Ep. 63: How the Face of Home Care is Changing, According to Bob Roth of Cypress Home Care

Miriam Allred (00:08):

Bob welcome to Home Care Live. Thanks for joining me today!

Bob Roth (00:12):

Miriam. Thank you for having me.

Miriam Allred (00:14):

I just want to start off by talking a little bit about your background. You come from kind of a sales and marketing background. You’ve worked at some really big names, Dole, Gatorade, Pepsi Co., a couple of different tech companies. And you’ve both worked on the tactical portions of businesses, the strategic narratives of businesses, you build relationships established processes. You’ve, you’ve been around the block and I know that feeds into the success that you’ve had with Cypress in Scottsdale. So thanks for joining me today. We’re lucky to have you.

Bob Roth (00:49):

Well, thank you for having me. And I think I’ve earned all the gray hair that I have in my head, and I’m thankful that I have it. So now I appreciate the introduction and certainly I just want to say Miriam would have honored is to be doing this with Home Care Pulse. And I reflect on the time when I first met Aaron Marcum, and I just want you and the audience to know that when he told me what he was attempting to do with Home Care Pulse, I’m like, I’m all in, what do you need? And, and specifically I was talking about the benchmark marking study and, and the biggest challenge we have in home care is getting data and getting information. And you described some of the places I’d worked previously and working in consumer product goods as a trademark and a manager and a brand manager, and working in sales, we needed data and information. And in the consumer product goods world, we had Nielsen data. We had scan track data. We had IRI data. So we had a lot of information and a lot of categorical data, categorical data where, you know, in home care we had zero. So I really applaud home care pulse, and really am thankful for Aaron to have this vision. And for us to have this benchmarking study that I think just completed what 12 or 13 years.

Miriam Allred (02:14):

Yeah. 13 years. Appreciate you mentioning that. Cause we’re going to talk a lot about data today. We’ve had some really great questions pre submitted to this call. So we’re going to get to that here in a little bit, but I want to start off by talking about this concept that you and I have talked about, Bob, which is the face of home care is really changing. You’ve served both on state and national boards here in home care. You’ve learned a lot. You’ve seen a lot and a lot has changed and a lot is continuing, continuing to change and to evolve. So let’s just start there maybe high level. When you, when we say the face of care is changing, what, what do you mean by that? Exactly.

Bob Roth (02:53):

I’m coming up on two decades and my family’s coming up on three decades of being the business. So I’m seeing a lot. And the biggest change that I really see is the shift and the shift that’s happening right now before all of us. And we really need to take note of this is the fact that this generation that is needing care now are the baby boomers. And I fall into that category. I just barely make it. And I am one of those boomers. And we all remember for those that were in the business back in 2011, the oldest baby boomers started turning 65. Then, well guess what? We’re in 2021. Now they’ve just started turning 75 and we’re almost done 20, 21. It’s hard to believe that November 1st is this sad or this Monday. And really in nine years, the baby boomers are going to start turning 85.

Bob Roth (03:49):

And what does that mean? Baby boomers built the economy that we are in today. They built the communities that we live in today, and I’m telling you for one, I am not going to be real receptive to having a caregiver. And I think we need to really understand the mindset of baby boomers and really understand that they may not want caregivers, but if we phrase it and position in a very different way, I’m really talking more about it, personal assistant, helping with some of those activities of daily living. And they may be just dressing. They may be assisting them with, you know, driving them to appointments or medication reminders. I think there’ll be more receptive to receiving care versus saying, you need a caregiver. So we have to really look at the demographic shift that is happening right before us right now.

Miriam Allred (04:45):

It’s super interesting, you know, there’s, there’s things that we may be able to do and there’s things that we may not be able to do. And you, like you said, you know, you fit into that category as well. Do you think it will be a matter of, of messaging and positioning your agency? Or do you think we’re going to have to innovate? You’ve hit on kind of a couple of things, but what are some other ways that we’re going to have to iterate to be able to attract them as clients now and in the coming years?

