Red Flags for Home Care Providers

Red Flags for Home Care Providers

Every year we survey Vancouver Island home care providers and every year there are impossible promises, wild claims and flat out untruths.

• Several care providers say "We always send the same caregiver", even for 7 day a week services. It sounds good but it's not true, logical or actually desirable.
• Having a single caregiver fosters unhealthy dependency and makes it harder to bring other caregivers in to provide support.
• Having too few caregivers for service means brittle service that breaks easily resulting in cancellations and time changes.
• There are exceptional situations where a single caregiver is the only person starting out to help acclimate a particularly resistant individual to care for non-essential services.
• A daily service will always require a team for stable long-term service.
• The CommunityPlus Difference: Home Care Expertise

• Travel is a cost of any home support service. The caregiver is legally required to be paid for travel between clients and thus it is typically taken from the overall visit time to keep bill and pay straightforward.
• A few care providers advertise that “you get the full hour you pay for” because they are not paying the caregiver for travel time.
• Services that do not pay caregivers for travel time create unpaid breaks between visits to allow for travel. It is difficult to retain quality caregivers with these practices.
• Home Care Basics: Travel Time & Rural Travel Time

Matching caregivers to clients based on just the "right fit" is what people want to hear but it is also untrue.

• There is always consideration for the personalities involved but organizations that talk about a personalized match are either being disingenuous or they truly don't understand home support services. Absolute requirements and necessities come before subjective preferences and wants.
• Primary considerations are always the proximity of the caregiver (and proximity of their schedule), what types of service they provide and their availability. Time and space are the greatest constraints in providing great home care service.
• Other requirements that come before subjective preferences include: Skills and education for the client's needs, Employee work restrictions, Allergies and Language.
• The better question is about the overall quality of the caregiving workforce. There is a huge difference in the experience between a great caregiver who is turned on and paying attention to the client vs getting a caregiver who is just putting in the time and doing the minimal tasks to get by. This exact experience is why so many home care clients fight to have certain people and dread new caregivers.
• Matching is less about "picking" specific caregivers and more about "excluding" those that just don't vibe together.

At CommunityPlus we are focused on the quality of ALL of our caregivers. We want clients to have a great experience regardless of who they meet and not have to fear new caregivers when it's necessary. Meeting new people can be a joy and as the owner likes to say "Each lovelier than the last". Caregivers have to be conscientious, detail oriented and reliable to be employed with us long term. Once we get past the absolute requirements and necessities to a likely group of caregivers then we can look at who shares music, culture, hobbies or other interests. It's a delight when we are able to match people in that way. Worth noting, we learned a long time ago not to pre-judge who will get along. Superficially dis-similar matches wind up being the favorites all the time.

• Home Care operations do not have waiting lists and it would not make any sense to have "limited client spaces" for dynamic care services with changing needs. Some clients are using 1 hour of service per week while others are using 112 hours per week or more.
• This is marketing language to make a service seem more exclusive or limited. Operations using this language are being disingenuous and that is usually the tip of the iceberg for shady practices. (The one we always see saying this has a completely AI generated website with a variety of ridiculous claims and "badges")
• Home care operations see significant increases and decreases through each year, they either have the staffing (and scheduling expertise) to handle the service needs as they change or they do not.

• Do each of the admin answering the phone know what is going on without you having to reexplain? This question goes to the documentation practices and the systems used to share information.
• Do they follow through on promised emails and information without being chased?
• Do they return calls and messages in a timely manner or at all?
• We audit all the care providers each year so we have a pretty good idea what potential clients deal with when they call.
• CommunityPlus has systems for tracking team follow-ups and generally responds to communications within 30 minutes between 0800-1800.
• The CommunityPlus Difference: Flexible + Responsive Service

• Care Providers talk a lot about Continuity of Care but how many can explain what that means in practice?
• The Care Provider should be able to provide a clear explanation of their Continuity of Care standards and what to expect for a given service. 
• Read more about CommunityPlus continuity standards Home Care Basics: What is Continuity of Care?

• Most awards that we've seen care providers claiming are either paid advertisements or unrelated to service quality. We are offered several awards every year for a price. The more awards there are, the more incredulous you should be.
• Business certifications may have value like certified B Corps.
• Accreditation shows a commitment to standard business standards for things like policy, procedure and confirming that the business follows their own standards.
• Other affiliations we see commonly rarely mean something substantive. Being a Veterans Authorized Provider or ICBC Authorized Provider primarily has to do with direct billing.
• CommunityPlus claims no awards or certifications beyond being a Living Wage employer.
• Home Care Basics: Do Awards, Certifications, Memberships or Accreditations matter?