inquiry calls are what we reallywanted to hear more of and
understand.
How many times did someone callus in that often desperate
situation where it's a son or adaughter, I don't know what to
(06:57):
do with mom or dad and I needmore information?
And we found that when we didget a chance to listen to calls
prior to us implementing thistechnology, it was an extremely
laborious process.
You had to find the right callto listen to.
You then had to listen to thecall and try and kind of grade
it.
Then you had to schedule timeto meet with someone to talk
about what they did well, whatthey can improve on.
And the reality is that homecare agencies of most average
(07:21):
sizes just don't get that manyvolume of calls, so you don't
get the chance to hear a lot ofcalls.
So our technology is allowingus to listen and hear every call
, but then process the callusing AI, we transcribe it and
then we pull all the data fromthe call so who the caller was,
what they were calling about,what their challenges were, and
(07:43):
then we're able to give a reportback to the end user within
minutes of the call happening.
They get a full report thatsaid here's what you did well in
the call, here's things youmaybe missed and could improve
on for your next call.
It's almost gamified so thatthey say, okay, I got a score, I
want to get a better score onthe next one and I want to make
sure I get all the data.
(08:05):
What's cool about it is we cangive detailed hints on what they
could have done better and waysthey could rephrase questions
or questions they could haveinserted at the right time where
they would have gotten moreinformation, because the reality
is callers want to hear thatthey've called the place that's
going to take care of themproperly.
And there's just certain thingsthat need to be said during that
call to have that caller feellike, okay, I don't need to call
someone else, I've called whereI need to and these folks can
(08:28):
help me.
Because the reality is everyagency that's doing what we do
caring senior service we're veryproud of the services that we
do, but we also know that thereare lots of good companies out
there and the fact is that weneed every company to service
these folks because there's somany people that need help we
can't all service all of them.
(08:48):
Not any one company can helpall of the clients.
So we just want everyone to bebetter.
We want to stop the shop foreverybody.
In reality, we know people callus first and we want them to
call us last and we want toactually empower others.
We can have the same kind ofoutcome with our new technology.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
That is exciting to me.
You've got basically a managerhelping you become a better
intake coordinator or scheduleror whoever picks up the phone.
You get better at your job andyou don't have somebody
micromanaging you.
It's smart, it's telling youexactly what you need and then
you get all the information.
You're making sure as a companythat you've standardized what
(09:25):
information that you want to getand so you're capturing it and
you set this level of excellenceacross the organization where
you can enforce it and itdoesn't feel creepy.
It's very cool.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
It's not big brotherish, it's definitely
coming from a system.
It's scoring me.
So that gamification we alllike that, we to do better.
The next one, and it's it'sunbiased.
Also, it's there's no bias toit in that sense.
And your boss sometimes you maynot have a great relationship
with your boss and it's like oh,here's Larry telling me how I
didn't do good this time again.
So it takes away all of that.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
I imagine the benefits of this are just vast.
You probably have a higherpercentage of intakes now that
your calls are better.
Tell me a little bit about thebenefits in terms of efficiency,
cost savings, increased census.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
I think the most exciting part of this is that,
as a leader in the leadershipsuite, a CEO, a COO, even an
owner, what we don't know rightnow is you just don't know how
many people are calling you andasking about your services.
You only get feedback on theones who are clearly engaged on
their side and asking questionsenough to where the person
(10:34):
receiving the call thought itwas an intake call.
Because what if someone justcalls and says, hey, how much
are your services and we givethem a price?
They say okay, thanks, and theyhang up.
That was actually an inquirycall.
It was someone that, because ofyour efforts, the money that
you were spending, they calledyour company.
They didn't just randomly pickyour number out of the air.
They called from somewhere.
(10:56):
They got your number on theinternet, they got a referral
from a source.
They found your brochure,business card, whatever it was.
Today those calls do not getrecorded.
The people answering the phonejust don't think that was a
really incorrect call and that'sokay, that's just education.
But even when we were givingeducation to record every single
call, we found that they justdidn't capture enough of them.
(11:16):
Today we now have insights intoknowing exactly how many people
call our service every singleday and asking a question about
service, because we log in, theAI picks up on that simple short
call and we can see how manycalls.
So that's gold to know how manytimes is my phone ringing for
someone.
And we discovered that it'sringing a lot more than we
thought.
(11:36):
I respect that some agencies,following the pandemic, are
challenged with caregiveracquisition and they maybe don't
need more clients.
That's just not us.
We need more clients.
We want more clients.
We want to serve more people.
I want to know how many peopleare calling, and so that's an
insight that I think is abyproduct of what we were trying
to achieve, and it's a reallyinteresting one.
(11:57):
From being a stat nerd that Iam, I kind of want to know that
number.
Then I can impact how many.
Because if you think your closerate client call to admission
is 20% or 50%, let's say youthink you're doing really good
50% Well, it's a false number ifyou're not recording every call
that actually came in.
So your close rate really isn't50%.
(12:18):
It could be much lower andthat's not good or bad.
I don't necessarily subscribeto industry standards and what
it should be.
I only care about what eachagency is able to achieve, and
this data helps us understand ita lot more.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
What gets measured, gets managed Absolutely, and the
other one?
Let's switch gears.
The other tool, a schedulingassistant, carrycare Is that
correct yeah.
And this is an AI assistant forrecipients.
These are elderly people.
I'm curious how does it work toenhance the care experiences
and what challenges did you facewhen developing a user-friendly
(12:52):
AI for seniors?
That sounds daunting.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
Yeah, it's really think of it as afriendly AI for
seniors.
That sounds daunting.
Yeah, it's really think of itas a AI tool for families, and
the senior is in the center ofthat care.
We often define it as a carecircle right, it's the senior
and then all of the people thatare around that it could be
family members.
When a senior is deciding tolive at home and remain there,
they need a whole suite of help.
(13:16):
They need help with family,they need help from the lawn
maintenance, cleaning services,they might need food service,
they might need any other normalthings.
They might call an agency likeours and need help during the
times when family can't be there.
So this AI system is designedto put the senior in the care
circle and then all of thepeople that are managing that
(13:37):
care circle can participate in avery unique way.
Today, the easiest example islet me put a picture out there
where it's a senior and they'vegot three children.
Those three children are all indifferent areas.
Maybe one lives in town, butthe other ones live somewhere
else.
The current way that they allcoordinate things is they
usually have chat threads, right?
(13:58):
We got a messages or we gotWhatsApp and we're all chatting
back and forth about what'sgoing on and the conversation
gets really messy real quickly.
We'll carry steps in the middleand acts as an assistant to
keep the conversation going.
It allows the senior to ask andrequest for assistance and help
and then it goes out and kindof polls the different family
members if they can help.