Bob Roth (05:13):

Well, I think messaging is so big and messaging something I always talk about. So I think how we message our services are really important. You know, I, I’m finishing up my second term on the home care association of America’s board. So the ACOA board of directors and, you know, we talk about it all the time. We still have an awareness issue and some of us just really think that everybody knows about home care, but we’re stuck in this, this mindset in the healthcare continuum where people think home health and home care are the same and they couldn’t be more different. And it’s crazy because it’s not just doctors that think that we have social workers and case managers that think that home health and home care are the same. And, you know, we’re, we’re stuck in this thing. And I, I think from a messaging standpoint, Miriam, I think we have to do a better job of messaging work that we do, and we have to be mindful and being able to articulate it to our audience and our audience now and going into the future is going to be more akin to the boomers than it ever has been before because this greatest generation now is unfortunately dying off.

Bob Roth (06:27):

And, and now we need to think about how do we position ourselves for this next generation. And I think messaging is a really big part of that. And that’s why I talk about, do we really talk about it as caregiving or do we really talk about it as assisting them? And that’s truly the word that we really need to focus in on is that we assist our clients with the ability to be able to remain in the home and how do we do that? We assist them getting dressed. We assist them going to the bathroom. We assist them with preparation of meals. We assist them with medication reminders. So if there’s anything that our audience really needs to be mindful of is be mindful of that word assist because when we start doing for our clients, that ends up leading us to really having potential scoping issues where we may be falling outside of our scope and maybe more akin to that home health agency responsibility versus home care responsibility.

Miriam Allred (07:33):

I think the pandemic obviously has shown a light on home care and has helped us distinguish and bring some of that awareness. But my, my thinking is, we’ve just got to make conscious efforts. We’ve got to continue to push things forward, but go about it intentionally and with consciousness because it’s not going to happen on its own. We’ve got to push for it. You know, we’ve got to advocate for it and get that messaging across. You know, it starts on a local level. Everyone here listening today is, you know, in some local market. And so just doing what you can on the local level to kind of push that messaging out there. I want to shift gears and talk about another change in the industry that you’ve, you’ve, you’ve brought to my attention that we’ve talked about, which is clients may be wanting shorter shifts, but then caregivers wanting more hours. There’s kind of this imbalance that’s taking place that we’re going to have to sort out. Talk to me a little bit about what you’ve seen and your thinking there.

Bob Roth (08:29):

Well, I mean, first of all, the length of service they clients are on with agency has gone down dramatically. And for the people that are joining us here today, and those that will be listening to this podcast down the road will concur with that. I mean, I used to have several clients that were with us more than 10 years, and I had several that were with seven years of more. So what is happening now is the affordability piece is really starting to impact our business. I can tell you firsthand that in Arizona, specifically, the Phoenix metropolitan market that we serve just eight or nine years ago, we were charging $18 an hour for our services. Five years ago, six years ago, we were charging 22 and now our average charge is about $32. So we’ve had this push in our country to raise the minimum wage to $15.

Bob Roth (09:31):

We don’t need a law to have $15 minimum wage we’re already there. The genie’s out of the bottle, the toothpaste is out of the tube. We’re paying caregivers north of $15. So as a result, the unintended consequence is the consumers are now burdened with paying for services that are in some cases almost twice what they were eight or nine years ago. They don’t have the resources that they once had had at one point in time because they’re not earning anymore. They’re on fixed incomes. So they’re stuck with trying to get care for their loved ones or themselves, and not really having the dollars to be able to support that. So what are, what are we experiencing? We’re experiencing people that are trying to do less in terms of providing care, giving services or engaging caregiving agencies to provide caregiving services with less hours, because they’re trying to make the dollars go further for them.

