Sep 10, 2019
We are in the midst of a perfect storm in the home healthcare world. People are living longer, we have multiple generations needing care – and a shortage of workers to take care of them. That’s the revelation brought by Charmaine Conaghan, who joins me on this episode of Leading with Health.
Charmaine is the owner of Always Best Care Senior Services, a full service caregiving agency licensed through the State of Illinois as a Home Services agency. Always Best Care sends caregivers to folks wherever they may be, whether in their own home, in an Independent Senior community, Assisted Living, Skilled Nursing, or even a hospital. Wherever or whenever someone is in need of one-on-one assistance, their caregivers can attend to a wide range of physical or cognitive needs.
Highlights include:
3:00 – Perfect storm happening now in home healthcare. People living longer, multiple generations needing care and a shortage of caregivers.
7:15 – Placement agencies vs. full-service agencies
9:03 – CC: “Any good agency has a vetting process. You make sure that the people you are sending to folks really do have a heart for this and really do care.”
11:04 – CC: “When people call for care, they are often under the assumption that Medicare is covering this.”
12:38 – CC: “There is a big change going on. The third leg of that perfect storm is care shifting to home and the government finally seeing that it makes sense for care and services to be provided in the home.”
13:14 – CC: “CMS announced just this past year that they are expanding their coverage and will be paying for more things in the home. Like grab bars to be installed and some durable medical equipment and ramps.”
14:20 – CC: “Health insurance carriers are negotiating contracts with mostly large home care companies.”
17:27 – JM: “We’re at a watershed moment where our society is finally going to have to own up to the fact that, if we don’t invest and make it easy to take care of our loved ones, we’re not going to be able to do anything. Our whole economy was built on the idea that somebody was home taking care of everybody and now that everybody’s working, we still need people at home taking care of people.”
20:00 – CC: “There are no visas out there for people who do not have a college degree. For the level of worker that we need; we need visas for those people.”
21:20 – JM: “Anything that has to do with nurturing, anything that has to do with the role of mothers or women traditionally, we value it so little – yet things collapse when it’s taken away.”
25:39 – CC: “We can make sure that your patient doesn’t return in that 30-day window so you don’t get dinged for Medicare.”
Leading with Health is hosted by Jennifer Michelle. Jennifer has a Master’s in Public Health and Epidemiology and is a certified EMT. As President of Michelle Marketing Strategies, Jennifer specializes in healthcare marketing. She is on a mission to help women find their voice so they can create a stronger, more responsive healthcare system.