Home Health Care News recently spoke with Special Touch Home Care CEO Evan Ostrovsky about the company’s 40-year history, serving 150,000 patients, its expansion into New York’s Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program (CDPAP) as a fiscal intermediary, and how the company expects to grow amid these changes.

Below is that conversation, edited for length and clarity.

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HHCN: Let’s start with some background on yourself and Special Touch Home Care.

Ostrovsky: My father founded Special Touch in 1984. I started working for the company in the summer when I was about 15. When I finished graduate school in 2004, I started working full-time.

My approach was hands-on. I worked in different departments to comprehensively understand the company’s operations. I focused on recruitment and addressing urgent needs. Later, I oversaw all human resources, including recruitment and compliance for home health and personal care aides.

As CEO, my primary goal is to ensure the company’s daily operations run smoothly and efficiently. I am committed to addressing all patient needs and ensuring all departments operate at their best, and I’m constantly seeking ways to enhance and innovate our services. I am always exploring new technologies and processes to keep us at the forefront of home care.

About ten years ago, we began providing services as a fiscal intermediary through the CDPAP program, bringing exciting new things within the company.

We offer services in many languages and tailor our services to different cultures. Because New York City is a highly diverse city, it’s benefited us to serve those groups and make them feel as comfortable doing business with us as possible.

Outside of CDPAP, what service lines do you have? Do you do Medicare-certified home health care, or is it more Medicaid-based home and community services?

Most of our services are Medicaid and long-term care. We see a certain percentage of Medicare patients. Regarding lines of business, we are home care services, home health aides, and private-care attendants, so that’s what we’ve been doing since the company’s inception. We’ve added the CDPAP service, where we’re a fiscal intermediary.

We do some nursing to manage our services, primarily the home care service, but we bill for the home health aide, personal care aide and consumer-directed program.

Is there any private-pay element to the business?

We have a private-pay population, but it’s a small percentage of our overall services. Probably less than 5% of the company is private pay.

What is running a home care business in New York like right now?

Operating in New York is extremely rewarding. We know that we are making a difference in people’s lives. We allow them to stay in their homes instead of going to facilities. To that end, we do it because we love it.

In recent years, the business has faced challenges. A lot of that has to do with wage parity and mandates. We appreciate that, through those mandates, our caregivers are earning more money. Our caregivers have significant benefits, including health insurance and vacation time. When wage mandates kicked in, ensuring we had the reimbursement to cover those was challenging, but those came through.

Regulation changes improve the quality of care, patient safety and other aspects of our work. We appreciate the Department of Health’s efforts to improve the quality of care and the services we provide. After over 40 years of dealing with these issues, we handle new regulatory requirements well.

With CDPAP, you’re optimistic about the program and your involvement. Can you give us a breakdown of what things have been like within that program as a fiscal intermediary, and is it your plan to continue being one in the future?

We started offering fiscal intermediary services about ten years ago. Some patients switched from our home care services to the CDPAP program, so we started investigating and providing those services.

We’re proponents of this program. It allows people who might not otherwise be comfortable with home care services to get the care they need to help them live quality lives. It also gives people greater independence to select their caregiver and oversee their care. You may have situations where a client’s personal assistant can’t work anymore, and they’ll switch from CDPAP to home care service or vice versa. We need to be there for them on both sides. We don’t want patients to go elsewhere for services when we can provide them.

It’s been a fast-growing part of our business. It’s been fast growing in New York, and ever since we started, the Department of Health has implemented specific authorizations or approval programs. Because we are experienced, we were one of the 62 agencies initially approved for the program. Even though things could change at the last minute, we hope that changes will allow us to keep doing this business because we love it.

What do you think New York could do better for home care providers or beneficiaries? What would improve the state of home care in New York right now?

The state does a great job of offering good benefits. New York sees that not only is it highly appreciated by the patients because it helps them live a better life, but it is also a better alternative, even financially, than a nursing home or assisted living facility.

We like to focus on underserved groups who may not know the services exist or cannot find a company that can work with them in their language. Not too long ago, the state gave us some grant money, and we used that money to build up our language abilities. It requires a specific investment when you want to service a different language. You’ve got to translate everything into that language. You need employees to be able to work with the caregivers and patients. Grants for things like that help us serve underserved groups. That grant money also helped us offer bonuses for people who would travel from or to areas where it’s not as easy to get to. That may be a one-time thing, but we want to see things like that ongoing.

We also would like grant money to help with educational programs to offer to our employees to better care for our patients. The state has provided grant money to help us train caregivers to improve their skills, ability to care for people, cultural competency, etc. We would like to see more of that because it really does help. It makes caregivers feel more valued, helps them develop their skills and helps them better serve our patients.