(14:18):
Where it gets really excitingis that agencies will be able to
also be part of that carecircle.
So let's say your mom needs toride to the doctor's office on
Tuesday.
Well, the AI can ask the threechildren is anyone available to
help with this visit?
And if all of them areunavailable, it can then go out
(14:40):
to the third party service andask if they're available to take
that person to the doctor'sappointment.
You can imagine a doctor'sappointment's not really where
it gets really cool because ithas layers of coolness to it and
what it also does is itintegrates.
So if I'm the manager of a careservice now and I get that
request directly from the carerecipient and says I need to
(15:02):
write to the doctor's office,well I can just ask the AI say
who do I have available that canmake that appointment?
And the AI has full integrationwith each of my caregivers and
my scheduling system.
So not only is it overlayingwhat's in my scheduling system,
but because all the caregiversalso create their own kind of
(15:23):
circles, if you will, theirinformation, whatever they've
told Carrie they might have.
On Tuesday Sally has aappointment to take her son to
the doctor and Jane has the dayoff because she's scheduled to
go on vacation.
Neither of those people mighthave told the agency that
(15:44):
they're working for that.
That was their schedule, butthey would know that and so they
might have told Carrie thatthat's what their schedule is.
And imagine if a caregiver isalso working for multiple
agencies.
I, as an agency owner, onlyknow their schedule for me.
I don't know their schedule forsomeone else.
Well, carrie goes out and asksI say well, carrie, can you
check my caregiver pool and seewho's available?
(16:06):
Well, carrie goes out havingthe knowledge of what's
available.
Who's available comes back tomy list of six people and then I
can just say, okay, can youcontact those six people for me
and see if one of them will takethe shift, and Carrie does all
of the legwork.
Traditionally today, many of ususe systems that will do some
algorithmic reporting back onwho might be available.
But imagine now that all thatinformation that's not recorded
(16:30):
in our database is alsopotentially accessible to the AI
and it can actually help findand choose people to provide
service.
So it goes through 10 people.
It asks them if they'reavailable in a very natural
language-like discussion.
That's what's really cool aboutit.
The person can ask moreinformation, they can interact
with the AI in ways that we justhaven't been able to see before
.
So that person, whoever responds, I say yes, I'll take the shift
(16:54):
, and then I'm able to say okay,we'll schedule that caregiver
to take care of it.
And then Carrie informseveryone else in the loop who's
going to be there.
And anyone that's in the carecircle can simply ask a question
and say you know if Bob livesout in Nevada caring for moms in
San Antonio, texas, bob justsays, hey, did mom get scheduled
for that ride on Tuesday?
(17:14):
And Carrie says, yes, we'vearranged a caregiver, she'll be
taken care of on Tuesday.
So it really helps fill in allof the gaps from the
communication side of things andit does all the footwork you
can imagine.
Now a scheduler's job notcompletely eliminated, but it
becomes much more easier.
They can handle a largercaseload by having an assistant
in place, because someone stillhas to be there to kind of help
(17:36):
coordinate these things.
But you now can manage a muchbigger caseload with fewer
people potentially Fewer phonecalls, fewer emails.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
all of it Super complex and very exciting.
It's going to change some livesfor sure.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
Even though a lot of our systems can communicate mass
texting.
Even to the right people youcan mass text, but then if
you've got six people that arecommunicating back now, you've
got to manage all six of those.
Now imagine the AI is able todo all of that for you.
That's where it gets reallykind of exciting and useful.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
I love it.
I love it.
So that's sort of a scarypicture for the more simple,
smaller agencies.
Picture for the more simple,smaller agencies, I bet, because
they don't really have theresources to invest in advanced
AI.
So what are some low cost, easyto adopt solutions that you
would recommend?
I know that's also a passion ofyours, like AI for everyone.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
I think, to be competitive I've been trying to
teach my team members is when itcomes to technology and AI.
I've told them to just play,have fun with it, test it out,
put it to its limits, spend anhour even of your workday, get
in with GuyGPT and have aconversation with it, because
while that's only one technology, a leading technology a lot of
(18:49):
people are familiar with,there's a lot of other ones that
are out there.
There's a lot of other onesthat are out there and ask
people start playing with it.
Because here at the conferenceI'm at right now, they asked a
question how many people havetaken a spreadsheet data and fed
that into a chat conversationto say analyze this data and
tell me what it says?
And it's amazing the resultsthat happen when you do that.
(19:11):
But because people didn't eventhink, oh, I didn't think I
could do that.
That comes with play.
So if you play a little bit,then you can learn a little bit
more.
And then it's just beingcurious because there's things
like there's an automationcompany called makecom and make
allows you to connect disparatesystems together in real, unique
ways.
(19:32):
I've been using that for thelast six years to try and
connect things together.
It can feel a little bit techiewhen you start using it at
first, but if you would justwatch a few YouTube videos and
find some low-hanging fruit,some easy things to automate,
it's amazing what you can buildon your own.
It's kind of satisfying whenyou go, wow, I just created this
automation that does somethingthat took me five minutes to do,
(19:55):
even if you save five minutesevery day.
For five minutes I was doingthat task because now I've
automated it.
Multiply that by three or fourof the people in your
organization and next thing youknow you've got 30 minutes of
time you potentially saved perday every day of the year and
you add that together.
As, like Franklin Covey isfamous for saying, you know
small things, you add themtogether, they equal big things,
(20:17):
especially when it comes totime saving.
And so if you can find somesimple things like that, I don't
think I want people to puttheir feet up and kick back and
rest for those five minutes, butnow I've given them five
minutes to think about biggerthings and time to do something
else and be more creative,because I think that's where
humans are going to be requiredto be creative and to be curious
(20:40):
about these things.
So I don't know if I've nailedit on that question or not, but
I think there's some simplethings and people just play with
these things, and that's whatI'm trying to encourage everyone
to do more of.
And it's kind of weird comingfrom a CEO to say go out and
play.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
Honor your boss is done.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
I think with this technology, if we're going to
win as companies, we have toallow our people to have some
freedom to just kind ofexperiment and try to understand
things.
Not a lot of classes you cansend them to right now, They've
just got to really learn bydoing.
I think.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
Yeah, that's good advice.
The makecom sounds very similarto a tool that we have at Awaia
Care called Connector, whereyou can put all the different
apps together and trigger andjust figure out the workflows
for you.
Very cool.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
Very cool.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
So you know there's concerns about privacy and data
security these days, especiallywhen it comes to AI, so I want
your opinion there.
How does Caring Senior Serviceaddress those issues, and
particularly when you're dealingwith PHI?