Bob Roth (10:36):

They also know that communal living had a huge spotlight shown on them during this pandemic. They don’t want to go in there because if they go there, then they might get COVID or they may get some other illness. So they want to try to stay at home. So that is where clients are really trying to do more with less hours. Now, on the caregiving side, the caregivers, many of them are doing intergenerational living. They’re living with their parents or they’re living with their in-laws or grandparents. They have children of their own. They want to go into less clients’ homes because they are fearful of getting COVID or this new variant, and they don’t want to bring it home. So they want to go to less clients. So what we’re experiencing is the caregivers there. We have these four hour cases that are maybe four hours a day, three days a week.

Bob Roth (11:34):

They’re really hard for us to problem solve. I will tell you that there are some agencies and we’re considering it as well. And some of our, our guests here today are people that are listening, upping their hours. I know of an agency back east in the mid Atlantic area from F and M state eight hour minimums and some drop off in their business. I haven’t had the I haven’t had the chutzpah to be able to do that yet, but certainly it’s something worth considering because caregivers staffing, those cases for shorter hours are really hard to find. And when we do find them, the biggest challenge we run in with home care is consistency. So if we find someone that does four hours, we’re hoping that we can get them to return for those cases during the week and weeks after. So part of what we try to position when we go out to visit clients is we tried to tell the story about caregivers wanting more hours. So we’re trying to get our clients to up their hours. But at the same time, as I shared with you just a couple of minutes ago, the clients have less in terms of resources, disposable resources to pay for our services. So there lies that biggest challenge we have right now is caregivers are wanting more hours with their clients. Not less, and clients are wanting less hours because they want their dollars to go further.

Miriam Allred (12:59):

Yeah, it’s a tough, it’s a tough balance to strike and, and hopefully we can, we can get there and we can find that that right balance that is mutually beneficial for our clients and for our caregivers. Before we keep going, I just want to reiterate to those listening in today, feel free to drop any questions that you have in the chat so that we can ask them to Bob here in a couple of minutes.

Bob Roth (13:23):

And if I could just chime in Miriam and we can talk about this later, I think we’re going this direction. I really believe that part of that solution for our clients is to really embrace and adapt some of the innovations and tech that’s out there. Robots and technology are not going to replace humans, but they can add to the delivery. They can ensure the safety of that loved one and be able to still do the life in person caregiving. So that is something that, you know, we need to embrace and maybe consider. And some of you may already be doing that.

Miriam Allred (14:08):

Yeah, let’s, let’s head that direction by starting with one of your all say competitive advantages. Hopefully that’s an okay term is data collection. You know, you highlighted at the beginning, what we’ve done here at home care polls. So the benchmarking study and pushing, you know, data forward in this industry, I would say it’s probably one of your competitive advantages is using data to the best of your ability. So let’s, let’s talk about that. You know, what, what has been your philosophy around data collection and how has it pushed, you know, Cypress to Excel in ways that other providers probably haven’t?

Bob Roth (14:45):

Well, I think it’s really important for us to be able to gather data. I mean, is the answer to all the problems that we deal with in our universe. I mean, let’s face it, everything’s down, does zeros and ones when, when you really talk to the tech geeks. So we really need to be able to understand the data and the data can come in many different forms. It can come in forms in terms of the way we deliver care. It can come in forms of how our caregivers are performing. And I think, you know, having Home Care Pulse and having some of these incredible software companies that really run the back offices of our businesses have really come a long way. I mean, as I shared with you, I’m finishing my second decade in this industry and to see the amount of data that we’re able to collect versus what we had 20 years ago is it is really earth shattering.

Bob Roth (15:43):

So I mean, we, we do need data to do predictive analytics. We do need data to really analyze how we’re performing. We need information. Information is really the key to everything. And, you know, for me, you know, I, you know, you know, the competitive advantage of a roof, whatever you want to call it. I had some really difficult decisions to make a couple of years ago, and that is we crossed our 25th year and providing care. And in the Phoenix market, 25 years, we were really literally one of 10 companies when we started back in 1994, which is now 27 years ago. Now they’re close to 700 companies I’m told in the Phoenix metropolitan area. So, I mean, it’s becoming creative, incredibly competitive, and we’re all competing for the same worker and we’re all competing for the same type of client. And we all do some of the same functions, right?