You recently reached 150,000 patients cared for since the company’s founding. How do you plan to continue growing?

We’ve always put the patient first in our business, focusing on services and the diverse population of New York City. That’s what got us to where we are, and we want to continue that.

As far as what we’re looking to do going forward, we see that this is an aging population, and you have different people, maybe decision-makers for patients, looking in other places than they used to for care. We have put a lot of time and effort into our website to educate those people. We also created a new site for the CDPAP program that offers information to help them decide if it’s right for them and to help them reach out to us when they’re ready to do that.

We’ve placed information on social media channels for people looking for care for themselves, a family member or a friend. If they’re in the CDPAP program, they can get information there and reach out to us when they need assistance.

Internally, we’ve always focused on our hiring practices. My brother and I hire most of the office staff because it’s crucial to ensure we get the right people in place and continue to provide outstanding service.

In addition, we’re exploring expanding our geographic reach. We primarily offer in-home care services in New York City and Westchester, but we think it’s time to offer services throughout New York State. That requires licensing and adding new services such as therapy and nursing. We’re also looking to explore areas to add to our product offering to help us grow as a company.

Regarding geographic expansion and organic growth within your current markets, what do you see as the largest barriers?

When it comes to growing in different geographic areas, it’s always been essential for us to offer our services correctly. We don’t want to provide a service that is not as good as what we’re doing in New York City.

We’ve had a training program in New York City for a long time, which has helped us ensure that we have caregivers ready. When we moved to Staten Island, we started training and certifying caregivers there. By doing that, we quickly became one of the largest home care agencies in Staten Island.

Our goal of reaching new language groups and cultures is challenging, especially when it starts small. You need to devote resources, and that’s always challenging, but it’s a welcome challenge.

Do you feel as though your staffing situation has improved? If so, why do you think that is? Is it due to external factors, internal initiatives or both?

Interestingly, staffing was relatively easy for us in 2004 when I started recruitment without much advertising. Word of mouth, historically, has been almost all we’ve ever needed. Our only advertising was for hardship service areas and certain language groups.

COVID-19 made it more difficult. A lot of people were scared to go into a patient’s home, and staffing became challenging during that period. But as that ended, we’re back to where people walk into our offices throughout New York City looking to work for us. So, we’re back to where the only areas we might need to focus on are the challenging service areas and languages. Offering training programs is an advantage for us.

Do you feel like one of the untapped areas of opportunity you’ve been going after remains that language piece, where you are willing to go into these neighborhoods where there may be language barriers and train caregivers to service those clients?

We’ve been doing English, Russian, Spanish, and Chinese and have translated everything into those languages for a long time. There are still a lot of groups out there that have a hard time finding providers that can work with them in their languages. We do see that as an area of growth. If you become the agency that provides services to those people, that’s a great opportunity. We do that with our home care agency and also with CDPAP.

Is there a particular technology you feel you need to unlock in the future or a technology you have adopted recently that will soon become table stakes for providers?

I firmly believe we need to adopt the latest technology. Regarding reimbursement, there’s not a lot of extra money for overhead, so you want to do as much as you can with as little as you can and use technology to improve the experience of your patients and consumers.

We all jumped into online education during the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, we’ve improved our phone system with a voiceover IP system for more accessible communication between caregivers and patients in the company, and that is critically important as fewer people are showing up to the offices. Right now, we’re converting from paper to digital charts. That comes with the nurses having a direct connection to the office, which helps us react to any issues they might see quicker and complete paperwork more efficiently.

From my perspective, I’m looking for something that can automate our processes so we can focus on tasks that require a human touch, such as talking to patients and helping when issues arise. We see technology as a way to be more efficient and spend more time dealing with people.

What excites you most about Special Touch Home Care’s future?

I am proud of what we do to make a difference in people’s lives. This kind of senior care will only become a more significant issue as we look to the future. I’m excited to see what happens as the population ages and how we can better use our services to care for them. Our goal is to help patients live their best lives.

We’re looking forward to seeing the changes in the health system over time and how patient outcomes are improving. We’re also looking forward to devoting more time and effort to expanding our reach and the scope of our services.

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For this episode of Disrupt, we caught up with Evan Ostrovsky, the CEO of Special Touch Home Care. During the conversation, Ostrovsky talks about how he plans to take his agency from Point A to Point B in the near-term future.

Listen to this episode of Disrupt to learn:

– What’s next for CDPAP intermediaries in New York

– The opportunities and challenges of operating a home care agency in New York

– Keys to contemporary home care growth

– And more!

Subscribe to Disrupt to be notified when new episodes are released. Listen today!

