Ep:52: 3 Insurance Claims Most Home Care Owners Aren’t Prepared For

Miriam Allred (00:09):

Welcome to Vision | The Care Leaders’ Podcast. I’m Miriam Allred with Home Care Pulse. My guests today are Rick Dyer and Kate Fraser from InPro Insurance Group. Rick is the VP of Sales and Kate is a Home Care Specialist. Rick and Kate, welcome to the show.

Rick Dyer (00:24):

Hi, thank you so much.

Kate Fraser (00:25):

Thanks for having us Miriam.

Miriam Allred (00:27):

This is a really exciting opportunity. The two of you are talking to home care providers, day in and day out about insurance claims and really all things insurance. And today we want to talk about the three most common insurance claims that most home care owners aren’t prepared for. So let’s really dive right in Rick. I want to kick it over to you for the first claim that we’re going to talk about today. You know, what is the claim and why is it so common? Why aren’t providers prepared to deal with it?

Rick Dyer (00:56):

Yes, I think the, the, the most pressing claim we see often as the workers’ comp space and that one being either repositioning or transferring clients or patients, a lot of times, you know, it’s always a risk in, in home care. But with the employee shortage, a lot of employees are doing more trying to do more. Sometimes it maybe then they should you know, all the time that your best employee winds up being the one that will get an edge injury that’s unexpected, and they can be there. You know, again, trying to reposition someone, they pull a strain or a twist, an ankle, things like that. And it can be a shock, I think, to an owner at how expensive and how quickly that claim can develop and, and really drive drive up their costs in a home care agency.

Rick Dyer (01:46):

Oftentimes work workers’ comp becomes your second largest expense after your payroll, it’s derived off of your payroll and more payroll you’re run more. Workers’ comp you’re gonna not, you’re gonna have, and kind of hand in hand with that. If you’re a startup, for example, your first three years, you have a controlled mat. It’s basically at a one, it’s a factor that determines your overall rate for your worker’s comp. If you’re clean and have less claims over that three-year period, your mat is going to go below one, basically giving you a large discount on your premiums. If you have claims and claims develop your experience map is going to go up. So for example, if you have a 1.2 bod, which is we commonly see in home care, you’re paying 20% more for your workers’ comp than someone that has a want. Conversely, if you’re really clean and safe and you have a 0.8, you’re paying 20% below, this can really equate to huge dollars for a lot of the home care owners for, for those types of claims, you know, and for anything with workers comp, statistically, every dollar prevention equates to about eight to $10 of savings in it.

Rick Dyer (02:57):

So for this particular type of claim, it’s much better to be proactive. I know it can be hard to get caregivers to come in for additional trainings, but I really highly recommended safe lifting going through these procedures, making sure they know what the limitations are. Oftentimes if it’s a smaller caregiver and it’s a larger client, you really should have two caregivers there. And I’ve been on calls with owners before they said, geez, I’m talking to the client. Can you come on the phone today and kind of help me sell them a why? Why do I have to have two caregivers there? And we’ve done that. Some situations it might be they’re using a Gator belt or an employer lift. Even if the employee comes in, has impeccable record all. I’ve got tons of experience with this. Make sure you see it with your own eyes.

Rick Dyer (03:39):

Make sure you train it, make sure they’re up to date on their training. Again, that prevention piece on the reposition claims is huge. The second point I would make is you could be running for five years, never had a claim. It’s clean, make sure you have your return to work or limited duty program in place ahead of time. There’s nothing worse than they come to you and say, I have the care comes to you and says, Hey, we’ve got limited duties for this. What’s your program and you don’t have it. And you’re scrambling around trying to find it, have that stuff in place. Well, beforehand, this is what we’re going to do. If we get a client, this is how we’re going to report it. This is who’s going to touch the file. This is what we’re going to have the person, if they do have limited restrictions, all those types of things you’d be doing ahead of time. You’re way ahead of the game. And then it can really save you huge dollars. If your time employees out, the longer they’re out, the less likely they’re ever going to come back to work and the costs can just get, you know, astronomical with that.

Miriam Allred (04:38):

It’s pretty incredible. At the beginning, you said, you know, after payroll workers comp could be the second biggest expense for an agency, but yet a lot of providers aren’t prepared. You know, what would you say are the biggest roadblocks as to why providers don’t have these processes in place?

