Choosing a Home Care Provider

Choosing a Home Care Provider

Private care providers may have different scopes of service, service limitations and policies that impact your ability to receive needed care. Most providers use very similar marketing language and it can be difficult to distinguish between them. Here are the differences that matter.

• Critical Care Considerations limit which providers can meet the needs
• Care Provider Features may make your service experience better and life easier
• Standard Provider Requirements that every provider should meet
• Red Flags to watch out for

Critical Care Considerations

• And do they provide the services you need in your area? Providers may only offer Live-in (Homestay) in remote locations.
• CommunityPlus provides hourly, overnight, live-in and 24h Care for Greater Victoria and Vancouver Island.
• For remote parts of the island Hourly services are primarily limited by travel cost relative to geographic Caregiver availability.
• Check out our Vancouver Island Resource Guide: Home Care Providers

• Most private care providers have visit minimums of 2, 3 or 4 hours long.
• Very few providers can effectively manage short visits, especially multiple times per day
• There is typically an additional fee for shorter visits from agencies that do provide short visits.
• Some agencies claim to provide 1 hour services but they still charge a 2 hour minimum per visit.
• CommunityPlus provides visits as short as 1-hour long including travel time.
• Types of Home Care Visit: Hourly Visits

• Not many home care providers have a nurse on staff and fewer have a nursing team able to support weekly or daily home nursing visits.
• Many care providers also have no nurses supervising clinical operations and should not be providing care with lifts, medications or complex care.
• CommunityPlus provides nurse-supervised care services and home nursing services including Weekly Vitals.
• Vancouver Island Resource Guide: Home Health Professional Services

• Not all private care providers offer Live-in services. Many only offer 24-Hour Care.
• For individuals who intend to remain in their homes long-term or through end-of-life it is possible that needs may progress to Live-in or 24-Hour care.
• CommunityPlus provides Hourly, Overnight, Live-in and 24 Hour care services.

• Essential Daily Service is for daily care tasks that cannot be missed or skipped - such as help with dressing, eating or medication administration.
• Some clients may have 4 or more visits per day. As service needs increase so too does the scheduling complexity and organization needed to provide continuity of care.
• CommunityPlus provides Essential Daily Services with reliability and continuity of care from skilled, quality caregivers.

• Many agencies have very inexperienced schedulers with no education standards and support.
• CommunityPlus is owned by a 19 year home care scheduler with experience operating and educating home care in provinces across Canada.
• The CommunityPlus Difference: Home Care Expertise

• Only skilled care providers should be used for individuals who intend to remain home through end-of-life, use mechanical lifts or hospital beds, or require complex care or nurse-delegated medications and procedures.
• Non-nurse supported care providers generally hire mixed skill caregivers who may have no care background and do not provide nursing support for lifts, medications and complex care needs.
• CommunityPlus runs a Nurse Supervised Operation

• Few private care providers can support short notice care requests, especially if they happen on a semi-regular basis.
• This is important when dealing with indeterminate hospital discharges, having bowel accidents or other care emergencies for someone who cannot be left unattended.
• Our track record is pretty good supporting these needs but there are no guarantees and it's always better to give as much notice as possible to get better continuity.
• The CommunityPlus Difference: Flexible + Responsive Service

Misclassified “Contract” Caregivers

• Have to buy their own gloves, masks and other protective equipment. They are often less willing to use the gloves and masks to ensure necessary infection prevention best practices.
• Are not provided paid sick time. Do you think they are more or less likely to work while sick?
• Are not supervised in general or clinically and should not be providing skilled care
• Receive no ongoing support or best practice education
• Are not paid for holidays or overtime and have to pay the employer's portion of CPP as well as their own
• Most people employed as "Contractors" do not understand the financial consequences of how they are being compensated and many wind up in financial jeopardy as a result
• CommunityPlus Caregivers are employees, paid a Living Wage, and we're pretty irritated that our government lets this behavior continue with impunity
• The CommunityPlus Difference: Living Wage Employer

Employers who misclassify caregivers as “Contractors”

• Are misrepresenting their services to Clients and the employment they provide to Caregivers.
• One of these employers charges submarket rates to get more client volume. Another is even more shameless and charges above-market rates while still paying significantly less than the Living Wage. All are pretending to hire caregivers as long-term employees.
• They typically do not disclose that your confidential information will be shared outside of the company with their contracted caregivers and are violating BC Privacy Laws.

Care Provider Features

• Does the organization provide an easy means to see scheduled times, caregivers and notes from each visit?
• This is especially important when there are multiple remote family members who want to stay in the loop.
• CommunityPlus built the Lifespan Portal with real-time schedules and visit notes available as they are reported to the client and/or their authorized contacts.
• The CommunityPlus Difference: Home Care Expertise

• Care providers with low wages have greater difficulty retaining skilled, reliable caregivers which impacts the quality and consistency of care.
• CommunityPlus is a proud Living Wage employer since 2018 with long-term employee retention over 90% each year. In all of BC we are the only private home care employer that is Living Wage certified.
• The CommunityPlus Difference: Living Wage Employer

• Is the care provider organized and responsive to communications? Are messages to one admin person being communicated to the Team?
• Great care providers document every interaction in order to provide seamless communication across the Team.
• Are you dealing with an answering service, remote call centre after hours or a chat bot?
• CommunityPlus provides weekend and afterhours customer service from the same small local group of Coordinators that answer the phones during business hours. We document all interactions in Lifespan Unified Care.
• The CommunityPlus Difference: Flexible + Responsive Service

• Being Accredited indicates that a basic business structure, practices and policies are in place
• Being Accredited does not signify a well-run home care operation or any knowledge of successful home care practices.
• Accreditors include: ISO, CARF, Accreditation Canada, Canadian Home Care Association
• CommunityPlus is not accredited but we operate with similar standards in terms of policy, process and annual improvement reviews.

Universal Provider Requirements

• Attendance Tracking systems send alerts to the care provider if the caregiver does not arrive or leave when expected.
• Clock-in systems ensure that caregivers are where they need to be at the right times for client service and safety.
• CommunityPlus uses Lifespan Unified Care with complete Attendance Tracking; clock-in and clock-outs are recorded with text reminders.

• Reputable private care providers carry significant liability insurance in the event of a serious accident.
• “Bondable” is a term which is often used to mean insurable in British Columbia. All employees for any reputable agency should be bondable - meaning that they have a clear criminal record and can be insured against theft or other losses.
• CommunityPlus provides gov funded services and maintains or exceeds the standards set for government care providers. All of our employees are skilled, bondable and provide clear Solicitor General criminal record checks regularly.

• Confidential health information should be hosted on servers located in BC and more broadly, other data should be stored in Canada.
• Many providers run on software that is hosted in the US.
• CommunityPlus runs on Lifespan Unified Care, hosted in BC. As a provider for gov funded services we maintain or exceeds the privacy standards they require.

Also see Red Flags for Home Care Providers

Note from the Owner

CommunityPlus is owned and operated by a home care nerd with a 19 year career as a caregiver, scheduler, operations manager and director. They spent months writing the website content and hope you find it helpful - if a little self-righteous!

• We do almost everything in-house with a small Admin team (3) who have been carefully selected for their conscience and commitment to excellence.
• We have the best paid caregivers and the lowest operating margins which isn't easy or accidental.
• We designed a home care software platform which we then built and have been using for more than 4 years now.
• Great home care takes more than good intentions. Expertise matters, we know our business and take pride in the services we provide.