Home care health services are more in demand than ever before, but finding reliable resources can be challenging. Home care clients know what they need and they are being vocal about how poorly delivered services affect their quality of life. We interviewed a few patients and their caregivers to get their thoughts.
Here are the five most common complaints from home care clients you should consider when building out a successful home care business:
Caregiver availability at preferred hours
Whether it’s a resource issue or scheduling error, home care patients often find it difficult to book their caregiver visits within their preferred timeframe. Making sure to have enough staff with flexibility in their schedule is paramount to circumvent this issue, but there are other steps agency owners can take to provide an easier scheduling experience.
Resource planning is an ideal way to visualize the variety of needs your patients have. Agency owners should always seek to find qualified and reliable experts that can consistently work within their preferred time range. Whether that’s morning, afternoon, or evening shifts, it’s vital that an agency owner have wide appointment availability for patients to choose from.
Patients are eager to choose times that work best for them, not just because it’s their preference, but because often their family members are dependent on aides to arrive in order for them to carry on with their day.
“My son can’t leave for his job until the aide comes for my morning vitals check,” said Mary P., an elderly patient in Ohio. “I already feel a little guilty about getting older and being a burden to my children. When the aides make it on time, my son leaves with less stress and that makes us all a little happier.”
Poorly matched skillset of caregivers to need
It is true that some caregivers are better than others at their job. However, making sure that caregivers are matched correctly to patient needs is the job of the scheduler or client care coordinator. Having a robust document management system will help your team keep track of onboarding needs like whether or not the patient has dementia or mobility challenges.
Placing a petite female aid for a very large male in a wheelchair, for example, presents more than a challenge. It’s an issue of safety. Sometimes a home caregiver must lift or move a patient. If the caregiver is not appropriately matched to the patient’s requirements, the patient and the caregiver could be injured in the process of providing care. Or perhaps even worse? Not be able to provide care at all.
Inconsistent experience between multiple caregivers
To ensure everyone is delivering consistent quality care on behalf of your agency, all of your caregivers need to have enough training to feel confident in their role before their first scheduled shift in the field. But even that can sometimes not be enough.
Patients will provide feedback about the inconsistencies they experience when trying to schedule new care appointments. For example, caregiver A was “kind, knowledgeable, and patient” whereas caregiver B was “rude or rushed and didn’t pay attention to details.”
When the patient cannot book the caregiver they prefer, they get frustrated and sometimes even scared. “For patients experiencing early dementia, or with severe mobility issues, not having a person they feel safe with is a huge challenge in home health care,” said Alice B., a home care coordinator from Houston, Texas.
Shared digital notes can help providers better prepare for unique patient needs, and potentially provide the patient with a more consistent home care experience.
Lack of personal touch with over-scheduled caregivers
When caregivers are overscheduled, they are rushing between patients and the patients can usually tell.
Nancy M., an elderly patient from “My normal aide was overbooked so they sent me a replacement, which was fine. But they were also overbooked and barely spent time chatting with me at all. It all felt very impersonal.”
Again, patient care coordinators and schedulers are extremely important here. It’s their job not only to schedule resources appropriately but to let agency owners know when staff limitations have become a chronic issue thwarting patient satisfaction. This can be a sign that it’s time to hire more staff or reduce patient load to ensure that patients genuinely feel supported by their home healthcare provider.
Unmet expectations of care
The worst scenario is when a provider leaves a patient uncared for. “It’s not that my expectations were that high, I just wanted them to make sure my father had the correct treatment and medications. It’s a low bar, I guess.”
That comment came from Thomas R., a young tech executive in California whose father requires home care. Thomas said that his experience with home care was much better when they used a service that kept comprehensive digital records of every visit. This helped each care provider know what to do, but when using an agency that took written notes, he felt that the care experience suffered.
“I don’t know if it’s really the digital notes thing or not, but I could tell that the caregivers who didn’t have updated notes from previous visits were less likely to provide my father with consistent care. They missed medications. That’s way below the standard I expect from a home care provider.”
One key takeaway = Train your schedulers!
Schedulers and coordinators are so important in making sure your home health care agency is a success. Make sure they have universal visibility on staff calendars and are equipped with the soft skills they need to triage conflicts and complaints as they arise.
Also, make sure that you teach them to notify patients early of schedule changes in order to get replacements prepped in a timely manner. Resource management can only be accomplished well when the entire team communicates effectively.
Having a robust document lifecycle management tool can empower your teams with the knowledge they need to do their jobs better. When agency owners invest in training and tools, allowing for patients and staff to be matched by needs rather than availability alone, patient experience improves dramatically.