Rick Dyer (04:56):

And I think it’s a fact of a couple of things. You know, if it’s a newer or a startup, we get the call every day, Hey, I just want something quick and inexpensive in place right away. So the first thing you really want to look at is does the character going with really understand your business? And what’s really involved in the day to day in the insurance world, especially with workers, kind of most carriers prefer what they call four walls coverage. If I work for you, Miriam, and we run a manufacturing facility and I get hurt, they’re going to call you up and you’re going to sell. Rick was a good employee. Yeah, it happened here. This is exactly what happened. This is what we’re going to do to prevent it in the future, et cetera, that doesn’t happen in all care. Right? I could be alone with the client slip trip fall.

Rick Dyer (05:39):

You know, you could have told me 10 times, Hey, don’t reposition this person or make sure the family’s there and help them out. Don’t do it by herself. I do it. I pull it back muscle. You really don’t know what went on. You know, we’ve had a lot of claims where, you know, the person was doing some, some tasks around the home and the client didn’t even see what happened, right? So again, you know, first and foremost, make sure your carrier understands because if you do get a claim, you want someone who knows how to manage that claim when it happens, who understands when you say, you know, Hey brick was repositioning a client and that’s how we got hurt. And here’s what the limited duties can look like. Those types of things. I think the second thing is if it’s an experienced operator and you’ve gone 3, 4, 5, 6 years and knock on wood, you’ve never had a claim.

Rick Dyer (06:28):

It becomes less and less important to you. And every year to renewal as well, what’s the least expensive. I can get it. Or, you know, I’ll get questions all the time. I’ve never had a claim. Why do I have to do all this training? Why do I have to, you know, sometimes on the larger accounts, you know, meet with the loss control specialist and it, with all of commercial insurance, they’re really partnering with you. I’ll give you a quick example of, of, of one that a guy who’s been with me for years and years from when I first met him, you know, he had had three first, three or four years. He was paying about 4,000, $5,000 a year in workers’ comp, never had a client. He got a call from another agent. So I’m going to save you a thousand dollars a movie to this new carrier that that’s in the space.

Rick Dyer (07:07):

And he’s like, oh, he does, it gets a bad claim, transferring a patient. Long story short, the claim on it being over $260,000, when the claim filing hit his workers’ comp report, that that year for his renewal, he went from about 4,000 and worker’s comp to 44,000 that year. And, you know, he was furious. And we, you know, that’s when he called me and Hey, you specialize this, what can I do? How do we fix this? And I kind of explained to him, I said, you’re going to have this for three years. So there’s things that we’re going to do to manage it. But most crucially is we’re going to put stuff in place to prevent this from ever happening again, where if you get a client, this is how you’re going to imagine. You’re going to go to the care that’s going to support you, help you help minimize the costs of that. So those are really the, I think the two things focus on the training, have your plan in place beforehand. And again, make sure you’re with a care that really knows and understands their rights these types of risks and that they clearly understand, and they’ll help you with them. I’ll provide you with resources.

Kate Fraser (08:11):

What I’d love to add Miriam to that is just to speak to the situation. Those numbers are no exaggeration. What Rick is describing. The numbers are absolutely accurate. I was here when this was happening. And what’s important to mention is that he’s describing cashflow. And the number one thing that puts out a home care in the first three years is cashflow Miriam. So when, when something like this happens, can, can a company sustain those that, that increased costs, you know.

Miriam Allred (08:40):

Yeah. I’m glad you mentioned that because that’s exactly what I was going to say is those costs are real, you know, like you said, you talked to providers that haven’t had a claim yet, and so they don’t maybe necessarily know what to expect, but then you just gave that example, you know, quarter of a million dollars and like what you just said, Kate, you know, an agency might not be prepared to out most probably wouldn’t, especially in their first few years of business. So love that example and love the solutions that you mentioned. That’s what I was going to say, you know, what is the resolution to this? What do you want to say to providers? If you know, they don’t have something in place where they do, you know, what do they need to be checking in on routinely in regards to workers’ comp?

