how in-home caregiver agencies can increase profits wit ...

Posted by  •  2 comments  •  Friday, Jun 11, 2010

As a home care agency, you’re probably acutely aware of the increasing needs of our aging population. As demand for your services increases, qualified caregivers will become more difficult to find. Other agencies may offer better compensation, or they will work privately. You need some way to distinguish yourself from other agencies, to offer more value to your clients, and to increase the efficiency of your caregiver employees. Partnering with a GrandCare and home automation companies could provide you all of these things.Home Automation Incorporated's Omni-touch

There are good reasons you haven’t partnered with any kind of technology companies. You want your customers to spend their money with you, not with somebody else. This would be true if there were only a finite number of customers to be had. In fact, the number of potential customers continues to grow as the population ages. Technology solutions allow you to:

  • Offer your clients more than your competition.
  • Care for more clients with the same payroll expenses.
  • Realize increased profits by offering services that relate directly to the technology.
  • Reduce liability risks by using technology as an unbiased witness to the quality of your care.
  • Increase customer retention by allowing your clients to remain in their homes longer than they otherwise could.
  • Hire and retain better caregivers by offering training, certification and easier record keeping.
  • Increase the satisfaction of your customers by keeping them connected to family, friends, caregivers, healthcare professionals and the world.
  • Offer technology that reduces vulnerability to telephone scammers who contact your clients.

 

healthcare professional

use technology to work with healthcare professionals to care for your clients

GrandCare is as easy to use as an ATM

GrandCare offers the user a simple touch screen interface

Home automation companies can adapt the home to meet the unique and changing needs of your clients in ways that can preserve their independence in a similar fashion to universal design. Automation can cause the lights in the house to flash on and off to notify someone hard of hearing that the doorbell is ringing. Automation can close garage doors if they are forgotten, and won’t forget to turn on security lights in the evening. Automation systems can detect flooding and shut off water if a tub overflows. Automation systems can allow family members or caregivers to verify all the doors and windows are closed from anywhere in the world with an internet or telephone connection.

mobile phone text message
Image via Wikipedia

Tele-wellness systems, such as GrandCare Systems can record wellness readings and verify activity without privacy robbing cameras. One caregiver can rotate from client to client without neglecting others, because programming created for each client’s unique needs will text message, email and call to alert the caregiver to unusual conditions. These could range from wellness measurements outside of normal to not getting out of bed at the usual time. Wellness measurements, caregiver notes, arrival and departure time as recorded by door entries or “clocking in” via the GrandCare System can document caregiver activity as well as client activity such as taking medicine. Calendars for the clients are available to family and caregivers for easy coordination of transportation to doctors or visits with friends. Caregivers can leave notes on the system for other caregivers that are not visible to the client.

Both GrandCare and automation systems can help defend your caregivers against accusations of theft. If valuables are stored in jewelry boxes, dresser drawers or closets, the time and date of them being opened can be recorded for comparison against caregiver activities. If something goes missing from a jewelry box but it wasn’t ever opened when your caregiver is in the home, it could prove innocence without question.

Your benefits and savings depend upon how you and your technology partners learn to benefit each other. They’re used to finding solutions to unique situations and to adapting to their client’s needs.

If you would like to learn more about increasing your profits, contact artdunn@yourhomeservesyou.com. Even if you’re not in the northern California area, there are networks of dealers across the country you would be able to consult with locally.

As always, I’ve promised my blog readers that I’ll completely disclose if I’m writing about a product or service that I or my employer offer. My employer is a GrandCare dealer as well as a dealer for Home Automation Incorporated, an automation system.

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In-home caregivers

Posted by  •  0 comments  •  Thursday, Jun 10, 2010

As a professional in-home caregiver, your income depends upon your being able to provide care to your clients. If you care for one client, and that client no longer needs your care, you’re out of a job. What if that single client suffers a stroke or a fall, and uncertainty lingers as to the client’s ability to return to the home environment? Do you look for another client, or wait it out while watching your bank account dwindle? What if you find another client and your original client returns home? Do you leave your new client high and dry to return to your old client, who now has no caregivers to return home to? While it’s possible that your original client will continue to pay your normal pay for a week or so just to make sure they have a caregiver when they return home, they may not. It might seem a bit selfish to approach your ailing client or anguished family members to bring your problem- you need an income- to them at that time.

When clients need caregivers, their needs are immediate. When a caregiver is unemployed, the caregivers’ needs are immediate. Having the two coincide is rare. It’s usually that the caregiver needs a client when the client already has a caregiver, or that the client needs a caregiver when the caregiver is occupied with a client. Both the caregiver and the client are looking for security. If the client already has a so-so caregiver, the client may be unwilling to replace them. What if the new caregiver is worse than the old one? What if the new caregiver gets a better offer from someone else? A caregiver with a client is reluctant to leave that client for another. What if the new client doesn’t work out? Will the old client take them back? If the caregiver has “the word out” that they need a client, what if they go to work with the first client who is willing to hire them but then a more attractive client (lives closer to home, pays more, is more pleasant) becomes available a week later? Ethics, loyalty, affection for the client and financial realities are not always aligned.

Quality caregivers are a rare commodity, mediocre caregivers can afford to be so because there is a shortage of in-home caregivers that will be far more acute in coming years. This will coincide with governments being asked to keep expensive promises they can’t afford to keep. It would be a great advantage then, if quality caregivers could care for several clients simultaneously. It would also be a great advantage if clients and could locate and identify quality caregivers who can provide care for multiple clients.

Technology allows us to increase our output, to do more than what we could possibly do without it. Mowing an acre of lawn with scissors can be done, but to get it done in one day you would need an army of people cutting grass with scissors. With a lawnmower, you could cut the same acre of lawn with one person. The lawnmower is technology that allows one person to get more done. Instead of one guard at each of a dozen doors to secure a building, one guard could watch cameras and unlock doors remotely if needed. Again, technology allows one to do the work of many. Why can’t technology allow one quality caregiver to care for multiple clients if there is a technological solution that makes it possible? It can!

A John Deere lawn mower in a Finnish garden.
Image via Wikipedia

 

Coming soon will be a website where caregivers and clients can connect. Coming soon will be online training for caregivers who want to become certified to use a GrandCare System, to enhance their skills and to help prospective clients to distinguish the quality caregivers from the mediocre ones. Once caregivers obtain certification, they will have access to GrandCare clients nationwide. For more detailed information, contact the author using the link below.

 

Keeping my promise of full disclosure when I’m discussing a product or service I or my employer offer, the services and equipment discussed will be shortly offered by my employer, NANLOW-DUNN inc. Any questions or comments may be directed to artdunn@yourhomeservesyou.com. www.yourhomeservesyou.com

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