Speaker 1 (21:38):
Yeah, it's really important to make sure that
you've got all of yourguardrails in place to make sure
that you're compliant with therules and regulations of
whatever technology or whateverinformation you're using, and
for us it's, you know, first ofall, using vendors and partners
that are compliant and can provetheir compliance levels.
It's not just passwordprotection that's kind of low,
(21:59):
easy to understand things butit's making sure that you have
systems that are truly lockeddown that people can't get into,
because you do have so muchinformation that's available to
everybody.
But we've partnered with a verygood company to make sure that
they are reviewing our securitypractices on a regular basis,
make sure that everything we'redoing is locked down as tight as
(22:19):
possible.
I'm of the opinion that youcan't read any kind of tech
publication or blog in whichyou're not seeing that major
companies who have millions ofdollars to invest in security
are having challenges and havingeither ransomware situations,
security breaches, hacking.
That's happening, so it's goingto impact everyone at some
(22:41):
stage.
You just hope that it's minorand that you have systems in
place to minimize that damage ifit's an actor trying to
actually create chaos.
So for us, we're just doingeverything kind of all of the
above approach, trying to makesure that we're staying within
standard practices when it comesto technology, and that's an
area where I think peopleprobably have the biggest fear
(23:02):
is that they want to dosomething that's going to expose
their systems or cause somechallenges.
So we only work with tools thatare kind of behind a walled
garden, if you will, to makesure it stays isolated when it
needs to and when it is passinginformation.
We're using encryption, dataencryption technologies that are
usually baked into whateveryou're using.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
So it doesn't sound like there's a need to go
overboard or do anything special.
If you're just using the righttools and you apply best
practices when it comes toprotecting information, you're
going to be fine, rightprotecting information.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
You're going to be fine, right, if you get an IT
security expert on this call andhe'll probably say something
completely different, becausetheir job is to be fearful and
to lock it down.
But you got to have thatbalance between usability,
access to new technologies, butalso being smart with it to make
sure that you're not exposingyourself in an unnecessary way.
And obviously, patientinformation is very important.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
We won't bring the security guy on here, I won't
have him argue with you.
There is a balance, becausewhen you lock it down too far,
then you don't share informationacross the continuum of care
and that impacts your outcome.
So definitely a delicatebalance, okay.
So beyond administrative tasksand patient interactions, that's
kind of what we've been talkingabout.
(24:15):
Are there any other innovativeways you envision AI being
leveraged in home care, likemaybe predictive analytics or
personalized care planning?
Speaker 1 (24:24):
Sky's the limit here.
There's just so much happeningright now it's hard to kind of
fathom.
I'm anxious to see youmentioned earlier I went on a
bike ride in 2021.
I went on a bike ride in 2021.
Part of my message during that9,500-mile ride was to try to
encourage other people who'vebeen involved in home care,
specifically to encourageyounger people in technology to
(24:46):
start thinking about how theycan help aging in place more
advanced with the use oftechnology.
Some of that's in robotics,some of that's in information
systems, some of them might bein just monitoring technologies,
because all of these thingsused together can really create
a safe environment, can make anenvironment that's helpful for
people, combat loneliness.
(25:07):
There's just so many areas andso many things that people are
working on, but the challengeremains how do we, as agencies,
use that without creating chaosfor our teams?
And that's what I typically seeis that our teams just get a
little bit inundated andoverloaded with too much
information, because every oneof these systems, they just feed
you more information, and youknow about the blood pressure
(25:28):
Now.
You know about their weight Now, you know about when they got
up, when they went to bed, andAI will hopefully help us get
insights, and that's the companythat we focus on is the ones
that are using the data in ananalytical way and letting AI
help you understand.
Who do I need to pay attentionto, because the data for just
data's sake doesn't do anybodyany good.
(25:50):
What you really need to know is, like which clients should I
spend more time with?
You know if I've got acaregiver spending eight hours
with Mrs Jones, but I've gotanother caregiver that's only
spending three hours with MrsSmith, I needed to tell me.
Actually, mrs Smith needs fivehours, so take away two hours
from Mrs Jones potentially andget them over there.
(26:11):
Now, that's difficult in aprivate pay world-of-pocket
family, reimbursed expenseversus dollars spent with
(26:32):
veterans or Medicaid dollars.
I just think we have to besmarter with that.
Ai is going to help in some ofthose areas.
I'm really interested inwearables right now, but the
patch type of ones that can goon and stay on for a long period
of time.
Those look exciting and I thinkthere'll be some augmented
reality.
That's going to be very, veryinteresting in the very near
future, because now, with thenewest, you know, chatgpt 4.0
(26:55):
has got the vision modality andthe audio modality and we're
close to where we're all wearinga pair of glasses, like the old
Google glasses, but it's in away that's much more helpful to
us being able to talk to it.
You get to that kind of almostthe Iron man stage where you can
(27:15):
talk with Jarvis and they cangive you a lot of good
information and even though itsounds kind of crazy, I don't
care to talk about that.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
It's like sci-fi.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
I think that's going to be the point to where I
envision a world where we'redoing an assessment with a pair
of glasses that's helping megive information, record the
information I'm getting from theclient, helping me create a
service plan that's prepared forthat client's individual needs
and highly tailored trulytailored to that individual,
because there are some peoplethat can do an intake with a
(27:46):
client and can pick up on thingsthat other people just wouldn't
be able to pick up on.
They're highly specialized,they've got a lot of good
experience and knowledge, butwe're serving so many people
that not everyone is gettingthat person to do the intake.
We all wish we all had thatperson at every location, but
it's simply not the case.
But technology is going toallow that to be more prevalent
(28:08):
and allow us to do those thingsin a way that we just can't
imagine today.
I get excited about some ofthat stuff and I know it's
coming.
I'm hopefully going to beinvolved in implementing some of
those things.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
I can feel your excitement and it gets me
excited too, because more andmore care is going to continue
to go into the home and as morepeople are cared for in the home
, we need a way to manage thatcare.
And if there's a tool, layeredon top of everything else we're
using, that can say hey, mrsJones, today is the one.
Out of all the masses, theterabytes of data that's flying
(28:41):
at us, it doesn't mean anythingunless you can condense it and
it says call this person or dothis thing.
It's going to be amazing towatch over the next decade or so
, for sure.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
Predictive analytics is where things will be really
interesting, and that's with themachine learning combined with
LLM.
I think that's going to be areally interesting area.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
I just have one more question for you.
Let's wrap this up with someadvice to the listeners.
If there are people out therethat just want to get started
with exploring the power of AI,where do they start?
I know you said play, but talkto us about some things that
they can go play with.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
Obviously, people have access to ChatGPT today.
It's public.
Anyone can use it.