Kate Fraser (09:21):

I was just adding to the resources provided by the carriers. Those experienced carriers that are familiar with the space, have resources available on their website and there’s training platforms and videos and training tools documents available to providers to help in this, in this space and that all, everybody has access to those. Yeah.

Rick Dyer (09:44):

And even one of the things that we’ve done as an agency is we built out a library of resources. So things, everything from, you know, our traditional safety manual, you know, here’s what you should implement. They want to simple training programs on player lifts on Gator belts on, you know, how do you conduct a training in your office for new hires? How do you get characters? Everyone’s so busy right now. There’s not enough caregivers. And really just explaining to an owner like, look, you’re going to have to pay them to come into the office. Maximize that time, you know, set aside 30 minutes once a quarter, twice a year at a minimum, make it mandatory, shell, proper lifting techniques, go over your procedures. You know, if the person is of ax size, we have to have two caregivers there. If you’re asked to do something beyond your job, it’s not necessarily going to be a good employee.

Rick Dyer (10:37):

I’m going to go above and beyond. I’m just going to do this myself. It’s not worth it. If the person gets hurt, you know, here’s how you report back to leadership. And this is a question I’m getting, this is why I told them no, you know, expect a phone calls sometimes from the family like, oh, we asked this person to do this action. They wouldn’t do it. But as an owner, you need to be well-versed and explained to them from a risk standpoint, we’re not saying no, we’re saying no to how this gets done. Let’s come up with a creative solution shoe solution. That’s safe for my employee, you know, and say for your loved one.

Miriam Allred (11:06):

Yeah, really good points on the caregiver side training, you know, we’re big advocates for as much training as possible as you can provide. But then on the provider side, what you’re saying is priorities. You know, owners are so busy, but knowing the cost associated with this claim specifically, you’ve got to make it a priority to keep things in check and constantly be, you know, just refining your processes and making sure you have everything in place. So yeah, go ahead, Kate. I

Kate Fraser (11:32):

May add one more thing to the having the communication and open lines of communication with your agent is really important because the opportunities that we have when something happens to kind of I don’t like to call it handholding, but just to help walk people through certain responses when something happens. And also I, when, if something happens a couple of years ago and, and what Rick was describing earlier, when the renewal happens, when it finally being applied to the mod and you’re not prepared, cause you don’t, you didn’t tell your agent about it and you don’t know how this going to impact your renewal. And then you get hit with like a 40% increase or huge increase, open lines of communication with the trusted agent really really helps.

Rick Dyer (12:19):

Yeah. I don’t, if they have my cell phone, they literally call me weekends nights, Hey, this just happened. What do I do? Or, you know, I’ve got a funny feeling about this claim or this call I just had with my caregiver. How can I prevent this right now? And it’s, it’s such a timely issue that if you have that an easy feeling, I just had a really bad call call your agent. This is what happened. This is what I think went down. Let’s get something in place right away, because there’s such a limited window where if it’s a fraudulent claim, for example, you want someone on it right away. Or if it’s something minor address it right away. Cause those little minor claims can really exacerbate themselves and increase your cost and mirror.

Kate Fraser (13:05):

And you know, very well that whether you’re a bigger, small home care, some of these individuals and providers have way too close a relationship with your attorneys. And so their first call is to their attorney versus their insurance agent. I think that’s a common situation that I run into a lot.

Miriam Allred (13:23):

Yeah. This is a perfect segue into our next point. I think because worker’s comp is top of mind is pretty familiar to most agencies, but we’re actually going to get into two other claims that may not be as common or as well known to providers. So let’s, let’s segue into this next claim. Kate, why don’t you introduce it around auto and talk about, you know, what’s happening there and why aren’t providers may be as familiar with this or doing wrong in this instance?

Kate Fraser (13:48):

Oh, sure. So we’re going to talk about the higher anonymous exposure for the home care industry, but just before I get into some, an example associated directly with higher non-owned auto, I wanted to just differentiate between the two. Some people are not familiar with the higher, not on auto, but they’re familiar with a business owned auto. Well, we’re not going to talk about the business on Datto today. That’s very, it’s obvious if you have a vehicle that’s titled in the company name, that’s your business auto hired and non-owned auto is associated with liabilities connected with your, your caregivers on the road, your caregivers, driving client vehicles. And it, so when a, an incident occurs on the road, your caregivers and insurance goes first. This is why it’s important that our, our providers are checking insurance for their staff as they’re onboarding. And then the, so the in a claim scenario, the coverage on the caregiver’s vehicle goes first and then this hired non auto is the limits that are over and above the caregiver’s limits.

