After President Joe Biden announced Thursday a new, six-pronged approach to his administration’s COVID-19 strategy that requires most home health workers to be vaccinated against the virus, many questions and concerns remain.

More clarity is likely to come to light as specific agencies deal with the next steps following the mandate’s release, like the Department of Labor (DOL) and the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).

“Ensuring that all frontline health care staff are vaccinated just makes sense,” Katie Smith Sloan, the president and CEO of the aging services advocacy organization LeadingAge, said in a statement. “This action not only shores up protection for older adults who move across care settings, but also levels the playing field among providers competing for in-demand health care workers.”

The National Association for Home Care & Hospice (NAHC) immediately had questions for CMS after the announcement, one of which has already been answered. Its president, William A. Dombi, asked who exactly the vaccination requirement would apply to in home health.

The CMS answer to that question was shared with Home Health Care News.

“The staff vaccination requirement would only apply to Medicare and Medicaid-certified provider and supplier types that are regulated under the Conditions of Participation,” the agency said. “If an entity is not regulated under the CoPs, then this requirement would not apply.”

Other questions still remain though, including when the interim final rule would be published, what the deadline for employees to get vaccinated would be, what exemptions would exist and how vaccination status would be monitored, among others.

While the announcement will certainly send some agencies with lower vaccination rates scrambling, it may be welcomed guidance for others.

“I think for many providers this is welcome news, especially those in the home-based care industry, who are looking for consistency and a significant measure by the federal government,” Matt Wolfe, a partner at law firm Parker Poe, told HHCN. “At the same time, providers within the home-based care space are going to have to wait and see exactly how CMS rolls this out, … how it will be implemented, exactly who it would apply to and when they’d be required to comply by.”

For providers that have been teetering the line between making sure they can safely provide care to patients while also not fully mandating vaccines for their employees, the move by the Biden administration is a cause for some relief.

“I think it does provide some relief for those providers who were considering mandates of their own or were looking at states to move forward with one,” Wolfe said. “But, again, we have to keep in mind that there’s still a lot of information we are expecting to see from CMS as we move forward with this.”

The news is also welcome for those providers in states that have already mandated vaccines for home health care workers, like in New York state.

“Without a major national mandate like this, providers had the threat of losing their employees to other industries where vaccinations will not be mandated,” Emina Poricanin, managing attorney of Poricanin Law, told HHCN. “But if other large private employers will require a vaccine also, then the employees’ options are somewhat limited and those home care aides may feel more pressure to become vaccinated and stay employed with their New York home care provider that is requiring the vaccine.”

The penalties for non-compliance are also not yet completely clear, outside of a $14,000 penalty that would likely be enforced by the DOL’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).

The effect on home care providers

An additional part of the announcement was a provision that would require all private-sector businesses with more than 100 employees to require that their workforces be fully vaccinated, or otherwise be subjected to weekly testing. Those employers will also be required to give paid time off to employees to get vaccinated.

A recent study from Caring.com of 2,000 caregivers found that just 50% of them were fully vaccinated. Of those that weren’t, 27% had at least started the vaccination process, while the remaining 23% had not.

The survey also found that vaccine hesitancy was not actually curbed after a full approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

While private-pay home-based care providers are not yet subject to mandated vaccine requirements on a federal level, it will still affect many of them considerably.

The first reason is that many of these providers also care for patients through Medicaid, which is obviously a federal payer source. The second is the aforementioned 100-plus-employee provision, with the caveat being that unvaccinated workers can still be tested weekly in lieu of getting the vaccine.

One question for these providers is whether part-time employees will be counted — this could make or break whether a provider is considered to have more or less than 100 employees.

Just 14% of direct care workers in the home-based care field work 40 or more hours per week, with many opting for more flexible schedules due to non-economic obligations like child care, according to a recent report from advocacy group PHI.

Additionally, it’s unclear for franchise organizations whether each franchise will be considered its own entity or if the network will be viewed as one.

Some home care operators in places like Los Angeles County have already been mandated by the regulators to comply with mandates, including 24 Hour Home Care.