I think that investing $20 amonth into a paid account makes
a lot of sense because you get alittle more security and
control when you have that paidaccount.
I have no stock in OpenAI.
I probably should have as crazyas I am about it but if it's
not OpenAI, it can be AnthropicCloud and it's very, very useful
(29:46):
.
But I think that once you geton the paid version, you have
access to a few more things andit's very, very useful.
But I think that once you geton the paid version, you have
access to a few more things andit's just the way I've had my
career, so I can't write foreverybody, but I've wanted to
understand things at least at alevel to where I can have a
decent discussion with others.
I'm always pleased when otherpeople on my team know more than
I do.
I'm jealous of them when thathappens, but I'm pleased.
(30:08):
I like to understand that I canhave the conversation and know
what they're talking about atsome level by learning some of
these things.
The cool thing is, if you'retalking to a guy that's talking
geek, speak to you, then you canuse ChatGPT to help translate
that for you.
Like what's he talking about?
And just go into it for so manythings.
Like I was on a panel inanother conference a few weeks
(30:31):
ago and I told people that I'verecently started just playing
with the voice interaction withChatGPT to learn Spanish on my
way to work and it's crazy whatthis one technology can do.
I can say, hey, I'd like tolearn Spanish, can you practice
some phrases with me?
You say the phrase you want meto say, say it to me in Spanish
(30:56):
and then I'll repeat it to youand you tell me how I did.
That's all that I prompted itwith and it started doing that.
Wow, I said I want to getbetter on my client inquiry
calls.
Can you act like you're asenior client's daughter and
you're calling me and then let'shave an interaction and then
when I say stop, you tell me howI did and how I could improve.
(31:16):
And it was able to do that.
Now that's the kind of stuffthat I think people need to play
with to know what it's capableof.
The days of us using it as achat bot to type in a message
and give us some feedback Ithink are over and we need to
move beyond that and we need toreally push the boundaries of
what we think it can do.
I took a picture with the appthat they have on the iPhone of
(31:39):
a room and I said can you tellme?
Because I wonder if we couldknow how the size of a room is.
I said, can you tell me how bigthis room is?
And it was able to estimate thesize of the room that I was in
in the square footage Because itpicked up on.
Well, I see a table and I seepeople sitting at the table,
because there's three people atthe table.
(32:00):
I think it's a six-foot table.
Using that as my guideline, Ithink this room is 15 by 20.
Pretty close to correct.
I didn't actually get my tapemeasure out to measure it, but I
mean, that's something that noone told me I could try that
with ChatGPT.
I tried it.
I got a million uses.
I could walk through all thelittle things I've done with it
just to see if it works, andit's always surprised me.
Speaker 2 (32:23):
You've been a good play.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
I no longer keep business cards because I take a
picture and I have ittranscribed, so funny.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
Completely so.
The theme here is just becurious people, Be open and
curious and see what's possible.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
I think there's nothing else to be curious,
because that's going to lead youto things you didn't expect and
it's going to open your mindquite a bit.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
Yeah, fantastic.
Well, this has been a very funconversation for me and I'm sure
the listeners are out thereenjoying it as well, and they're
going to be playing with chatTPT when they finish listening
to this podcast, if they're notalready playing with it now.
Thank you so much for coming onto the show today.
So good to talk.
Speaker 1 (33:07):
Appreciate you having me here.
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
Home Health 360 is presented by Alaya Care and
hosted by Erin Valliere.
First, we want to thank ouramazing guests and listeners.
Second, new episodes air everymonth, so be sure to subscribe
today so you don't miss anepisode.
And, last but not least, if youlike this episode and want to
learn more about all thingshome-based care, you can explore
(33:31):
all of our episodes ataliacarecom, slash homehelp360
or visit us on your favoritepodcast platform.
So we're really looking at that low-hanging
fruit.
What can we automate?
Where can we really use AI tohelp achieve the outcomes that
really don't require a lot ofdecision-making, don't require
someone to make a decision aboutwhat's the right thing to say
or the right thing to do, butsimply moving things from one
thing to the next?
That's an area where I think AIcan really empower a lot of
(00:20):
agencies.
I've been trying to championthat every agency, regardless of
their tech awareness or theirtech prowess, every agency can
do things that can make smallchanges that can lead to big,
big impacts.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Welcome to another episode of the Home Health 360
podcast, where we speak tohome-based care professionals
from around the globe.
I'm your host, Erin Valliere,and today I am joined by someone
I respect and admire in theindustry, and that's Jeff Salter
.
Jeff is the founder and CEO ofCaring Senior Service when he
(01:07):
had the audacity to start thiscompany when he was just 20
years old, and has grown it towhat it is today, and that's
over 50 locations spanningacross 20 states.
That is impressive, Jeff.
He is also heavily involved ina few associations the National
Association for Home Care andHospice, the Private Duty Home
Care Association of America and,to scratch his itch for his
(01:30):
passion for technology, he'sinvolved in the Home Care
Technology Advisory Council.
Welcome to the show, Jeff.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Thanks.
I appreciate the chance to beon with you.
And just to clarify, we're onlyin 18 states, so not 20, but
it's been a long journey.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Okay, well, maybe 20 states by the end of the year,
right?
Well, I'm so excited to haveyou on the show today to talk
about technology and,specifically, artificial
intelligence and how it's beingapplied in the home care space.
I think it's coming and we allgot to be prepared for how to
use it, so I think you are theright man to talk about it.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
Obviously it's a topic on everyone's mind.
There's lots of discussion.
I'm at a consumer experienceconference and it's interesting
that it's a lot of CEOs, CTOsand CMOs, chief marketing
officers, so they're kind of allover the place with this
technology and I thought thatgroup would have a lot more
influence and be up to speed onit.
But I'm finding that peoplejust aren't as up to speed as
(02:27):
you might think.
So it's a good topic to keeptalking about.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Interesting.
Yeah, let's bring someawareness to this topic.
So, as CEO of one of theleading healthcare home care
providers in the US and a hugetechnology advocate, what role
do you see AI playing in thefuture of the industry?
I'm curious, like what areasare ripe for disruption, how?
Speaker 1 (02:51):
can we prepare for all that?
They're calling it the fifthindustrial revolution.
Much like, automation came tothe automobile and allowed it to
get created on top of steamengines, and then we went to
cars, then we had the advent ofmore microcomputers and then the
internet was considered part ofthe fourth step of the
industrial revolution.
I think that what we're goingto be seeing is continued
(03:12):
challenges, with companiestrying to understand where it
fits in, and for me, I thinkthat there's a lot of disruption
available, primarily in theoffice setting in this early
wave.
If you will Think about, howcan I make someone's job?