Kate Fraser (14:51):

And that’s why it’s, that’s why it’s there. It’s so important. And the example that I think could really hit home for these guys that we put together. There’s so many, the ones specifically of, we have a lot of situations where a a provider allows their staff to drive the client vehicle. How many situations are where the client vehicle is, looks a little bit safer or a little bit better condition. And you’ve got that Malibu in the, in the garage that has 5,000 miles on it. So the client may want the caregiver to drive that vehicle. Sounds like a reasonable solution for a lot of these providers, but here’s a, here’s a realistic situation. You have a, you have a caregiver that comes to a client’s home and they want to go to the doctor’s office. But the vehicle in the driveway is a, an F150 Miriam.

Kate Fraser (15:43):

And that caregiver who drove to work that day in her Toyota Prius is asked to drive that F-150 to the, to the doctor’s office. Is that, is that a comfortable transition? Do you see the difference in the size of that vehicle versus what she’s acclimated to? You’re not, you’re not in a safe situation. You’re not in a comfortable atmosphere when you have that large of a shift going, going from one size vehicle to another the, the there’s a lot of there’s a lot of stringencies that have, that carriers have put on, on insurance companies in the last several years because of the increase of claims and this and this area it’s huge the last several years.

Rick Dyer (16:25):

Well, one interesting thing that I get a lot of times about is an owner will come call in and say, well, I’d rather have him drive the client’s vehicle. You know? And, and a lot of people don’t even real realize as a rule of thumb coverage goes with the vehicle. So the client will say, yeah, I want you to drive my client. People not realizing that they’re not taking on that risk. The other thing is there’s been a large crackdown of personal insurers on vehicles that will not extend coverage to that person. If you don’t tell them so that there’s some hoops you got to jump through where you want to go back to the client and the client’s family, if that’s your solution is the client’s vehicle. They actually need to go to their insurer and request permission and get a letter and all this other stuff.

Rick Dyer (17:09):

But I really discourage that because you’re going to lose a client over it, right? The client’s going to assume even I haven’t been on a call before with an owner and the client and that almost exact situation where he wanted to drive his larger vehicle at mama caregiver driving. And we explained to him a couple of times, like you’re taking the risk out for this, even with this ladder and, you know and he still insisted, well, if something happens, of course, I’m going to go back to the home care owner to make it right. And it’s like, that’s, that’s not how this works. So you want to discourage that, but the hired non owned there’s case law out there now, where you’re seeing caregivers driving from their, to the client, get in a bad accident. And it comes back to the business.

Rick Dyer (17:54):

You, you really want to have that hard, not all there to protect yourself. The, even if it’s a 10 99 employee, we just had a client go through this in Florida where I said, well, I’m safe because it was 10 99. And she got in a bad accident. It’s not going to come back on me. It took that attorney, you know, 30 minutes to figure out, no, you really were driving in due course from that home care agency, we’re going to take this to court and they ultimately want, now, luckily they had hired not own in place and then did, did a cover for the claim. But you really have to be careful out there. And you know, that’s why carriers are asking more questions, check MBRs, check insurance records, at least annually on your caregivers.

Kate Fraser (18:39):

A lot of people don’t know what MDRs are. So the Motor Vehicle Records are so important and whether we’re talking about the liability exposure and workers’ comp carriers also are very, very in tuned with motor vehicle record checks. And what a great way to just further peel back the onion on the screen process with your employees and really deep dive into what exposures are really there with somebody. Do I want to put on a place, this particular caregiver who is amazing with staff or amazing with clients. So I want to place her with this, with this client that requires a little bit more transportation each week versus another client that does not have any requirements for transportation or running errands. The other thing with a motor vehicle check if they’re the things that are on this, this record, Miriam are so important and you can’t find this information elsewhere. Let’s say that there’s an individual that has a restricted driver’s license where they can’t drive past eight o’clock at night. Is that going to determine how you staff that individual? How else do you know this is, there’s so much information that that’s on here that is, that is helpful to how you staff somebody and that further decreases your risk when you are, when you’re able to probably staff somebody.