“We’re in this testing phase right now,” Ryan Iwamoto, the president and co-founder of 24 Hour Home Care, recently told HHCN. “We’re probably at about 50% vaccinated, in terms of caregivers who’ve told us they’ve gotten the shot. With the other 50%, we’re wondering, ‘Are they on the fence? Or are they just going to leave the industry?’ It’s all a bit unknown. We hope most will get [the vaccine], but you never know. And I think that’s what we’re sort of facing right now.”

Other providers still remain in limbo, however. With vaccine hesitancy high and looming federal and state mandates still sometimes unclear, they are in a precarious position.

A sigh of relief

Nursing home operators were among the loudest supporters of a vaccine mandate from the federal government that stretched across the continuum of care. CMS announced on Aug. 19 that all nursing home staff must be vaccinated against the COVID-19 virus, or risk losing Medicare or Medicaid reimbursement.

“It needs to be broadcast to all health care settings, because it will decimate the industry as a whole,” Carespring CEO Chris Chirumbolo said during the Skilled Nursing News Rethink conference in Chicago.

Essentially, nursing home executives feared that a mandate in one setting would simply cause workers to migrate into less-regulated corners of the health care world.

“The problem is singling us out,” Ignite Medical Resorts CEO Tim Fields said at Rethink. “I think that you’ll force some people who just don’t want to get [the vaccine] to go to home health, hospice, hospitals, assisted living and other settings.”

The post ‘For Many Providers, It’s Welcome News’: Breaking Down the White House Vaccine Mandate appeared first on Home Health Care News.

Since the announcement, survey data is beginning to prove why vaccinating all nursing home and home health employees would be a herculean feat — and how it could put health care providers across the country in a precarious position.

Among long-term care staff, only 57% have currently received the COVID-19 vaccine, according to a recent survey conducted by the post-acute care management software company OnShift. Over 2,000 workers responded to the survey.

Nearly 40% of the respondents said they had not received the vaccine. Of those, only 8% were planning on getting it in the future.

More than half of the unvaccinated respondents said they planned to seek employment where vaccines are not mandated, with 39% unsure of their future employment status.

“With the forthcoming COVID-19 vaccine mandate for long-term care providers, we wanted to leverage our unique connections with provider organizations and their employees to help them further prepare for the ongoing staffing battle with the pandemic,” Mark Woodka, the CEO of OnShift, said in a press release announcing the survey results. “It is our hope that this research helps provide insight into the mindset of long-term care staff to help prevent a mass employee exodus from the industry.”

Initially, there’s a chance some of the unvaccinated staff opt to enter home health care and other settings. If that plays out, it could temporarily mitigate staffing shortages.

At the same time, there could be negative business consequences if home health providers become known as the “last refuge” for unvaccinated workers, a point AccentCare CEO Steve Rodgers made to Home Health Care News earlier this week. Additionally, any staffing gains may prove short-lived, with some home-based care providers already exposed to state-level mandates.

New York state has already mandated that all home health and personal care workers get at least one dose of the vaccine by Oct. 7.

“These survey results showcase exactly what we have feared,” Mark Parkinson, the president and CEO of the American Health Care Association and National Center for Assisted Living (AHCA/NCAL), said in a statement. “Nursing homes cannot afford to lose any more caregivers without threatening access to long-term care for our residents. ​​It is critical that the Administration expand the vaccine requirement to include all health care providers and prevent a mass exodus of nursing home staff.”

In another study, Caring.com also surveyed 2,000 caregivers to find out similar information. The results confirmed that vaccine hesitancy is just not a nursing home staff problem.

The survey’s results found that one in five caregivers had not started the vaccination process at all and that only 50% had been fully vaccinated against COVID-19.

Of those who weren’t vaccinated, one-quarter planned on remaining so. The reasons for why they were not vaccinated ranged from distrust of the vaccines — the most popular reason — to believing that COVID-19 was a hoax completely. About one in 10 of vaccine-hesitant caregivers believe that COVID-19 is a hoax.

“In response to vaccine mandates, 54% of vaccine-hesitant caregivers would rather lose their job than get vaccinated,” the Caring.com survey results said. “More than 50% of unvaccinated caregivers don’t wear masks when in public or around at-risk individuals.”

