The company works with the likes of BrightStar Care, Home Instead, Visiting Angels, Griswold and Always Best Care, according to its website. It leverages audio technology to detect abnormal events in a senior’s home.

In 2022, the company raised $14 million in Series A funding. The most recent funding round was led by Zeev Ventures and Insight Partners. Existing investors Entrée Capital, Flint Capital, Jibe Ventures and Secret Chord Ventures also participated in the round.

“When our customers say that Sensi is more than just technology, that there is a heart behind it, we know we are on the right path,” Sensi.AI Co-Founder and CEO Romi Gubes said in a statement. “We are dedicated to ensuring every senior can age with dignity in the comfort of their own home, the place they love most. This funding from renowned investors will help us continue to innovate our product and scale our go-to-market strategy, bringing our vision to life.”

The dementia care expert Teepa Snow is an advisory board member at Sensi.AI. Her Positive Approach to Care program previously partnered with the company.

“We’re very excited because Sensi is this sort of audio awareness system. It has that level of awareness — what’s happening in that environment 24/7. It’s not really recording every second, it’s just noticing things,” Snow previously told Home Health Care News. “When it picks up on something that’s care related, or distress related or good care related, or an anomaly, then it records about 10 seconds of an interaction right around that. Then it creates a signal to the dashboard that says this has happened, and it could be an indication that something good or not good is going on.”

Sensi.AI is based in Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel, and also has offices in the United States. In addition to the aforementioned providers, it supports “over 80% of the largest home care providers in the U.S.,” according to the company.

Its technology extracts hundreds of insights on a senior’s well being, and that information is sent back to a clinical care team that includes social workers, occupational therapists, geriatric clinicians and nurses.

With staffing shortages persisting in home care, providers have recognized emerging technologies as one way to augment care staff in the home.

“When I came across Sensi, I immediately recognized the magnitude of the problem they were solving. It requires more than simply applying AI technology,” Oren Zeev, founding partner at Zeev Ventures, said in a statement. “I am confident that Sensi’s advanced audio AI technology along with their talented team will spearhead a transformation in the care ecosystem unlike anything seen before.”

Home-based care providers and AI

For years, home-based care provider leaders expressed their belief that AI solutions could ease pain points in the space.

Both home health and home care providers saw the opportunities to supplement staffing, or even to recruit or retain better. Home health providers also saw the opportunity to ease the documentation burden on clinicians, increasing efficiency, operations and retention rates.

Now, those solutions are actually beginning to be realized. Home care providers are partnering with platforms like Sensi.AI, and they’re also developing their own AI solutions.

Take the Phoenix-based Devoted Guardians as an example. It has completely transformed its recruiting process through AI, ensuring applicants are always receiving timely responses from the company.

“The minute someone is engaging us on any of these platforms, we have an AI system that’s going to engage back — answer any question that they might have and really drive them to scheduling interviews — to really cut down on those ghosting problems that we’ve been all seeing over the last couple of years,” Devoted Guardians CEO Aaron Sinykin told HHCN earlier this year.

Home health providers have also come up with AI documentation tools like Apricot, which was launched by the home health CEO Trent Smith. Apricot can reduce documentation time for home health nurses by “up to 85%,” according to Smith.

“I just saw a solution to some problems that we had,” Smith said. “And I was fortunate to know people that could help me build it. We found a nail and then went and built a hammer for it, as opposed to building a hammer and looking for a nail.”

While many providers are now applying AI, they’re using it in a variety of ways. The support for Sensi.AI is just another example of the possibilities for the emerging technologies in both home care and home health care.

The post Home Care Technology Platform Sensi.AI Raises $31 Million In Series B appeared first on Home Health Care News.

You can watch the Staffing Summit the below story is based on here.

While recruitment and retention issues continue to plague the home-based care industry, provider leaders are challenging themselves to come up with creative mitigation strategies.

One of the key solutions that has arised is the utilization of artificial intelligence (AI).