Rick Dyer (19:51):

Yeah. People get in car accidents, you know, and if you’ve got a lot of caregivers out on the road, their fault or not an accident is going to happen, you want to protect your business and your assets. You know, any concern with driver, net, all the distracted driving, you know, cell phone, make sure you have a no cell phone use policy when they’re dry little things like a habit in the handbook. When you do your, bring them in for their safety training, remind them no sun, no teller, no cell phone use all those types of things can really, really be a benefit. Yeah, it

Kate Fraser (20:23):

Goes back to front of mine too. Just like we were talking about with the worker’s comp, these things that are, it’s obvious to not drive with your cell phone and answering the phone calls and texting, it’s obvious that we’re not supposed to tailgate, but as we’re rushing, or as, as, as we’re doing our everyday life, we forget these things that are so important. And so this con this reiteration, this like this, this this practice of making these front of mind are an investment in a company and they’re necessary.

Miriam Allred (20:51):

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I love how granular we’re getting, because I’ve talked to providers that have said, you know, all I’m asking is, do you have a vehicle or not? And that’s where they’re starting. But yet there are so many additional steps and talking points that providers need to be checking and verifying with each and every caregiver, because like you’re saying, yeah, accidents happen and providers, aren’t going to think about it until it happens, but it’s going to happen at some point in your agency. And so you’ve got to be prepared. I want to ask one really simple question that just kind of shows my lack of education here, but the hired and non-owned auto, you were saying that’s kind of a secondary insurance for the caregiver’s car. And then you were talking about the clients’ vehicles. Does that count for client vehicles or not?

Rick Dyer (21:35):

It, it, depending on your state, it can, it will hear it and the carrier as well. So it’s real, it’s really for the business, right? It’s really a, a business protection. So if it’s the client’s favorite client’s vehicle is going to be first. If it’s the caregiver driving their own vehicle, that’s, that’s willing to look to first, but in today’s day, I mean, every type of business where their home is, you’re not should have a higher Knotel

Kate Fraser (21:59):

On the common exclusion where somebody might say like, climb vehicles are excluded or liability associated with client. Field sites are excluded. And this is the who reads a 300 page document. We do. But these are really common exclusions that people don’t know. They don’t know that it’s on there. And as

Rick Dyer (22:16):

An owner, you, you, again, we chose these three kind of areas because that is the risk that again, owners aren’t seeing, they can pop up and be very, very damaging and very expensive. Where if you take a little bit of time, research makes you understand, does my policy have this? What exactly does it cover? How does it work? It’ll help determine some of your policies and procedures that you put in place in your agency. And now you’ll know the why, why do you do it that way?

Kate Fraser (22:41):

One more thing I want to add about the client’s vehicles when we’re working with startups in particular, we always take an opportunity to discourage our, our startups from getting in the habit of allowing such practices and coming up with alternatives. It’s a little bit more difficult to discourage somebody who’s been doing it for so many years. And they’re like, number one, they may not have run into a situation yet. And they’ve been doing it for such a long time, and it works so changing those or changing those practices are, are much more challenging versus getting into the practice correctly from the get go. And that’s something we run into because we always try and emphasize it. And if something happens in that situation, it’s very common that you may lose a caregiver or a client. Do you connect any of us that can we afford that? It’s costly.

Miriam Allred (23:28):

Yeah. I appreciate the clarification because I’m sure those are common questions. And so I just wanted to be sure. Yeah, that all being said, let’s move into this third claim that we want to talk about. Rick, why don’t you introduce it?

Rick Dyer (23:40):

Yeah. So this one is a really interesting one because it’s usage and requirement. It has greatly increased, I’d say in the last three years, it’s employment practices, liability insurance. Everybody refers to it as Eli. And it’s, it’s the coverage that really is there for your interactions with your employees predominantly. And it covers a lot of things. Particularly discrimination, hiring practices, promotional practices, wage, and hour real, anything to do with employees. I really want to focus on the discrimination claim aspects of it because we see these pop up multiple different ways in a lot of different scenarios, the thing with EPL line, there’s some interesting statistics out there from the carriers, but if you’re in business for 10 years, three out of every five employers is going to get some type of APLI claim. A lot of them could be fraudulent or just misunderstandings.