For now, home health and personal home care providers remain steadfast in their outreach and education efforts. But for a great deal of the coveted workers in these sectors, it seems like no swaying will be done.

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While traditional media advertising — such as television and radio — has been essential in helping the Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania-based agency rise through the ranks, the future is social, according to Senior Vice President of Global Operations Dave Ritterling.

“Geotargeting, Hulu, Youtube,” Ritterling told Home Health Care News. “Those really are the next extension for all of us [home care providers]. We need to be where the people are, and they’re on phones.”

Ritterling shared those insights with HHCN at Visiting Angels’ annual conference last week in Nashville, Tennessee, where he said the importance of social media and emerging technologies took center stage.

“The days of the Yellow Pages are over,” Ritterling said. “What people are doing is using social media. I think we’re just going to see that trend really go quickly.”

The prominence of online advertising is nothing new.

But with studies showing that 86% of consumers read online reviews and 67% of adults age 65 and older use the internet, online advertising is becoming increasingly important in capturing clients.

Specifically, the average person seeking senior care online is a woman between 50 and 70, according to third-party market research compiled from more than 4,500 respondents and used by Caring.com. Most often, that person is the care recipient’s adult child (39%) or spouse (29%).

Lately, Visiting Angels has been researching new — and better ways — to capture those audiences.

“A lot of our strategies have been with cable, but now that cable’s changing, we’re going to a lot more digital sources,” Ritterling said. “We’re on NPR now, which is unique for us. We’re finding new areas where listenership trends are happening.”

Beyond bringing in new clients, social media has also been hailed as a way to recruit caregivers, as retention is at an all-time low and demand for services is at an all-time high.

“It has become table stakes — an effective multi-channel marketing effort,” Hireology CEO Adam Robinson previously told HHCN. “Recruiting via social media certainly includes potential applicants that read your post, click on a link and apply to a job, but equally important is brand building. Word of mouth is heavily influenced by a company’s online employment brand.”

Medicare Advantage play

Beyond digital advertising, another area of interest for Visiting Angels is Medicare Advantage (MA), Ritterling said.

“The more we think we know, the more we find out we don’t know,” Ritterling said. “I think there’s a lot more work to be done in that area for us to get our arms around it and figure out how we’re going to approach that. We see it as an opportunity but as we learn more and more, we’ll engage that more.”

While Ritterling declined to go into specifics, he said Visiting Angels is “looking at, developing and discussing” MA partnerships.

“We’ve got our feelers out,” Ritterling said. “We’ve got such a great experienced director group, many of which have lots of experience in that area. We’re working with them and sort of helping them chart the way as we approach this.”

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”The first thing is to simply understand that this trend is there,” Peter Droubay, director of recruiting at senior care resource and referral platform Caring.com, told Home Health Care News. “Unfortunately, far too many agencies just get caught unaware. Suddenly their phone starts to ring and they don’t have caregivers they can place, they don’t have people ready to take the calls and they don’t have advertising out there.”

Online searches for the term “home care” spike every January, according to U.S. Google data from the past five years. It’s easy to understand why: At holiday gatherings, loved ones see for the first time that their parents or other family members need assistance. Generally, the post-holiday bump follows slow fall months and is rivaled only by summer, when home care searches reach peak popularity.

It’s a trend Interim HealthCare’s location in Montgomery County, Maryland started preparing for months ago. There, things start picking up as early as November, with the rush running through January, according to Amy Kisanga, franchise administrator.

”I would say our inquiries double during that period, and it’s a quicker turnaround time,” she told HHCN, pointing to holiday gatherings as the catalyst. “When families are visiting their loved ones, it’s a shorter period of time, so they’re calling and they need someone now because of what they’re seeing.”

Unlike many other franchise companies, Interim’s operations include Medicare-certified home health and hospice services in addition to private-duty home care offerings. Overall, there are more than 530 Interim franchises in seven countries.

This year, the Montgomery County franchise location, which serves about 200 clients with about 300 caregivers, started recruiting earlier than usual. By starting in September, the goal was to give caregivers more time to train ahead of the bump. At the same time, Kisanga’s team checked the availability of current caregivers to make the most of their market.