Bob Roth (16:46):

We all do payroll, we all do scheduling. We, we all have to onboarding caregivers interviewing them. We do on-call so it’s hard to do it really, really well. So, you know, for me, you know, it’s trying to figure out how can we be able, especially at Cypress homecare, having been around twenty-five years, how do we make it another 25 years? And data was really important getting information, but also being able to utilize tech and innovation as I was describing before in the home to be able to use that in your agency and use that to your advantage, to be able to provide care into this next generation was really important to me. And that’s probably a great segue into the next question you have. And that was probably why we did what we did when we partnered with honor. Yeah.

Miriam Allred (17:43):

Let’s, let’s talk a little bit about that. And then I actually want to, we’ve got a question here from Dina who I think is on line with us that I want get to, but, but let’s, let’s talk a little bit about that. You know, you are a part of the honor network and talk a little bit about that, what that means and why you guys made that decision a couple of years ago and how, you know, collecting more data was maybe the root of that decision and what it’s led to for you guys.

Bob Roth (18:06):

Well, for me, it was about workforce. I, we didn’t have an issue relative to workforce at Cypress, matter of fact, the March before. So March of 2019 we hired and we oriented and we put to work 32 caregivers, which, you know, may have been one of the highest that we had ever done. But I will tell you, I mean, the, the, the tea leaves, the data that we were getting from the power professional healthcare Institute. And if anyone’s not familiar with them, Phi national.org, I believe is their website. They have a lot of data as relates to direct care workforce. And they’ve been tracking that for almost 40 years and they were sharing with all of us in the direct care workforce world that we were going to have a shortage between now and 2026 of approximately 1.4 to 1.6 million direct care workers for us to have available, to provide care in the state of Arizona.

Bob Roth (19:13):

The number was north of a hundred thousand. And the crazy thing is that we were going to have about a 32,000 workforce shortage, but we also were going to have about 68,000 here in the state of Arizona, there were retiring out. So we were already short 32, we had 68,000 retiring out. I knew we were going to have a problem with workforce, and that was long before the pandemic, right? So for us, I wanted to look to figure out how to problem solve this. So I had been attached to this group called aging, two dot, oh, if anyone has heard of them, you know what I’m talking about. If you don’t know who they are, go to aging, two.o.org. They are a curator or a platform for tech and innovation to the senior community, senior world community, if you would. And it’s not just home care companies that senior living it’s healthcare they’re based out of the bay area.

Bob Roth (20:10):

And I actually saw this company called honor back in 2014 and, and was really, really intrigued by what they were doing. And they’ve gone through several iterations for those that know who they are. They did try to uberize home care. There’s no doubt about it, but they learned, they created one of the largest home care companies in the bay area, and then realize in 2017, I believe it was that they, it was hard for them to go ahead and do this in other markets. It would take a lot of capital do that. But one of the things they realized is home care companies like Cypress Home Care, and many others had established themselves in communities where they had established trust. They had established a customer base and they were all trying to figure out how to solve for the workforce challenge. Like Cypress was. They figured if they partner with them, they could help deliver that workforce and be able to be able to care for so many more people than they were presently.