Rick Dyer (24:39):

They get elevated and more and more, I think virtually every franchise or requires it now to have EPL lie in place. But the issue we see and in the bigger way to prevent this is again, like we’ve talked a little bit about today. People are overworked, they’re busy, they’re looking for caregivers, they’re doing all kinds of creative hiring interviewing practices, but you really want to be careful with how you proceed with those. And our rule of thumb is you want to interview, hire, train, promote everybody exactly the same way. And you want to document it. You know, if you’re a smaller or you’re a startup, maybe you yourself, as an owner, you’re doing it. You’re checking every box. You being careful, you’re documenting it properly. But as you grow, you might have hire a schedule or someone or a recruiter, and you want to make sure that person knows on her, on the understands this as well.

Rick Dyer (25:33):

And I always say, you know, as you’re going through the process, a good check for yourself, you know, once a year’s review your policies and your procedures, and try to look at it from the caregiver’s point of view, everyone’s fighting for caregivers, everyone’s trying to get them in and you’re trying to hire them and push them through as quickly as possible. We’ve had some claims come up from extraneous promises major in the hiring practice that if it doesn’t come through through, for fruition, that employee might look at that if they were discriminated against, you told me I was going to get X pay or X number of hours, or this type of working condition, and you didn’t deliver on it. And then they’d go get an attorney. The attorney’s gonna look at your policies. Your procedures is going to talk to past employees.

Rick Dyer (26:18):

Current employees, if there’s any differences or discrepancies, they’re probably going to proceed and go forward with it. So that’s our big, big concern. I don’t think there’s any owner out there purposely discriminating. It gets, but again, it’s taking that moment looking at it through the caregiver’s eyes. Another thing I always tell especially in this environment now, even if it’s just a corrective action meeting or phone call or talking to an employee, I really discouraged one-on-one nowadays, you know, you really want to have a second person there. I’ve had so many where I’m talking to the owner and it’s, she’s like, oh, I’m just going to talk to her and say, you know, work on this, this, this person got upset and quit on the spot. You know, now they go off, how upset are they really? Are you going to conduct an exit interview?

Rick Dyer (27:10):

Or if they get an attorney and it comes back on, your EPLs can be, you know, what are the owners say? What are the employees say, great to have some documentation there. And oftentimes those will be construed as a discrimination case while you, you only singled me out to do this. And again, if you have that second person now, we’re, you know, we’re going through with several of our employees and doing a review process, documenting having a secondary person there to help prevent it. Also on the EPL line, there there’s a, a large misunderstanding, I think with, you know, how it’s really there. Everyone tends to look at it. Well, how much coverage do I get? Is it a $500,000 or is a million dollar limit doing this for a long time and dealing with hundreds of agencies, which are what the real value is. You’re having the access to the carrier legal team. And a lot of the larger, better carriers have a whole team of attorneys that this is all they do. Is he gonna lie?

Kate Fraser (28:07):

So we provide hours for free complimentary hours. You can call them versus the personal attorney.

Rick Dyer (28:12):

Yeah. Even beforehand, right? You can call into the carrot, Hey, this happened, I’m a little uncomfortable with this and they’ll get guidance, but that’s a great point about the personal attorney, the key with Eli, and really what you’re getting is that coverage from the carrier. And you’re getting access to that illegal resources. Your first call should be to either your agent or the carrier, and you want to use the carriers law firm. You can be comfortable with your, you know, your local attorney, maybe help you set up the business. They’re probably not an expert EPL Alliance. And oftentimes you can get into trouble if you go to that attorney for versus the carriers. And then you quickly on all, this is going to be bigger. Or the attorney’s like, oh, this is really developing something. Either better call your coverage in carriers. Don’t like that.

Rick Dyer (29:00):

They want to be in it right from the beginning. Also the temperature of the situation. And they have access to the biggest and best law firms in this space. They get it at a discounted rate that you and I would not be able to do. And you’re paid for that resource. I really want owners to look at it more from, I’m not just paying for that claim limit. I’m wait, I’m paying for that expertise. You know, if I get a claim, even if I think it’s fraudulent and Sarah, I want the best at it to defend myself, defend my business, protect my assets.