“One of the biggest changes that we’ve made the last couple of years is diving into AI, and I’ve really immersed myself in trying to figure out how we can apply AI to all the aspects of what we’re currently doing,” Aaron Sinykin, founder and CEO of Devoted Guardians, said during Home Health Care News’ virtual Staffing Summit last week. “The last couple years, we’ve been starting to move into that sector along with the robotic process automation options there.”

The Phoenix-based at-home care company implemented an AI employee recruiting system that allowed the organization to engage with potential applicants 24/7, for instance.

“The minute someone is engaging us on any of these platforms, we have an AI system that’s going to engage back — answer any question that they might have and really drive them to scheduling interviews — to really cut down on those ghosting problems that we’ve been all seeing over the last couple of years,” Sinykin said.

Sinykin has found the 24/7 aspect of Devoted Guardians’ AI employee recruiting system crucial, as more applicants are applying during nights and weekends.

“In the past, when they would apply for a job at night, or on the weekend, they’d wait for a response on Monday morning,” he said. “It was more of an expectation that, ‘I know, I’m applying after hours. I know that most people aren’t working, and I’ll wait for a typical response.’ I think that really changed during COVID. We found that people just weren’t that patient anymore. They wanted a result when they wanted it, and I think that is just an overall reflection of where everything is now. We have to be able to meet everyone with overall needs and wants.”

In addition to Devoted Guardians’ use of AI tools, the company has also implemented an employee rewards system.

The system works by pulling data points from the company’s EMR software. These data points included things like points for hours worked, perfect EVV use and strong reporting of clients’ change in condition.

These data points are assigned a star rating. The star rating then corresponds to a financial package on the company rewards site.

“The feedback coming in was just really eye opening — they’ve been really starved for this,” Sinykin said. “Once they were seeing it, they were really getting excited and motivated.”

Devoted Guardians saw its retention rate move from the 40s into the 70s since launching the rewards program. Sinykin noted that the cost of turnover was somewhere between $2,000 and $3,000, so the program is also a cost curbing measure for the company.

Ultimately, he believes that home-based care providers are operating in a slightly more positive home care labor environment.

“On the caregiver side, we’re having a lot more success,” Sinykin said. “I’d say our low point was in 2022, where it was just such a struggle to find anyone who was really willing to work. We’re hiring about 40 caregivers monthly, so we’re really starting to see a positive change there.”

However, Devoted Guardians isn’t seeing the same improved labor market on the home health side.

“We’re having a very hard time finding clinical staff, so I think we’re seeing a pretty big difference between the two different sectors,” Sinykin said. “I think a lot of the caregivers got a little burned out through COVID, and took a break for a little bit, and we’re seeing some of them come back into the market. We saw a lot of clinical staff just leave the overall industry. It’s left a huge hole in the overall market, [in the ability] to hire clinical staff.”

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Amid a persistently challenging labor market, home care companies are still constantly working on configuring the best possible employee benefits package for caregivers. Companies like Right at Home San Gabriel Valley, Devoted Guardians and Family Tree Private Care have emerged as standouts when it comes to crafting impressive benefits packages.

At Devoted Guardians — a home-based care company that operates in the Phoenix metropolitan area — the caregiver benefits package includes health care insurance to those who qualify as full-time employees, 401(k) and bonuses based on reaching certain milestones.

The company also offers dental, vision, disability insurance, life insurance, accident insurance and cancer insurance.

Plus, Devoted Guardians implemented a star system for its caregivers. The company’s star system has categories of points that caregivers are able to accumulate weekly. For example, caregivers can earn points for how many hours they’re working weekly or how well they’re adhering to a plan of care.

“We have an automated AI recognition system, which is combing through our EHR software and pulling all of these data points out and assigning a value, and then communicating that out to our caregivers weekly,” Aaron Sinykin, founder and CEO of Devoted Guardians, told Home Health Care News. “Those points roll up to a star rating, and that has a financial benefit.”

Devoted Guardians’ star system came as a result of trying to find a benefit that would appeal to a wide-ranging demographic of caregivers.