Bob Roth (21:15):

And they could grow their model. So back in 2019, I solved this and I said, you know what? We need to join this. We need to be a part of this. It’s a contract, it’s a partnership. It’s not a sale. And a lot of people thought that they were selling. A lot of people felt threatened by them because it was something new. But I knew at the same time that if you try to do what you were doing and tried to do that into the future, that that wasn’t going to work. I didn’t want to prove Einstein’s theory, and I’m not talking relativity, I’m talking about insanity, you know, and I knew that there was a different way, and there lies my decision to entertain a discussion with Honor and join the Honor care network to help solve for the workforce issue. So I do want to just let our listeners know that we weren’t having a workforce issue, but I foresaw there was going to be a workforce challenge, just never thought in a million years that we were going to have a pandemic. And there lies all of us having workforce issues right here right now. And it’s been a real godsend to have them as a partner, literally for the last, almost two years during this pandemic,

Miriam Allred (22:34):

I’d ask everyone to raise your hand. If you’re struggling with the workforces you issues as well. You know, it, we’re all dealing with it. It’s, it’s hitting this nation. It’s hitting this world. And every single one of us is feeling the effects of it. I’d love to hear kind of putting you on the spot, your take on data, collect collection, as it pertains to workforce, you know, recruitment and retention metrics. What are you tracking? That’s helping you identify some of the pain points or some of the successes, or just where you’re at with the workforce. Should it shortages, where does data help you measure and track?

Bob Roth (23:13):

So let me first say that, you know, one of the things that honor does bring to a marketplace and Susan, I see your message. And, and, and thank you for the question that you’ve heard of them, that they haven’t had much of a presence in Chicago. What makes honor work is the network. It’s a creating a network in a marketplace. So do you go to your question Miriam, about data? You know, one of the things that honor has learned, and I think every one of us that is listening that runs a home care agency has learned that if clients are, I’m sorry, if caregivers travel 20 minutes or more to a client, they, they, their risk is that they won’t stay with the client beyond 30 days honor has data that shows that if they travel 20 minutes or less, there’s an 85% chance, or like 85% or greater chance that, that caregiver’s going to stay with that client more than 30 days.

Bob Roth (24:12):

And the biggest challenge we have is consistency. So if you have a network of caregivers across a marketplace, you’re able to tap into the caregiver that has the right skills at the right place at the right time for that care recipient. Now mind you, there’s a lot of, as it relates to data. So, you know, one of the things that Seth Sternberg talks about the CEO of honor is machine learning. So we all know machine learning is artificial intelligence. And the hardest thing to predict is human beings. But if you put enough data into the funnel, you can get pretty close to predicting outcomes. So over the last seven years honor has put a lot of data into that funnel and been able to predict a lot of outcomes. So for honor, and certainly for companies like Cyprus, you know, we have all the data about the caregiver, right?

Bob Roth (25:08):

You know, their certifications, their experience, whether they’re allergic to cats, whether they don’t want to be with someone that’s a smoker, whether they’re talkative or they’re quiet, you have a lot of data in there. And then when we go out to our clients and we assess our client’s needs, we’re putting together a care plan. And not only are we putting the care plan together for their physical and healthcare needs, but we also are doing behavioral and social needs as well. So we’re putting all of that into the, the portal, the funnel, if you would. So, a lot of that machine learning goes into the background and the artificial intelligence is doing their computations and the matching starts happening through the machines and through the machines, it may spit out four or five care pros and honor call some care professionals care pros that may be a match.

Bob Roth (26:06):

Now, the machines don’t do all the work honor has hired these exceptional client managers. They have these regional managers, they have these recruiters and they also have these caregiver managers. So that client manager, in regards to the way we operate, ends up getting those matches, there’s three or four or five caregivers that match that client’s needs. And then the human element takes place. And that’s where the decision is made, that this caregiver may be the best fit for my fictitious client, Mrs. Abramson. So the data is in the, the background and all the information about the caregiver, as well as their performance, because we’re tracking their performance as they’re on the platform. And the data is the data that we push up through the portal from the client when we’ve gone to visit them home their home, and we’ve done the care planning and we’ve done the behavioral and social needs that they have as well as obviously the care needs that they have.