”This is a very competitive area, so if someone is calling you up and you’re not able to meet that need, literally in seconds they’re going to go to someone else,” Kisanga said.

Meanwhile, New Jersey-based home health care provider CareFinders Total Care prepares for the holidays by juggling logistics.

”The biggest challenge for us is in the rescheduling that has to go on to make sure there’s continuity of care for all our clients,” Co-chairman Linda Mintz told HHCN.

With about 8,000 clients and 20 offices between New Jersey and Connecticut, CareFinders employs about 7,500 home health aides. Mintz says the company plans ahead to substitute coverage and offers additional perks to those who work during the holidays.

“We do offer an enhanced pay rate in order to encourage them,” Mintz said, adding that employees also earn additional points through the company’s internal reward program.

But caregivers are are only one piece of the pie. Social workers, clinical employees and even office staff are equally important when business peaks.

“If you don’t have someone taking the phone calls that are going to start coming in [or] if you don’t have a process where you can go out and do at-home assessments, then it’s all for naught,” Droubay said.

Don’t forget advertising

Even with appropriate staffing, agencies can miss opportunities by failing to advertise ahead of January’s rush. For example, smaller companies often cut back during slow fall months, ultimately costing them business in the new year, according to Droubay, who leads referral business at Caring.com.

“There’s nothing there to capture the leads,” he said. “The salmon run is coming, but you don’t even have your hooks in the water.”

Now, with studies showing that 86% of consumers read online reviews and 67% of adults age 65 and older use the internet, online advertising is more important than ever.

Specifically, the average person seeking senior care online is a woman between 50 and 70, according to third-party market research compiled from more than 4,500 respondents and used by Caring.com. Most often, that person is the care recipient’s adult child (39%) or spouse (29%).

To capture that audience, Droubay recommends bolstering online testimonials and reviews. But local referral services are also important, as clinics and physicians can suggest agencies to prospective clients directly in person. Fostering those relationships during the holidays can be natural for home care agencies.

”You’re walking in for the holidays to drop off cookies, talking to the doctor’s office or the discharge clinics,” he said. “Now you’ve just planted your face, your agency name in their minds.”

With January right around the corner, the sooner agencies start preparing for the post-holiday referral rush, the better. But above all, Droubay says the best way to get ready is to run a solid business year-round.

“Even though we talk about these trends and cycles, individual business owners should never lose sight of the fact that they just need to build great business and keep those systems running,” Droubay said. “Because yes, there are natural cycles, but you can capitalize on them better if you’ve been doing all this stuff during the down times.”

Written by Bailey Bryant

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Referral sites like Caring.com, Aging Care, Home Advisor, Care In Homes and A Place for Mom have continued to capitalize on an ever-growing home care market. The general model is that a potential consumer turns to these sites to begin researching care options in their areas, and the site then passes along these potential leads to area senior living or home care providers. They typically charge a fee for leads and/or move-ins.

“It does bridge a gap between the clients and what types of care they need. That family may not know who to call or what types of services are out there,” Daniel Thom, president and CEO at Trusted Family Home Care, told Home Health Care News. “[Third-party referral sites] were able to get me going. I attribute those [third-party] referral sources to getting me to where I am at today. I couldn’t be where I am at without them.”

Thousand Oaks, California-based Trusted Family Home Care is offers private-duty services to clients across Ventura and Los Angeles counties.

Thom is currently at a crossroads, as he is trying to decide whether the fees for third-party sites are worth the potential clients.

“I am not bashing them by any means,” Thom said. “[But] I am at an impasse now, where I need to decide, do I want to continue to spend that kind of money on these referral sources, or take that money and put it into some employees that can go out there and market my business and then start to get these referral sources (like skilled nursing facilities or hospitals) to start giving me those clients … because those don’t cost me per referral.”

Trusted Family Home Care uses Caring.com, Care In Homes and Aging Care.

Third-party referral site fees can be expensive, but agencies should think of the fees as a part of an overall marketing budget and then decide whether the price is worth it, Peter Droubay, director of recruiting, on-boarding and training at Caring.com, told HHCN. It is a misconception that agencies pay directly for clients, he also noted. Rather, they are paying for an opportunity to market themselves to someone who has already indicated they are in the market for home care services.

