There are lots of activities performed by home caregiving agencies and out of all these it is the balancing act between client satisfaction and caregiver retention that is the most significant ones. This helps them to strive in this competitive segment which is growing in demand and volume with each passing day.
- It is also very crucial for the home care agencies to ensure accuracy of patient information maintenance and record keeping.
- In addition to that, they must also focus on the accuracy of agency visit documentation. This is important because:
More often than not, these visits are so strongly scheduled that the home caregivers do not find enough time during their respective visits to complete their notes and document all records.
For that matter, the home care agencies now need an appropriate digital point-of-care documentation solution. This will be highly effective and result driven as it will help them to conduct automated surveys a as well as to standardize the assessment forms. These when are made available to the caregivers at their fingertips, there will be no chances of any lapses and lacunas.
This is what the experts suggest to do to ensure higher client satisfaction and better caregiver retention. Both of these aspects are equally important because they are the ones that help the home care agencies to survive. Both of them add to the revenue:
- The clients help them to have a steady cash flow and
- The caregivers ensure that no clients are lost thereby reinforcing the cash flow to the agency.
Therefore, it will be unwise for any home care agency to ignore any one of the two. Otherwise, it will result in loss and eventually a closure of yet another home care service provider.
A different endeavor
Home care service is highly personal and high touch endeavor. This means that:
- The expectations of the client are always high
- The home care agencies need to ensure the highest customer and health care service and
- Any variance and disappointment of the clients will make them highly vocal with their insurers.
If you look at the things from the point of view of the payer, client satisfaction is the most critical concern for any home care agency and you will see that in MyAllAmericanCare.com or any other of equal repertoire.
The key data point
The home care agencies now will have to look at the key data points that will help them to ensure that their care giving policies are of the highest standards and carefully designed according to the need of each client. These major data points include:
- Percentage of the on-time as well as missed visits
- Lack of punctuality of the caregiver
- Consistency in resolving the common complaints made by the home care clients.
All these metrics will help the home care agency to improve on these itself and ensure that the caregivers have a reliable access to the updated schedules of caregiving. In addition to that, it will also help the home care agencies to have clear visibility into and knowledge about the different activities performed by the caregiver.
One of the easiest and most effective ways to collect immediate feedback regarding satisfaction of the clients is the finish-screen survey. This approach will give the home care service providing agencies another useful tool with which they can evaluate the performance of the caregiver. In turn it gives them an opportunity to correct anything that is hindering them from achieving the desired results.
Focusing on caregiver retention
Once client satisfaction aspect is taken care of, the home care agencies must shift their focus on caregiver retention, which is equally important for their business operation, cash flow and client service.
However, staffing, as it is in any other industry, is often one of the biggest challenges that the home care agencies face. There are lots of reasons for that such as:
- Personnel issues: There may be a severe issue of lacking qualified caregivers.
- Workload issues: The limited number of caregivers and the huge demand of home care services and care givers increases the workload on the care givers.
- Overscheduling issues: due the lack of enough care givers and an increased demand of home care service, the caregivers are often overscheduled. This results in missing visits which inevitably impacts the quality of care directly.
- The competition issue: The home care industry just like any other is highly competitive. Not only one home care agency tries to surpass the other in the care giving service types and process but they also are on the lookout to allure the best caregiver from other agencies towards them
- The economic issue: most of the care givers work on low salary or on commission basis which means that do not earn much to sustain or meet the needs of their families. In such situations, to avoid financial hardships, they are always on the lookout for better opportunities and will leave on home care agency to another even at the slightest of hints.
All these factors make it highly difficult, if not impossible, for the home care agencies to retain their best talent. However, this is an area that should not be overlooked at any point or at any cost.
Once again, the home care agencies need to focus on the data and information gathered from different sources in order to ensure that the best talents stay with them and does not go anywhere but to the places of their clients.
These important data points include:
- The working policy of the competition and the likelihood of their offers
- The percentage of continuity of the caregivers
- The consistency of the care givers and
- Their intent to leave the agency due to the dissatisfaction of the working environment, pay structure, benefits and of course, recognition.
When all these facts are known and are considered to make the necessary changes in the working policy and management, the home care agencies will be able to deliver personal care of high quality on a consistent basis and develop a trusting relationship with their clients.