It's a tedious job already.
How can I make it a littleeasier?
How can I make their role andgive them time back?
And that's what we're reallyfocusing on.
How do I give time back to thepeople I have?
(03:34):
I'm not trying to eliminateanyone, maybe trying to keep
from expanding and adding staffunnecessarily, so we're really
looking at that low hangingfruit.
What can we automate?
Speaker 2 (04:01):
no-transcript, so they can actually use their
brain for more important tasksinstead of clicking buttons.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
It may not seem exciting.
There's a few of us out therethat get all giddy about this
kind of stuff and excited aboutit.
I've been trying to championthat every agency, regardless of
their tech awareness or theirtech prowess, every agency can
do things that can make smallchanges that can lead to big,
big impacts.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
I think we're going to talk about some of those
small changes or I hope so inthis conversation.
I know that you're involved ina couple of AI projects now, so
what can you tell me at highlevel?
Speaker 1 (04:40):
What are you doing?
Two things we're focused onheavily, and both are using AI,
high level.
What are you doing?
Two things we're focused onheavily, and both are using AI.
But the first was trying tounderstand how we could impact
our location's growth, andgrowth comes, as we all know,
from admissions.
Admissions start almost alwayswith a phone call, Even if it's
a form submission from theinternet, that leads to us
picking the phone up and callingsomeone.
Or our advertising leads to acaller calling us.
(05:04):
Either our marketing effortswe're out there talking to
referral sources All of thatleads to a phone call.
As I expanded more and morelocations, I long suspected that
it's a challenge for theaverage worker in a home care
office to stop what they'redoing and focus on that caller
to give them all the informationthey need to make that decision
, because consumers just don'tknow what's going on.
(05:26):
So we focused on a callingsoftware that's helping us to
better understand that.
So that was one area.
The second area of focus thatwe're doing is really trying to
automate the scheduling process,which there's some fantastic
schedules out there and whenyou've got one, they're worth
their weight in gold.
They're not as common as we alllike and we need to look at how
can we use technology to helpin the scheduling.
(05:48):
And we're finding that there'snot just scheduling but there's
a lot of other activities thatrely on human decision-making
that we can actually helpaugment through some AI
technology.
Interesting.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
So you've got a calling tool or a call logging
tool and a sort of a personalassistant scheduler.
Let's talk a little bit moreabout that.
I think your calling tool isInkey Scrub.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
Yeah, we call it Inkey Scrub.
What we're doing is we're ableto capture the incoming phone
calls and when those calls arehappening, we're recording the
call, which is pretty common.
Many people might be recordingcalls and they have that
recording for quality andtraining purposes, but we found
that no one's actually doinganything with those calls.
They might be getting recordedand putting into a bucket
somewhere, but no one's actuallyprocessing them.
(06:34):
Unless you're a big call centeror you've got a real big agency
that has a massive amount ofcalls, you can leverage the use
of other technologies.
We found that we just weren'tdoing enough with it, and those
inquiry calls are what we reallywanted to hear more of and
understand.
How many times did someone callus in that often desperate
situation where it's a son or adaughter, I don't know what to
(06:57):
do with mom or dad and I needmore information?
And we found that when we didget a chance to listen to calls
prior to us implementing thistechnology, it was an extremely
laborious process.
You had to find the right callto listen to.
You then had to listen to thecall and try and kind of grade
it.
Then you had to schedule timeto meet with someone to talk
about what they did well, whatthey can improve on.
And the reality is that homecare agencies of most average
(07:21):
sizes just don't get that manyvolume of calls, so you don't
get the chance to hear a lot ofcalls.
So our technology is allowingus to listen and hear every call
, but then process the callusing AI, we transcribe it and
then we pull all the data fromthe call so who the caller was,
what they were calling about,what their challenges were, and
(07:43):
then we're able to give a reportback to the end user within
minutes of the call happening.
They get a full report thatsaid here's what you did well in
the call, here's things youmaybe missed and could improve
on for your next call.
It's almost gamified so thatthey say, okay, I got a score, I
want to get a better score onthe next one and I want to make
sure I get all the data.
(08:05):
What's cool about it is we cangive detailed hints on what they
could have done better and waysthey could rephrase questions
or questions they could haveinserted at the right time where
they would have gotten moreinformation, because the reality
is callers want to hear thatthey've called the place that's
going to take care of themproperly.
And there's just certain thingsthat need to be said during that
call to have that caller feellike, okay, I don't need to call
someone else, I've called whereI need to and these folks can
(08:28):
help me.
Because the reality is everyagency that's doing what we do
caring senior service we're veryproud of the services that we
do, but we also know that thereare lots of good companies out
there and the fact is that weneed every company to service
these folks because there's somany people that need help we
can't all service all of them.
(08:48):
Not any one company can helpall of the clients.
So we just want everyone to bebetter.
We want to stop the shop foreverybody.
In reality, we know people callus first and we want them to
call us last and we want toactually empower others.
We can have the same kind ofoutcome with our new technology.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
That is exciting to me.
You've got basically a managerhelping you become a better
intake coordinator or scheduleror whoever picks up the phone.
You get better at your job andyou don't have somebody
micromanaging you.
It's smart, it's telling youexactly what you need and then
you get all the information.
You're making sure as a companythat you've standardized what
(09:25):
information that you want to getand so you're capturing it and
you set this level of excellenceacross the organization where
you can enforce it and itdoesn't feel creepy.
It's very cool.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
It's not big brotherish, it's definitely
coming from a system.
It's scoring me.
So that gamification we alllike that, we to do better.
The next one, and it's it'sunbiased.
Also, it's there's no bias toit in that sense.
And your boss sometimes you maynot have a great relationship
with your boss and it's like oh,here's Larry telling me how I
didn't do good this time again.
So it takes away all of that.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
I imagine the benefits of this are just vast.
You probably have a higherpercentage of intakes now that
your calls are better.
Tell me a little bit about thebenefits in terms of efficiency,
cost savings, increased census.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
I think the most exciting part of this is that,
as a leader in the leadershipsuite, a CEO, a COO, even an
owner, what we don't know rightnow is you just don't know how
many people are calling you andasking about your services.
You only get feedback on theones who are clearly engaged on
their side and asking questionsenough to where the person
(10:34):
receiving the call thought itwas an intake call.
Because what if someone justcalls and says, hey, how much
are your services and we givethem a price?
They say okay, thanks, and theyhang up.
That was actually an inquirycall.
It was someone that, because ofyour efforts, the money that
you were spending, they calledyour company.
They didn't just randomly pickyour number out of the air.
They called from somewhere.
(10:56):
They got your number on theinternet, they got a referral
from a source.