San Mateo, California-based Caring.com is a website and senior care resource company that offers senior care related information and a directory of caregiving services. It is the second-largest third-party referral site nationally, and is being led by a new CEO, Jim Rosenthal, who took the position in late July. Rosenthal is a partner in private equity firm Caring Holdings, which acquired Caring.com in May 2018.

“We offer a home care agency an additional marketing or lead generation source — any good business is built on numerous sources of leads or marketing,” Droubay said. “[Third-party sites] are one more way of getting leads in … And in each way you market there is a cost. In our case, the cost is per lead.”

The price per lead at Caring.com is $50.

“Is it worth it? Is it not worth?” Droubay said. “The majority of people that use us definitely feel like it’s worth it, that’s why they keep buying leads. And we definitely feel like it’s worth it, because we see people that are successful that way. Just like placing an ad somewhere in a publication, a savvy business owner has to count the number of people and see what the conversion rate is.”

It is just a math problem from a business standpoint, Droubay added.

The newer, the better

For newer offices these sites can be an easy way to get into the business as soon as their doors open.

“We utilize third-party referrals quite a lot,” Lenny Verkhoglaz, CEO at Executive Care, told HHCN. “[For] the newer offices, I think it’s a great source of referrals to start. The referrals come in at a brisk pace, but there is a lot more work to be done because they come from the internet — people are just clicking away.”

New Jersey-based Executive Care is a home care franchise company that employs roughly 1,000 people in 22 offices across 11 states. The company has several locations in various stages of development.

Executive Care uses such sites as Aging Care and Care in Homes, according to the company.

“Leads through third-party referrals are what I call tire kickers,” Verkhoglaz said. “They are not [necessarily] committed to care. But there is a place for these referrals — it’s a great start for newer companies and we value those relationships. Some of our newer franchisees have built a decent number of clients thanks to those third-party referral companies.”

As Executive Care locations grow and expand with more organic leads in their markets the need for these sites can deteriorate naturally.

“The offices that have been operating for two-plus years, the dependency on third-party referrals is a lot less,” Verkhoglaz said. “By that time, they have established many different relationships with referral sources on the ground such as skilled nursing facilities, assisted living [communities] and hospitals. They draw more organic business [like] word of mouth referrals.”

The conversion rate can be relatively low on third-party leads as multiple agencies receive the information at a time.

There is about a 2% conversion rate on these clients, and it is a lot of work to sift through the leads and get a person on the phone, according to Verkhoglaz.

Turning those potential leads into clients can be more work for agencies too, as some third-party sites don’t properly vet a client before passing along the referral.

“Caring.com is doing their job … the company will talk to a client and ask them what their needs are and what their budgets is. But, some other referral agencies don’t do that — they don’t dig into whether a client can afford the service, they’ll just connect them to agencies,” Thom said.

This can result in frustration and wasted resources.

“I get a referral, and I tell them how much it costs, and they immediately hang up because they can’t afford it,” Thom said. “Had the [third-party] referral source dug in deeper to see if [a client] could afford it, they would have known this family could not afford home care services and not have wasted [the client’s] time, my time and my money … We are spending all this money on these leads that will never come to fruition because the client could never afford it in the first place.”

Trusted Family Home Care has spent about $21,000 year-to-date on third-party referrals, which translates to client acquisition costs of about $1,800 per person, according to Thom.

Is the price right?

The fees associated with third-party sites can be a hard line for some agencies.

“We used to use one when we initially started the business, called Home Advisor,” Said Aliyev, president at Virginia Home Care Services, told HHCN. “We had to pay $20 to $30 per lead — no matter how good or bad the lead was, it was $20 to $30. I had a problem with that because after a certain amount of time we noticed nothing [was] coming … that’s why we stopped.”

While Virginia Home Care Services backed away from third-party referrals after a few months, calling up these leads did help the company sharpen its sales pitch, Aliyev noted.

Vienna, Virginia-based Virginia Home Care Services is a home care provider offering services like private duty, companion and respite care to 110 clients in Northern Virginia. The company employs about 150 staff members.