Bob Roth (27:07):

So that’s in a lot of ways, the data, but I will share one data point that honor has, and home instead has done their own research. And they’ve concurred with the data point that honor has, cause they came to the same realization is that these small cases, these 12 hour week cases, we’re talking about the four hour visits, three times a week, and many of our agencies have 12 hour minimums. And trust me, all of us have heard our marketers or our care managers that are out there. They’d opened this case. And they’re like, this case will expand the same. It’s going to grow. Well, honor has the data’s sport it home instead did their own research. 80% of those times, 80% of the time, they don’t get any bigger than 12 hours they don’t grow. And those are hard cases honor has computated that the breakeven on that is about six to seven weeks. And I’m talking about all the human costs that go into that. So if you’re doing a 12 hour case and four hours a day, three days a week for only a month, you’ve lost money on that case. And that that case hasn’t really turned out to be worthwhile as maybe it was represented to be

Miriam Allred (28:23):

Great response. I’m kind of processing everything that you’ve shared. I want to make sure we’ve got time for some audience questions here. So I want to kind of pause and let anyone from our audience ask a question. I know, I think Dina’s here on live and she had submitted a question. Maybe I’ll ask it. And then if, if she’s got any follow-up questions, feel free to chime in Dina. She’s asking, you know, what systems do you use to track? And maybe you could cover, you know, maybe what you’re using before honor, and how honor helps you with that. Now, just, just for providers that are using different systems are looking to use a system to help them track. But what, what systems are you using to help you track consistently?

Bob Roth (29:04):

Well, I mean, previously we were using matrix care which was for some of you may recall that was called scenario. So we were using that as our backend engine. We were doing some tracking internally, obviously as well, but you know, companies like matrix care, clear care, Elia care, access, care access. I mean, they all do a lot of the same things. I mean, you know, I could see how many people were making inquiries in terms of now I’m talking about people, caregivers inquiries about joining the team and, and hiring. So I could see, I could see how many interviews we had, how many people were, you know, you know, waiting for drug test results or background checks results. I mean, I could see the entire onboarding process for the caregiving side. And then on the client’s side, we could see the hours.

Bob Roth (30:01):

We could see, you know, what was scheduled, you know, how many hours were worked. I mean, all of these things are really fundamentally basic, but we’re able to get those from the software companies that we all utilize. And I’m here to tell you that I’ve witnessed over the last 20 years, the software just continuously improving. And I will tell you the only difference between that software that is running many of the back engines to all of our home care agencies and, and, and honor is honors is really more real time. I mean, I get a dashboard that I can look at and I can drill down. I can see hours clicking off by the minute. I can see all of a sudden if 168 hour case no longer is on the schedule because I can see the hours come off and I can drill down to see what client that was, where in the past, I was not able to see that a lot of times I would have to wait for the system to refresh and I might not see it till the next day.

Bob Roth (31:04):

I mean, there’s a lot of data on a lot of information that I can see in the portal that is not readily available, but I will tell you that the metrics, I mean, I’ve gone as far as using Excel spreadsheets. I I had a hot board with a big TV that could show the caregivers that were in the queue when they were available. We used to have a an 18 that we would go into weekends and holidays and we would list who those caregivers word we typically would go in with at least five, sometimes 10, we pay them a little bit more money to be available, but we were creating these systems just to monitor that. So, I mean, look, the software continues to get robust. I’ve had one of this software founders and owners be very critical of honor.

Bob Roth (31:58):

And I just said, you shouldn’t be critical of them. You know, that old adage about rising tides, lift all boats, honor’s gonna help all of us up our game. There’s enough business out there for all of us. And what we need is we need information. We need tech to be able to make informed decisions and make the right decisions for not only our clients, but also for the caregivers, because I don’t have to tell you all how precious the caregivers are, especially in these times and the challenges and challenges that we have with workforce. I’d much rather lose a client than lose a caregiver. If I have a client that is very rough on our caregivers verbally, or maybe even physically might be challenging maybe a caregiver that just, or I’m sorry, a client does doesn’t really respect and appreciate the work that we do. I rather lose that client than lose a really good caregiver because caregivers are really hard to find.