The post Disrupt Podcast: Evan Ostrovsky, CEO, Special Touch Home Care appeared first on Home Health Care News.

AccentCare has promoted Dr. Balu Natarajan to the roles of executive vice president and chief medical officer (CMO), effective immediately.

“In his almost two decades with our company, Dr. Natarajan has been an invaluable asset to our team, demonstrating exceptional leadership and medical expertise,” AccentCare CEO Laura Tortorella said in a statement. “With his proven track record of putting patients first and building best-in-class clinical teams, I am confident that Dr. Natarajan will continue to advance our delivery of high-quality, consistent, and connected care.”

AccentCare is one of the largest home health and hospice providers in the country. The Dallas-based company also provides personal home care, palliative care and other home-based care services. Its footprint includes 250 locations across 31 states and the District of Columbia, and it serves more than 200,000 individuals each year.

In his new role, Natarajan will be responsible for overseeing all of AccentCare’s clinical care operations and patient experience initiatives.

“Our team will continue to be guided by the patient’s voice and put patients at the center of everything we do as we deliver high-quality care,” Natarajan said in the statement. “From coast to coast, patients and their families are counting on providers to help them navigate a complex health care system. I look forward to working with our clinical teams and partners to develop and implement strategies that promote innovation and drive successful patient experiences and outcomes. I am excited about working with Laura and the entire team as we continue to treat our patients with integrity, compassion, and excellence.”

Prior to his promotion, Natarajan served as CMO for the company’s hospice service line.

Modivcare names two new c-suite leaders

Modivcare Inc. (Nasdaq: MODV) has named Jeff Bennett as its chief strategy and innovation officer, and Seth Ravine as its chief commercial officer, effective December 2023.

“I am incredibly excited for the appointment of these two positions, underscoring our commitment to building a top-notch leadership team that will steer Modivcare’s strategic course and drive success in this dynamic landscape,” Heath Sampson, president and CEO of Modivcare, said in a press statement. “The addition of Jeff and Seth’s roles reinforce our dedication to providing innovative and cohesive healthcare solutions with an enterprise mindset.”

The Denver-based Modivcare offers technology-enabled health care services and provides non-emergency medical transportation (NEMT). The company’s Modivcare Home division includes its personal care, remote patient monitoring and nutritional meal delivery service offerings.

Bennett joined Modivcare as part of the company’s acquisition of Higi, where he previously served as CEO.

Ravine joined Modivcare in 2021 as the senior vice president of strategic solutions through the acquisition of VRI.

Androscoggin appoints chief human resource officer

Sarah Conroy has joined Androscoggin Home Healthcare and Hospice as the company’s chief human resource officer.

The Maine-based Androscoggin is a nonprofit operator that employs 500 workers across all 16 counties in the state.

Prior to her new role, Conroy was an HR business consultant, and also served on the Maine State Society of Washington, DC Foundation.

Special Touch Home Care makes several leadership appointments

Special Touch Home Care has made changes to its leadership team.

Evan Ostrovsky has been named CEO and executive director of traditional home care services.

“I’m deeply honored to assume this role and continue our family’s legacy in delivering top-quality home health services,” Evan Ostrovsky said in a press statement. “I want to extend my heartfelt appreciation to my father, Steven Ostrovsky, for founding this remarkable organization, and his unwavering dedication to our mission ever since. Looking ahead, we remain committed to innovation, enhancing care quality, and supporting our devoted caregivers.”

Founded in 1984, Special Touch Home Care is a home health services provider in New York State. The company employs more than 5,000 home health aides.

David Ostrovsky — who previously served as vice president — will take on the role of chief strategy officer and executive director of the company’s consumer directed personal assistance program.

The company also named Jasmin Arias its chief operating officer, and Steven Ostrovsky transitioned from CEO to the role of executive chairman.

Humana names president of enterprise growth

Humana (NYSE: HUM) has named David Dintenfass president of enterprise growth, a newly created role.

In his new role, Dintenfass will lead the company’s growth plan, with an emphasis on customer acquisition, retention and experience. He will focus on the growth of Humana’s insurance businesses initially, but will also partner with CenterWell.

“David has a 30-year track record of delivering outstanding financial and organizational results across a range of businesses,” Bruce Broussard, president and CEO of Humana, said in a press statement. “He knows how to leverage digital capabilities to enhance the customer and broker experience and drive growth. He’s a strategic leader who is customer obsessed, digitally savvy and data driven and can help us maximize investments and act on current and future trends.”

Prior to joining Humana, Dintenfass served as executive vice president, head of products and emerging growth markets. He will step into the role on February 5, 2024.

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