Agencies need to consider the cost of alternative forms of internet marketing, Droubay said.

“We have hundreds of agencies that have told us this is worth it,” he said. “It is far less [expensive] than any other advertising sources they can go to. They are going to spend more with Google on search-engine marketing. Even if they bought 20 leads to get one client. That one client more than pays for it.”

Written by Kaitlyn Mattson

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Bayada Home Health Care named Jennifer Scoggins, who has been working with the company as a physical therapist since 2014, the new director of its Bennington, Vermont office, according to an report from the Bennington Banner.

Bayada is a provider of at home care for children and adults. The organization works out of 335 offices in 22 states and currently employees 22,000 professionals.

Senior Helpers Adds Michael Hughes to Executive Leadership Team

Senior Helpers announced at the end of July that Michael Hughes will be appointed the new vice president of strategic development for the company. Hughes will work to forge partnerships and alliances with health care systems, Medicare Advantage programs, long-term care companies and other key health care partners, according to a press release from Senior Helpers.

Senior Helpers is an in-home senior care provider with over 311 franchised businesses. The company was founded in 2002.

Hughes, prior to accepting a job with Senior Helpers, was the principal at a strategic consultancy focusing on the intersection of aging, health and technology. He worked for AARP for nearly a decade, according to the release.

Joliet Area Community Hospice Names New Medical Director

The Joliet Area Community Hospice (JACH) named Dr. Muhamad Krad the new medical director of the facility. Krad prior to the appointment specialized in internal medicine at Amita Health and he had been working part-time at JACH for the last year, according to a news report from The Herald-News. Krad graduated from Loyola University Chicago and received a master’s degree from Georgetown University and Loyola Stritch School of Medicine.

JACH is a nonprofit Medicare-certified hospice facility serving several counties in Illinois. The agency serves about 1,800 patients a year and employs 140 full and part-time employees.

The former director of JACH, Dr. J.D. Wright, retired in June.

Compassus Adds Tech and Finance Vice Presidents

Compassus has added two new executives to its ranks. Brian Blackburn has joined the team as the new vice president of technology. Jesse Verni will be the vice president of financial planning and analysis, according to a news report from the Nashville Post. The two bring a combined 35 years of experience, the report noted.

Compassus is a Nashville, Tennessee-based network of community hospice and home care services. The organization has 140 local programs across 31 states in the U.S.

Caring.com Names New CEO

Caring.com announced Jim Rosenthal will be the new CEO of the senior care referral service. Rosenthal was most recently the executive chairman for Caring, according to a press release from the company. Rosenthal worked closely with the previous CEO, Karen Cassel. He will work with the team to grow Caring as it continues its social mission and expands its partnerships.

Caring.com was founded in 2007 as a one-stop spot for helping family caregivers navigate the intricacies of caregiving.

Former CEO Cassel was instrumental in pivoting the company from a content site to a senior care referral agency, according to the release.

“Karen did a terrific job leading a talented team and taking the company to a new level. I am excited to work with the team on its next chapter,” Rosenthal said in the release.

Written by Kaitlyn Mattson

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Recently acquired senior care referral service Caring.com has found a new chief financial officer.

San Mateo, California-based Caring.com—acquired in May by private equity group Caring Holdings, LLC—has chosen technology and finance veteran Lia Burke as its next CFO.

Among the reasons for the hiring, Burke was chosen because of her experience leading tech-focused businesses through periods of rapid strategic growth and helping them transition through mergers and acquisitions, according to Caring.com.

Caring.com’s previous owner, Bankrate, agreed to part ways with the senior living referral service last year in order to be acquired by Red Ventures for $1.4 billion.

Two minority investors of Red Ventures—General Atlantic and Silver Lake Partners—already owned A Place for Mom, a Seattle-based company providing similar services.

Those investment ties contributed to a mandated divestiture of Caring.com.

Burke previously served as CFO at RadiumOne Inc. She has also held positions at Oracle Corporation (NYSE: ORCL), KPMG and Ernst & Young.

SpiriTrust Appoints VP

Nina DelGrande has been named vice president of community health services and executive director of SpiriTrust Lutheran Home Care & Hospice.