Amma (32:57):

Yeah. I have a quick question. I, Bob, thank you so much for your insightful data around the 12 hours a week. Our agency, that’s currently our amend them and we’ve been looking at increasing that to 20. And so I wanted to see if you having data around, well, first of all, yeah, around minimums. And if there’s like a, a golden hours that’s recommended for, for a new clients.

Bob Roth (33:27):

Amma thank you. That’s a really good question. And I, and I think all of us are really learning on the fly. I mean, COVID has really changed the landscape scape upon care. It has certainly put a spotlight on home care in a very positive light because of what has happened to communal living. And I will tell you that there are clients that are going to want just to do 12 hours. I mean, the hardest thing that we have, and we haven’t even begun to scratch the surface on affordability and problem solving for that. I mean, we’re hoping, obviously this bill that, that the infrastructure bill that Washington and the president are trying to push, they’re supposed to be $400 billion in there for home and community-based service work, but obviously that’s not going to impact the way we do business today. And how do we do business today?

Bob Roth (34:20):

We tried the best to serve our clients in the best way we can. If you have caregivers that are willing to work those minimum hours, four hours a day, let’s say three days a week. I gave you, you know, kudos for trying to do that. I just think that the data shows us that it’s not sustainable. If those cases don’t stay on beyond 30 days, you’ve lost money on that. So I be very, very encourage, or I would encourage you to consider going to doing eight hour minimums or maybe 20 hour, minimum weeks to try to make sure you stabilize that and ensure profitability and certainly consistency of care. And I can’t emphasize that enough. I mean, the biggest challenge that we do run into is inconsistency of care for our clients. If we have churn turnover, you know, and that’s what we’ve heard too, is churn.

Bob Roth (35:20):

If we have a client churn, oftentimes it’s a consistency issue. And, and oftentimes when we look at it, it’s because of the location was too hard to get to the hours. Weren’t enough for the, you know, the peak of caregiver’s interests. So I think we’re almost stuck with the, that we need to try to get more hours and people that want to try to do the less our worker, you know, the less our cases give them, give them the opportunity to do that. But I mean, for us to be sustainable and for us to be here tomorrow there’s no shame in having to take a profit, but we’re going to have to be profitable. I just don’t see how you can be profitable with, you know, 12 hour minimums. It’s just too hard to be sustainable.

Miriam Allred (36:04):

Yeah. Great question. Thanks again, I’ll follow up with one that was pre submitted. That’s kind of tangential to what we’ve been talking about, but it’s, how do we use data to our advantage with referral partners? Someone asked especially with hospice specifically, you know, how are, how do we use our data to get connected with referral partners and how do we use it to our advantage? So,

Bob Roth (36:26):

Well, you know, one of the things that we’re doing at all on are, are, should I say our honor partners are doing is being able to give the, the ability for our referral partners and certainly they’ve referred to the adult child or the spouse or other family members count owner to be able to give them a lens, the data that we really need to be able to give to our clients is to be able to let them see exactly what’s going on in the home. And I’m not talking about cameras, I’m talking about, you know, the caregivers notes, I’m talking about the caregivers care plan and what they accomplished. I mean, we, we have all these different time zones and we’d certainly have adult children that are really stuck in that sandwich generation and may not live in the same town as their loved one, but they want to know how mom or dad is doing referral partner the same.

Bob Roth (37:23):

You know, if the referral partner has the you know, the, the authorization from the client that they have to see what’s going on, they can take a peek in to see how my fictitious client Mrs. Abramson is doing so honor packages it in a couple of ways, they can send an email and that email’s automatically generated after the client has, I’m sorry. After the caregiver has visited the client and they’ve clocked out, there will be an email that is sent to that person as to the care plan that was accomplished and notes from what was accomplished during that day. And when I say notes, I’m talking about the social and behavioral stuff that is so important that, you know, adult daughters and adult sons want to know how mom or dad did that day. So all of that information is there. So, you know, those types of data points and they are more akin to the care plan and information what’s going on is so vital for them to see and know what’s going on.