They found your brochure,business card, whatever it was.
Today those calls do not getrecorded.
The people answering the phonejust don't think that was a
really incorrect call and that'sokay, that's just education.
But even when we were givingeducation to record every single
call, we found that they justdidn't capture enough of them.
(11:16):
Today we now have insights intoknowing exactly how many people
call our service every singleday and asking a question about
service, because we log in, theAI picks up on that simple short
call and we can see how manycalls.
So that's gold to know how manytimes is my phone ringing for
someone.
And we discovered that it'sringing a lot more than we
thought.
(11:36):
I respect that some agencies,following the pandemic, are
challenged with caregiveracquisition and they maybe don't
need more clients.
That's just not us.
We need more clients.
We want more clients.
We want to serve more people.
I want to know how many peopleare calling, and so that's an
insight that I think is abyproduct of what we were trying
to achieve, and it's a reallyinteresting one.
(11:57):
From being a stat nerd that Iam, I kind of want to know that
number.
Then I can impact how many.
Because if you think your closerate client call to admission
is 20% or 50%, let's say youthink you're doing really good
50% Well, it's a false number ifyou're not recording every call
that actually came in.
So your close rate really isn't50%.
(12:18):
It could be much lower andthat's not good or bad.
I don't necessarily subscribeto industry standards and what
it should be.
I only care about what eachagency is able to achieve, and
this data helps us understand ita lot more.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
What gets measured, gets managed Absolutely, and the
other one?
Let's switch gears.
The other tool, a schedulingassistant, carrycare Is that
correct yeah.
And this is an AI assistant forrecipients.
These are elderly people.
I'm curious how does it work toenhance the care experiences
and what challenges did you facewhen developing a user-friendly
(12:52):
AI for seniors?
That sounds daunting.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
Yeah, it's really think of it as afriendly AI for
seniors.
That sounds daunting.
Yeah, it's really think of itas a AI tool for families, and
the senior is in the center ofthat care.
We often define it as a carecircle right, it's the senior
and then all of the people thatare around that it could be
family members.
When a senior is deciding tolive at home and remain there,
they need a whole suite of help.
(13:16):
They need help with family,they need help from the lawn
maintenance, cleaning services,they might need food service,
they might need any other normalthings.
They might call an agency likeours and need help during the
times when family can't be there.
So this AI system is designedto put the senior in the care
circle and then all of thepeople that are managing that
(13:37):
care circle can participate in avery unique way.
Today, the easiest example islet me put a picture out there
where it's a senior and they'vegot three children.
Those three children are all indifferent areas.
Maybe one lives in town, butthe other ones live somewhere
else.
The current way that they allcoordinate things is they
usually have chat threads, right?
(13:58):
We got a messages or we gotWhatsApp and we're all chatting
back and forth about what'sgoing on and the conversation
gets really messy real quickly.
We'll carry steps in the middleand acts as an assistant to
keep the conversation going.
It allows the senior to ask andrequest for assistance and help
and then it goes out and kindof polls the different family
members if they can help.
(14:18):
Where it gets really excitingis that agencies will be able to
also be part of that carecircle.
So let's say your mom needs toride to the doctor's office on
Tuesday.
Well, the AI can ask the threechildren is anyone available to
help with this visit?
And if all of them areunavailable, it can then go out
(14:40):
to the third party service andask if they're available to take
that person to the doctor'sappointment.
You can imagine a doctor'sappointment's not really where
it gets really cool because ithas layers of coolness to it and
what it also does is itintegrates.
So if I'm the manager of a careservice now and I get that
request directly from the carerecipient and says I need to
(15:02):
write to the doctor's office,well I can just ask the AI say
who do I have available that canmake that appointment?
And the AI has full integrationwith each of my caregivers and
my scheduling system.
So not only is it overlayingwhat's in my scheduling system,
but because all the caregiversalso create their own kind of
(15:23):
circles, if you will, theirinformation, whatever they've
told Carrie they might have.
On Tuesday Sally has aappointment to take her son to
the doctor and Jane has the dayoff because she's scheduled to
go on vacation.
Neither of those people mighthave told the agency that
(15:44):
they're working for that.
That was their schedule, butthey would know that and so they
might have told Carrie thatthat's what their schedule is.
And imagine if a caregiver isalso working for multiple
agencies.
I, as an agency owner, onlyknow their schedule for me.
I don't know their schedule forsomeone else.
Well, carrie goes out and asksI say well, carrie, can you
check my caregiver pool and seewho's available?
(16:06):
Well, carrie goes out havingthe knowledge of what's
available.
Who's available comes back tomy list of six people and then I
can just say, okay, can youcontact those six people for me
and see if one of them will takethe shift, and Carrie does all
of the legwork.
Traditionally today, many of ususe systems that will do some
algorithmic reporting back onwho might be available.
But imagine now that all thatinformation that's not recorded
(16:30):
in our database is alsopotentially accessible to the AI
and it can actually help findand choose people to provide
service.
So it goes through 10 people.
It asks them if they'reavailable in a very natural
language-like discussion.
That's what's really cool aboutit.
The person can ask moreinformation, they can interact
with the AI in ways that we justhaven't been able to see before
.
So that person, whoever responds, I say yes, I'll take the shift
(16:54):
, and then I'm able to say okay,we'll schedule that caregiver
to take care of it.
And then Carrie informseveryone else in the loop who's
going to be there.
And anyone that's in the carecircle can simply ask a question
and say you know if Bob livesout in Nevada caring for moms in
San Antonio, texas, bob justsays, hey, did mom get scheduled
for that ride on Tuesday?
(17:14):
And Carrie says, yes, we'vearranged a caregiver, she'll be
taken care of on Tuesday.
So it really helps fill in allof the gaps from the
communication side of things andit does all the footwork you
can imagine.
Now a scheduler's job notcompletely eliminated, but it
becomes much more easier.
They can handle a largercaseload by having an assistant
in place, because someone stillhas to be there to kind of help
(17:36):
coordinate these things.
But you now can manage a muchbigger caseload with fewer
people potentially Fewer phonecalls, fewer emails.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
all of it Super complex and very exciting.
It's going to change some livesfor sure.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
Even though a lot of our systems can communicate mass
texting.
Even to the right people youcan mass text, but then if
you've got six people that arecommunicating back now, you've
got to manage all six of those.
Now imagine the AI is able todo all of that for you.
That's where it gets reallykind of exciting and useful.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
I love it.
I love it.
So that's sort of a scarypicture for the more simple,
smaller agencies.
Picture for the more simple,smaller agencies, I bet, because
they don't really have theresources to invest in advanced
AI.
So what are some low cost, easyto adopt solutions that you
would recommend?