“When I started to develop our star system, I was really trying to figure out what would be the one or two benefits that everyone would love, and that would motivate them,” Sinykin said. “I just could not figure it out. I have such a spectrum in our workforce of ages and demographics, and there’s no singular benefit that’s going to mean something to everyone. It really hit home with me that I needed a platform where I can give a monetary benefit and allow our employees to apply that to whatever benefit was meaningful to them.”

Right at Home San Gabriel Valley has a caregiver benefits package that includes 40 hours of sick pay, performance-based recognition bonuses, health care insurance, dental, vision and chiropractic care.

The company also offers retirement benefits, paid training, flexible work schedules and much more.

Right at Home San Gabriel Valley Owner Renee Concialdi believes that flexibility around work schedules, in particular, is an offering that caregivers appreciate.

A recent Care.com study found that one in five employees left their companies because their employer didn’t offer family care benefits. A lack of child care benefits was one of the top reasons people sought employment elsewhere.

“When we hire someone and they tell us, ‘I can only work these hours because I have child care needs,’ we hire them and customize their hours based on their family situation,” Concialdi told HHCN.

Right at Home San Gabriel Valley also helps caregivers navigate state child care benefits, according to Concialdi.

“We have an HR team who are experts in helping them find the state benefits that will be geared toward what they need, whether it’s transportation, childcare, or maybe a Medi-Cal supplement or policy for their health care,” she said. “We’ve even helped when they need to fill out state forms. When they have needs that don’t even fit our employment, they can come in and we will try to help guide them through the various systems.”

Family Tree Private Care — a company that offers concierge-level caregiving, private nursing and care management services in Texas and Colorado — offers a minimum essential coverage health care plan, an employee assistance program, dental, life insurance coverage and a 401(k).

The company’s employee assistance program offers access to child and elder care services.

In addition to family care services, the employee assistance program includes counseling and legal will drafting services.

Still, formulating a comprehensive benefits package doesn’t always translate into immediate results. Family Tree Private Care’s employee assistance program wasn’t immediately popular with caregivers, despite its many offerings, according to Ana M. Diaz​​​​, vice president of human resources at Family Tree Private Care.

“I thought that after COVID, and the industry we’re in, the benefit would be utilized, especially since it was employer paid and free,” she told HHCN. “The biggest lesson was that care providers didn’t really understand what the program was, and so they didn’t see it as a benefit.”

One of the ways that Family Tree Private Care got caregivers to see the advantages of the program was by stepping in and finding multiple ways to apply services.

“If a care provider has been with a client for three or four years and that client passes away, let’s make sure we set them up with the employee assistance program and get them grief counseling,” Diaz said. “Nobody thinks of it that way. They thought of it more along the lines of, ‘If my father passes away, I’ll use it for grief counseling.’ We just needed to go beyond what they realized the program could be used for.”

Managing logistics

Aside from the possibility that caregivers might not immediately take advantage of a benefit, offering a great benefits package isn’t always easy for small businesses.

“We’re still a small business, and we don’t command the heavy discounts that the large corporations have, so we don’t get the best pricing and that’s really sad,” Concialdi said. “I know our franchisors are working on this for us, but we have to really work hard and we use our internal system network of other owners in our local area to bounce off each other.”

Despite these challenges, home care companies are often seeing positive returns for having strong benefits packages in place.

For instance, Right at Home San Gabriel Valley turnover rate is at just 48%, well below the industry average. .

Devoted Guardians has also seen a number of gains since enhancing its benefits package.

“We were able to land in the top one 100 category for Home Care Pulse, driven highly by our caregiver scores,” Sinykin said. “We’re seeing our annual retention improved from the lowest point in the 30s and 40s into the 60s and 70s now. We’re feeling it just in the overall growth of our agency, we’re seeing double-digit growth year-over-year.”

What’s more, Family Tree Private Care has been able to gauge how good its employee benefits are compared to other companies.

“We acquire a lot of home care agencies, and every time we compare benefits to other home care companies, ours are roughly 20% to 30% cheaper, with better deductibles and network providers and coverage,” Diaz said. “When we acquire companies, it’s usually always a benefit for the employees, because they end up saving money.”

The post Home Care Providers’ Creative Benefit Packages Are Paying Off appeared first on Home Health Care News.