Bob Roth (38:24):

Obviously from a data standpoint for us, what we do with information is obviously change of condition. And when change of condition comes across, you know, part of the secret sauce of honor is they can see that through the machine learning the changes of condition and flags are thrown up. So if Mrs Abramson is not feeling well, if she’s not eating, if she might’ve had a fall, those things are reported. And then all of a sudden an escalation happens as elevated that there’s a change in condition. So we need to intercede. I mean, let’s face it. We literally are the tip of the spear. We are in the home. We see those change of conditions before and hopefully a healthcare event happens. So the data points, the information is available to referral partners is available to the adult children or any other family member on what’s going on.

Bob Roth (39:24):

That is vital for us and for us to continue to exist as part of the healthcare continuum. You know, Miriam, when I first joined this trade over 20 years, almost 20 years ago, everyone referred to it as nonmedical. And we’ve got to get away from calling ourselves nonmedical. I’ve been on this crusade for about 15 years. Ever since I started doing some public speaking in our space, we need to call it what it truly is, and that’s in-home care or in-home care support, or in-home personal care. Cause that’s more descriptive of what we do when we call it. Non-Medical we kind of like uninvite ourselves to the party. I mean, home health, hospice, hospitals, and doctors, or medical, and guess what we are too. I mean, if we’re not keeping our clients safe, we’re not keeping them fed. We’re not keeping them clean. We’re not following a care plan.

Bob Roth (40:21):

We’re not making sure they’re taking their meds in the right time and the right place, guess what? They’re going to have a medical event. So we need to be mindful of the work that we do. And we are very much a part of that health care continuum. So information’s really important for us to, for that to flow to and from our referral sources. And I will wrap the referral question up to Miriam and just saying that I’ve always been a believer that it’s so important for home care agencies to keep touching back to the referral source. So my fictitious client, Mrs. Abramson, when our care coordinator goes to visit her, that is imperative for us to report back to that person that referred her on how things are going. So they can take a look at it on their own time, but we also own the right that we can’t trust that they’re looking at that we need to be able to stay in communicative with them and let them know what’s going on.

Miriam Allred (41:23):

Absolutely great response. Well, we’ve made it kind of full circle here. We started talking about really the changing face of home care. And I love what you’re saying here at the end is that, you know, we can no longer identify ourselves as nonmedical. We need to own that. We are in home care that we are assisting and supporting the continuum. And we deserve a seat at the table. You know, that phrase that we use so often. And I, I think we’ll close at that. I just want to say, Bob, thanks for your advocacy and your leadership in this industry. You’ve served along and you’ve served well and continue to serve, and we’re lucky to have you to follow. And I just want to thank everyone for joining us here today, but it’s been an insightful conversation. I hope everyone’s got some notes that they’ve taken and some actions that they can take after this.

Bob Roth (42:07):

Well, Miriam, thank you for the honor. And certainly thank you home care. Paul’s for everything that you guys do. And, you know, I talked just briefly about tech and innovation, and I really believe that part of that is going to be part of our solution going forward. I will leave you with this. There’s some really cool stuff that I’m seeing and it’s just now being introduced. I mean, stuff like radar being put in the home where, you know, tech can actually see a change in a client’s gate before a possible fall. I’m not talking about remote patient monitoring. I’m talking about behavioral stuff. I’m talking about social stuff that we can utilize tack. That’s not know invasive. It’s not a camera because older adults don’t want cameras. So we are really literally on the edge of some really great things that are about to happen, but I will leave you with this. People will always be caring for people. Tech will never replace that. We won’t, we probably won’t see robots in our lifetime, but you never know.

Miriam Allred (43:15):

Yeah. Great. Well, thanks Bob. Appreciate it so much. Thanks everyone.

Bob Roth (43:20):

Okay. Thank you for the honor.