SpiriTrust Lutheran Home Care & Hospice is a faith-based, not-for-profit organization serving south central and northeastern Pennsylvania, along with parts of northern Maryland.

In addition to hospice care, the organization also offers home health and home care services.

DelGrande previously served as director of SpiriTrust Lutheran LIFE, a program that provides professional care helping seniors stay in their homes as they age.

In her duties, DelGrande will be responsible for the operations of both SpiriTrust Luthern Home Care & Hospice and SpiriTrust Lutheran LIFE, including client and participant care, along with administrative tasks.

Before joining SpiriTrust’s leadership team, DelGrande held various positions at HomeCall, LHC Group, Affilia Home Health and Pinnacle Health System.

Compass Regional Hospice Welcomes Three New Employees 

Compass Regional Hospice has added three new employees to help meet growing demand for the provider’s services.

Maryland-based Compass Regional Hospice provides routine home hospice care to patients in Queen Anee’s, Kent and Caroline counties. It also offers residential hospice care through its six-bed Hospice Center in Centerville, its four-bed Hospice Center in Chesterton and its three-bed Caroline Hospice Home in Denton for when patients can no longer remain in their homes.

Compass Regional Hospice offers General Inpatient Care (GIP) at its Centerville facility.

Dawn Victoria joins the hospice provider as a clinical assistant for home care, while Shannon von Hagel comes on board as a full-time referral specialist, Kent County News reported. Katie Willis has also accepted a position as a communications and web specialist.

On top of the three new hirings, the hospice provider also recently promoted Holly Hayman to the position of director of clinical services.

Compass Regional’s Bridges program also provides patients with pre-hospice care and support for those who have been diagnosed with a life-limiting illness.

Advantage Home Health Hires New Mental Health Specialist 

Advantage Home Health in Oregon has reportedly hired a new RN specialist to help serve the provider’s mental health patients.

Advantage Home Health provides in-home health services and caregiver training. It serves between 150 and 175 clients at a time and has about 100 employees, The News-Review reported.

Roughly half of its clients have dementia or other mental health needs.

RN Greg Wolf joins Advantage Home Health after previously working for a mental health hospital in Junction City, Oregon. In his new role, Wolf will help train caregivers on the physical and emotional needs of clients with mental health illnesses.

Written by Robert Holly

The post Movers & Shakers: Caring.com Names New CFO appeared first on Home Health Care News.

Caring.com is an internet-based online resource and referral service for customers looking information about care options.

On a big-picture level, the move will protect competition among leading referral services operating in the home health and senior care spaces, as Caring.com’s previous owner already had ownership of another online competitor. Bankrate, which had owned Caring.com since 2014, agreed to part ways with the senior living referral service in November 2017 in order to be acquired by Red Ventures for $1.4 billion. The deal was complicated by the fact that two of Red Ventures’ minority investors—General Atlantic and Silver Lake Partners—already owned A Place for Mom, a Seattle-based company that also offers similar services.

Those investment ties contributed to the mandated divestiture of Caring.com, though Red Ventures does not directly provide senior care referral services itself. Divestment details were outlined in a March 7 Federal Trade Commission filing.

“While this is good news for Caring and our future, we also see this as a net positive for the industry as a whole, as the transaction supports competition among referral services and is expected to accelerate our ability to support the needs of more families and elders, including helping to match them to home care agencies in their local areas and provide a range of support service for aging in place,” Caring.com CEO Karen Cassel told Home Health Care News in an email. “Our home care agency network is already large and growing, and with the backing of Caring Holdings, we anticipate both immediate and long-term growth that will be beneficial for our agency partners, the families we both serve, and our organization as well.”

Although Caring.com had been owned by Bankrate, it has largely operated as a separate business with its own management. It generates revenue from referral service fees paid by senior living facilities and other agencies for prospective clients.

Caring Holdings is a newly formed entity that’s owned and controlled by 2050 Glendale Partners, LLC; DHW Caring Partners, LLC; 2717 ING, LP; and Stripes39, LLC. Combined, the team had more than 15 years of online and digital marketing expertise. Past investment from the Caring Holding partners include HigherEducation.com and Soda.com, which operates websites SimpleDollar.com and Reviews.com.