I know that's also a passion ofyours, like AI for everyone.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
I think, to be competitive I've been trying to
teach my team members is when itcomes to technology and AI.
I've told them to just play,have fun with it, test it out,
put it to its limits, spend anhour even of your workday, get
in with GuyGPT and have aconversation with it, because
while that's only one technology, a leading technology a lot of
(18:49):
people are familiar with,there's a lot of other ones that
are out there.
There's a lot of other onesthat are out there and ask
people start playing with it.
Because here at the conferenceI'm at right now, they asked a
question how many people havetaken a spreadsheet data and fed
that into a chat conversationto say analyze this data and
tell me what it says?
And it's amazing the resultsthat happen when you do that.
(19:11):
But because people didn't eventhink, oh, I didn't think I
could do that.
That comes with play.
So if you play a little bit,then you can learn a little bit
more.
And then it's just beingcurious because there's things
like there's an automationcompany called makecom and make
allows you to connect disparatesystems together in real, unique
ways.
(19:32):
I've been using that for thelast six years to try and
connect things together.
It can feel a little bit techiewhen you start using it at
first, but if you would justwatch a few YouTube videos and
find some low-hanging fruit,some easy things to automate,
it's amazing what you can buildon your own.
It's kind of satisfying whenyou go, wow, I just created this
automation that does somethingthat took me five minutes to do,
(19:55):
even if you save five minutesevery day.
For five minutes I was doingthat task because now I've
automated it.
Multiply that by three or fourof the people in your
organization and next thing youknow you've got 30 minutes of
time you potentially saved perday every day of the year and
you add that together.
As, like Franklin Covey isfamous for saying, you know
small things, you add themtogether, they equal big things,
(20:17):
especially when it comes totime saving.
And so if you can find somesimple things like that, I don't
think I want people to puttheir feet up and kick back and
rest for those five minutes, butnow I've given them five
minutes to think about biggerthings and time to do something
else and be more creative,because I think that's where
humans are going to be requiredto be creative and to be curious
(20:40):
about these things.
So I don't know if I've nailedit on that question or not, but
I think there's some simplethings and people just play with
these things, and that's whatI'm trying to encourage everyone
to do more of.
And it's kind of weird comingfrom a CEO to say go out and
play.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
Honor your boss is done.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
I think with this technology, if we're going to
win as companies, we have toallow our people to have some
freedom to just kind ofexperiment and try to understand
things.
Not a lot of classes you cansend them to right now, They've
just got to really learn bydoing.
I think.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
Yeah, that's good advice.
The makecom sounds very similarto a tool that we have at Awaia
Care called Connector, whereyou can put all the different
apps together and trigger andjust figure out the workflows
for you.
Very cool.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
Very cool.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
So you know there's concerns about privacy and data
security these days, especiallywhen it comes to AI, so I want
your opinion there.
How does Caring Senior Serviceaddress those issues, and
particularly when you're dealingwith PHI?
Speaker 1 (21:38):
Yeah, it's really important to make sure that
you've got all of yourguardrails in place to make sure
that you're compliant with therules and regulations of
whatever technology or whateverinformation you're using, and
for us it's, you know, first ofall, using vendors and partners
that are compliant and can provetheir compliance levels.
It's not just passwordprotection that's kind of low,
(21:59):
easy to understand things butit's making sure that you have
systems that are truly lockeddown that people can't get into,
because you do have so muchinformation that's available to
everybody.
But we've partnered with a verygood company to make sure that
they are reviewing our securitypractices on a regular basis,
make sure that everything we'redoing is locked down as tight as
(22:19):
possible.
I'm of the opinion that youcan't read any kind of tech
publication or blog in whichyou're not seeing that major
companies who have millions ofdollars to invest in security
are having challenges and havingeither ransomware situations,
security breaches, hacking.
That's happening, so it's goingto impact everyone at some
(22:41):
stage.
You just hope that it's minorand that you have systems in
place to minimize that damage ifit's an actor trying to
actually create chaos.
So for us, we're just doingeverything kind of all of the
above approach, trying to makesure that we're staying within
standard practices when it comesto technology, and that's an
area where I think peopleprobably have the biggest fear
(23:02):
is that they want to dosomething that's going to expose
their systems or cause somechallenges.
So we only work with tools thatare kind of behind a walled
garden, if you will, to makesure it stays isolated when it
needs to and when it is passinginformation.
We're using encryption, dataencryption technologies that are
usually baked into whateveryou're using.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
So it doesn't sound like there's a need to go
overboard or do anything special.
If you're just using the righttools and you apply best
practices when it comes toprotecting information, you're
going to be fine, rightprotecting information.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
You're going to be fine, right, if you get an IT
security expert on this call andhe'll probably say something
completely different, becausetheir job is to be fearful and
to lock it down.
But you got to have thatbalance between usability,
access to new technologies, butalso being smart with it to make
sure that you're not exposingyourself in an unnecessary way.
And obviously, patientinformation is very important.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
We won't bring the security guy on here, I won't
have him argue with you.
There is a balance, becausewhen you lock it down too far,
then you don't share informationacross the continuum of care
and that impacts your outcome.
So definitely a delicatebalance, okay.
So beyond administrative tasksand patient interactions, that's
kind of what we've been talkingabout.
(24:15):
Are there any other innovativeways you envision AI being
leveraged in home care, likemaybe predictive analytics or
personalized care planning?
Speaker 1 (24:24):
Sky's the limit here.
There's just so much happeningright now it's hard to kind of
fathom.
I'm anxious to see youmentioned earlier I went on a
bike ride in 2021.
I went on a bike ride in 2021.
Part of my message during that9,500-mile ride was to try to
encourage other people who'vebeen involved in home care,
specifically to encourageyounger people in technology to
(24:46):
start thinking about how theycan help aging in place more
advanced with the use oftechnology.
Some of that's in robotics,some of that's in information
systems, some of them might bein just monitoring technologies,
because all of these thingsused together can really create
a safe environment, can make anenvironment that's helpful for
people, combat loneliness.
(25:07):
There's just so many areas andso many things that people are
working on, but the challengeremains how do we, as agencies,
use that without creating chaosfor our teams?
And that's what I typically seeis that our teams just get a
little bit inundated andoverloaded with too much
information, because every oneof these systems, they just feed
you more information, and youknow about the blood pressure
(25:28):
Now.
You know about their weight Now, you know about when they got
up, when they went to bed, andAI will hopefully help us get
insights, and that's the companythat we focus on is the ones
that are using the data in ananalytical way and letting AI
help you understand.
Who do I need to pay attentionto, because the data for just
data's sake doesn't do anybodyany good.