Miriam Allred (29:27):

Yeah. This one is super tough. And I’m glad we’re talking about it. Something that I was just thinking of that’s relevant is, you know, four to five providers have caregivers working for multiple agencies. And so these caregivers come in with preconceived ideas and thoughts, and that plays into the discrimination. You know, if something’s done differently or not familiar to them, it can turn into an issue. And so I just love what you’re saying, you know, really simple changes that providers need to make, you know, having two people in those, maybe one-on-one conversations, there’s just little things like that, that providers probably aren’t thinking about, but that can result in these liability claims and it blows up in their face. So you, you kind of mentioned a couple of examples. I’d love to hear maybe some really specific examples that you’ve heard of that maybe, you know, you took a step back or hadn’t heard of before that are, that our audience might want to hear.

Rick Dyer (30:23):

Yeah. You know, it’s, I just had so many owners where they’re just shocked when they get, especially if it’s a discrimination law, you know, where it’s very

Kate Fraser (30:34):

Personal. It’s very emotional. It’s the most emotional conversations that we have with our

Rick Dyer (30:39):

Clients because it’s direct back to the owner, you know the person was in the field, maybe a great caregiver and you brought them into the office for a period of time. And then either it didn’t work out or you didn’t explain it clear enough that, Hey, I’m going to have you do this for X amount of time. And then, you know, going to go back on the field. And then that person takes it the wrong way, or doesn’t want to go back and, you know, to you and I we’d look at sale, just a misunderstanding and try to have a conversation that caregiver overworked, Ms. Misread the situation like they’re treated differently than the other people to act like I was treated differently than the other office person. And you’re doing it because I’m a female, I’m a minority. I had one recently where it’s, it’s kind of a long detailed one.

Rick Dyer (31:29):

But she was pregnant. She thought it was because it was, she was privately she was given this hours and this type of thing, and it was filed as a discrimination. So those types of things, again, it’s easy in the course of business, you make a quick call, I’m gonna have you do this, this and this person agrees to it. And you think you’re good document, any type of change, any type of interaction you have with an employee to say so that if it ever, you know, again, look at it from their point of view and how do they understand that, you know, ask those up questions. I’m asking you to a, B and C, have them repeat back. This is what I’m after you want me to do. And this is why, and keep those, you know, good, good notes on this. I’m going to divert a little bit, because one thing that I’ve really seen, I was thinking about this last night, K9 are active with a lot of the home care agency groups on the various social media platforms and something I’ve seen a huge increase in, in the last year are kind of these venting posts.

Rick Dyer (32:30):

And it’s making me very, very nervous from an API standpoint. I get it. Everybody likes to go on there and say, oh my gosh, this look what candidate, caregiver, et cetera, did, please limit that and limit the amount of detail you give. Because if you get one of these, they’re going to go pull those accounts. And if they think they can tie it back or act enough dots to say, oh, on this incident, you posted acts, you’re referring to this very situation. That can be very, very difficult to recover from. So this was just going through this last night, responding to a couple of things on Facebook with some of the owners. And the more I, you know, it went from kind of a general thing to now, it’s getting really, really specific this person, this area did exactly this with that. You know, it’s probably the vast majority owners on there, but again, if it gets, would you want this to come up in the portal law, if you got to meet POI clank, this person says you’re discriminatory, treated them differently and they can find postings on it where you’re talking about them. Boy, that’s unwinnable. Yeah.

Miriam Allred (33:39):

Wow. Glad you’re saying that. I I’ve seen it. Everyone listening to this has probably seen that and knows very specifically what you’re talking about and it’s something to be aware of. So I’m glad you mentioned that. Well, Rick and Kate, we’re at the top here, but thank you so much. We have only covered three claims today. I know I’ve learned a ton. I know our listeners have learned a ton. There’s so much more that we could go into, but I just want to mention, you know, we’ll have all of this information on our website. You guys are going to give us, you know, a couple of resources that we can promote for free to those that are listening today, but really just thank you so much. We will definitely be learning more from you in the future.

Rick Dyer (34:19):

Thank you so much for having us. We really appreciate this.