There's a common perception that small local home care agencies are the best care providers. The truth is more complicated. The best home health care comes from organizations with tested expertise, local knowledge, and a clear integrity of purpose that looks after both clients and caregivers.
Local doesn't automatically mean better
We appreciate the movement to buy local, but there's no implicit advantage in using a home care provider just because they're down the street. The real question is whether they have any local home care and healthcare expertise, and how that knowledge gets shared across their team.
Ask who answers the phone. Some providers have one admin team handling daytime and after-hours calls. Others use answering services or remote call centres staffed by people who can't answer basic questions about services and policies. A few use third-party answering services that may or may not respond locally, if at all.
At CommunityPlus, our three-person Coordination team knows local health care and answers the phone seven days a week from 0800 to 1800, with a 30-minute response time.
Big versus small: both have problems
'Big' home care is often associated with disjointed organizations that treat people like numbers and put profit ahead of everything else. But 'small' home care usually struggles to provide service flexibility and reliability, and most small operations don't survive the ups and downs of the business cycle.
Home care benefits from network effects, so larger operations are theoretically better, but only if they're well-organized, well-managed, and have real scheduling expertise. Small home care typically can't meet changing care requirements or provide flexible coverage when you need it most.
CommunityPlus is a medium-sized organization with exceptional scheduling and organizational expertise. We built our own in-house tools so we can scale effectively and maintain high service quality through growth and change.
What actually matters
Three things separate good home care from bad: scheduling expertise, local healthcare knowledge, and integrity of purpose. Scheduling expertise is very hard to find and makes a huge difference to the experience both clients and employees have. Local healthcare knowledge matters when the admin team actually knows the systems and resources available and can connect you with them. And integrity of purpose is the 'why' that drives the priority of everything else.
CommunityPlus is owned by Matthew, a 19-year home care scheduler and healthcare operator in both government and private sectors. He developed the home care software we use to provide organized, person-centered support. He's a relentless efficiency nut with humanist tendencies.
Our website holds a wealth of local healthcare information that we update each year. The entire admin team participates, and we use the site as both an internal and external resource. The people who work here long-term are conscientious, caring, and reliable. They care about the impact they have on the people around them. We are small but mighty and united in purpose: developing and delivering great home care and improving industry tools and practices for all home care providers.