(25:50):
What you really need to know is, like which clients should I
spend more time with?
You know if I've got acaregiver spending eight hours
with Mrs Jones, but I've gotanother caregiver that's only
spending three hours with MrsSmith, I needed to tell me.
Actually, mrs Smith needs fivehours, so take away two hours
from Mrs Jones potentially andget them over there.
(26:11):
Now, that's difficult in aprivate pay world-of-pocket
family, reimbursed expenseversus dollars spent with
(26:32):
veterans or Medicaid dollars.
I just think we have to besmarter with that.
Ai is going to help in some ofthose areas.
I'm really interested inwearables right now, but the
patch type of ones that can goon and stay on for a long period
of time.
Those look exciting and I thinkthere'll be some augmented
reality.
That's going to be very, veryinteresting in the very near
future, because now, with thenewest, you know, chatgpt 4.0
(26:55):
has got the vision modality andthe audio modality and we're
close to where we're all wearinga pair of glasses, like the old
Google glasses, but it's in away that's much more helpful to
us being able to talk to it.
You get to that kind of almostthe Iron man stage where you can
(27:15):
talk with Jarvis and they cangive you a lot of good
information and even though itsounds kind of crazy, I don't
care to talk about that.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
It's like sci-fi.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
I think that's going to be the point to where I
envision a world where we'redoing an assessment with a pair
of glasses that's helping megive information, record the
information I'm getting from theclient, helping me create a
service plan that's prepared forthat client's individual needs
and highly tailored trulytailored to that individual,
because there are some peoplethat can do an intake with a
(27:46):
client and can pick up on thingsthat other people just wouldn't
be able to pick up on.
They're highly specialized,they've got a lot of good
experience and knowledge, butwe're serving so many people
that not everyone is gettingthat person to do the intake.
We all wish we all had thatperson at every location, but
it's simply not the case.
But technology is going toallow that to be more prevalent
(28:08):
and allow us to do those thingsin a way that we just can't
imagine today.
I get excited about some ofthat stuff and I know it's
coming.
I'm hopefully going to beinvolved in implementing some of
those things.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
I can feel your excitement and it gets me
excited too, because more andmore care is going to continue
to go into the home and as morepeople are cared for in the home
, we need a way to manage thatcare.
And if there's a tool, layeredon top of everything else we're
using, that can say hey, mrsJones, today is the one.
Out of all the masses, theterabytes of data that's flying
(28:41):
at us, it doesn't mean anythingunless you can condense it and
it says call this person or dothis thing.
It's going to be amazing towatch over the next decade or so
, for sure.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
Predictive analytics is where things will be really
interesting, and that's with themachine learning combined with
LLM.
I think that's going to be areally interesting area.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
I just have one more question for you.
Let's wrap this up with someadvice to the listeners.
If there are people out therethat just want to get started
with exploring the power of AI,where do they start?
I know you said play, but talkto us about some things that
they can go play with.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
Obviously, people have access to ChatGPT today.
It's public.
Anyone can use it.
I think that investing $20 amonth into a paid account makes
a lot of sense because you get alittle more security and
control when you have that paidaccount.
I have no stock in OpenAI.
I probably should have as crazyas I am about it but if it's
not OpenAI, it can be AnthropicCloud and it's very, very useful
(29:46):
.
But I think that once you geton the paid version, you have
access to a few more things andit's very, very useful.
But I think that once you geton the paid version, you have
access to a few more things andit's just the way I've had my
career, so I can't write foreverybody, but I've wanted to
understand things at least at alevel to where I can have a
decent discussion with others.
I'm always pleased when otherpeople on my team know more than
I do.
I'm jealous of them when thathappens, but I'm pleased.
(30:08):
I like to understand that I canhave the conversation and know
what they're talking about atsome level by learning some of
these things.
The cool thing is, if you'retalking to a guy that's talking
geek, speak to you, then you canuse ChatGPT to help translate
that for you.
Like what's he talking about?
And just go into it for so manythings.
Like I was on a panel inanother conference a few weeks
(30:31):
ago and I told people that I'verecently started just playing
with the voice interaction withChatGPT to learn Spanish on my
way to work and it's crazy whatthis one technology can do.
I can say, hey, I'd like tolearn Spanish, can you practice
some phrases with me?
You say the phrase you want meto say, say it to me in Spanish
(30:56):
and then I'll repeat it to youand you tell me how I did.
That's all that I prompted itwith and it started doing that.
Wow, I said I want to getbetter on my client inquiry
calls.
Can you act like you're asenior client's daughter and
you're calling me and then let'shave an interaction and then
when I say stop, you tell me howI did and how I could improve.
(31:16):
And it was able to do that.
Now that's the kind of stuffthat I think people need to play
with to know what it's capableof.
The days of us using it as achat bot to type in a message
and give us some feedback Ithink are over and we need to
move beyond that and we need toreally push the boundaries of
what we think it can do.
I took a picture with the appthat they have on the iPhone of
(31:39):
a room and I said can you tellme?
Because I wonder if we couldknow how the size of a room is.
I said, can you tell me how bigthis room is?
And it was able to estimate thesize of the room that I was in
in the square footage Because itpicked up on.
Well, I see a table and I seepeople sitting at the table,
because there's three people atthe table.
(32:00):
I think it's a six-foot table.
Using that as my guideline, Ithink this room is 15 by 20.
Pretty close to correct.
I didn't actually get my tapemeasure out to measure it, but I
mean, that's something that noone told me I could try that
with ChatGPT.
I tried it.
I got a million uses.
I could walk through all thelittle things I've done with it
just to see if it works, andit's always surprised me.
Speaker 2 (32:23):
You've been a good play.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
I no longer keep business cards because I take a
picture and I have ittranscribed, so funny.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
Completely so.
The theme here is just becurious people, Be open and
curious and see what's possible.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
I think there's nothing else to be curious,
because that's going to lead youto things you didn't expect and
it's going to open your mindquite a bit.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
Yeah, fantastic.
Well, this has been a very funconversation for me and I'm sure
the listeners are out thereenjoying it as well, and they're
going to be playing with chatTPT when they finish listening
to this podcast, if they're notalready playing with it now.
Thank you so much for coming onto the show today.
So good to talk.
Speaker 1 (33:07):
Appreciate you having me here.
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
Home Health 360 is presented by Alaya Care and
hosted by Erin Valliere.
First, we want to thank ouramazing guests and listeners.
Second, new episodes air everymonth, so be sure to subscribe
today so you don't miss anepisode.
And, last but not least, if youlike this episode and want to
learn more about all thingshome-based care, you can explore
(33:31):
all of our episodes ataliacarecom, slash homehelp360
or visit us on your favoritepodcast platform.
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