That background made Caring Holdings the “strongest” and “best positioned” buyer to acquire Caring.com, according to the referral service.

“After meeting the Caring.com team and thorough analysis of the industry, we’re excited to accelerate Caring.com’s ability to serve the needs of seniors and their families, as well as Caring’s referral parters,” Jim Rosenthal, senior partner at Caring Holdings, said in a statement. “With our long term investment horizon, we are confident we can build on Caring’s competitive position.”

Despite high hopes, findings from a recent survey suggest relatively few home care providers actually use referral services as their top marketing sources. Only 5.1% cited Caring.com as a top revenue-generating consumer marketing source in 2017, according to the latest Home Care Pulse Home Care Benchmarking Study, which surveyed more than 700 home care providers. Similarly, only 3.6% of providers listed A Place for Mom as a top marketing source.

Written by Robert Holly

The post Caring.com Acquired Following FTC Agreement appeared first on Home Health Care News.

The Sooner State ranked third overall for the average cost of senior care in the list from Caring.com, a web platform that connects consumers with senior housing and care providers. To calculate the affordability score, the researchers used internal Caring.com data as well as the 2017 Cost of Care report from insurer Genworth.

Oklahoma’s median annual cost for an in-home care aide clocked in at about $48,000. That’s slightly less than the national median of $49,188, as per the Genworth data. At $36,390, the annual media cost for assisted living facility care in Oklahoma is $8,000 less than the national median. The numbers are even more striking from nursing home care. In Oklahoma, the annual median cost for a nursing home is $53,655, which is more than $32,000 less than the national median.

However, there’s a trade-off in terms of the accessibility of services in Oklahoma. It ranked No. 24 in the nation in this category, based on the 2017 Long-Term Services & Supports State Scorecard from AARP, The Commonwealth Fund and The SCAN Foundation.

“In a lot of rural areas in the country you’re going to have much cheaper costs, but you’ll probably have to make sacrifices when it comes to accessing medical care and senior facilities,” said Stephan Weller, professor of economics at Colorado State University’s Regional Economic Development Institute, in a Caring.com website post detailing the findings. “Conversely, vibrant and attractive coastal or urban regions are going to be expensive but also brimming with care options. That’s just the nature of the beast.”

Mississippi and Missouri took second and third place. Here’s the complete top 10 list:

On the opposite end of the spectrum, Wyoming, Rhode Island, New Jersey and Hawaii were determined to be the least affordable states for seniors.

Click here to see all 50 states ranked.

Written by Tim Mullaney

The post 10 Most Affordable States for Seniors appeared first on Home Health Care News.

The website ranks states according to various factors, including senior living community reviews, nursing home costs and elderly well-being assessments, according to the site, which differentiates its ranking as one that is based on factors that make a state “a healthy, affordable environment for the elderly.”

Utah not only outranked other states in the overall lineup, it excelled overall in both quality of life and health care, as well as cost. Elderly residents in the state have access to “high-quality care” that is far cheaper compared to the price that their peers pay in other states, according to Caring.com.

In fact, the median annual rate for a one-bedroom unit in an assisted living community in Utah, for example, costs $36,000, compared to a national median annual rate of $43,200, according to Genworth’s 2015 Cost of Care Survey for the state.

Rounding out the top 10 best states to age include Iowa, South Carolina, Washington, Nebraska, Arizona, California, Idaho, Colorado and Oregon.

On the flip side, the state of West Virginia was given the title of “worst” state to age, coming in last in the ranks.

While affordable for the state’s elderly to live in, West Virginia’s older residents reported poor well being in various categories, including “coming in last for physical health, having a sense of purpose and having a decent social life,” according to Caring.com.

Rounding out the bottom of the list in terms of “worst” states to age include Rhode Island, Kentucky, Ohio, Mississippi, New Jersey, Wyoming, North Dakota, New York, Indiana and West Virginia.

Written by Carlo Calma

The post Utah Seniors Reside in Top-Ranked State for Aging appeared first on Home Health Care News.