September 19, 2012
Issue No. 4
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Greetings!

... to Caregiver Quality Today!, the electronic newsletter for recruiting, selecting and retaining in-home care staff for home health, hospice, and private duty home care.  If you want to grow your business, serve more clients, and make more money, this is the newsletter for you.  

Please enjoy this newsletter, and join our interactive community.

 

Best regards,

Diane West
Program Manager
Caregiver Quality Assurance
Leading Home Care ... a Tweed Jeffries company

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Home Care Aide Shortage Coming Back

 

 
A recent article from the Associated Press and reported on Minnesota Public Radio describes the coming crisis in finding and keeping enough caregivers to meet the home care needs of aging baby boomers.

"Demand for home health care workers is soaring as baby boomers -- the 78 million Americans born between 1946 and 1964 -- get older and states try to save money by moving people out of more costly nursing homes. But filling more than 1 million new home care positions over the next decade will be a challenge.

The U.S. Labor Department projects that home health and personal care aides will be among the fastest-growing jobs over the next decade, adding 1.3 million positions and increasing at a rate higher than any other occupation. If those jobs can't be filled, many older Americans are likely to face living with relatives or in nursing homes, which will only cost families and taxpayers more money.  

Nearly half of all home care workers live at or below the poverty level, and many receive government benefits such as food stamps, unions and advocacy groups say. The median pay a year ago was $9.70 per hour -- 4 cents less than fast-food workers and short-order cooks, according to the most recent statistics from the Labor Department." 
 
By Stephen Tweed, CSP

How do you find terrific sales representatives in home health care and hospice who will stay with you?  How do you select the very best nurses for your home health agency?  What are the core competencies of a highly effective scheduling coordinator?

These are some of the questions we've been asked frequently over the past couple of years by owners and CEOs of home health and hospice companies.  To address these questions, we have been working to expand the number of jobs that have been benchmarked for the Caregiver Quality Assurance (TM) program. CQA Seal

In 2006, we recognized that one of the biggest barriers to growing private duty home care was the ability of owners to find and keep high quality caregivers.  The supply of people who were willing to work as caregivers was very thin, and the turnover in the industry was horrific.  We began to explore the best practices for recruiting caregivers, and through industry surveys of the readers of Private Duty Today, we gathered lots of great information.  However, we quickly realized that the issue is not recruiting, it's selection and retention.  If you have a process to select only the very best caregivers, and you have in place a strategy to retain them, then you don't need to spend as much time and money recruiting replacements when they left.


Lined In 3D logoOne of the benefits of belonging to the Caregiver Quality Assurance program is the opportunity to interact with other members through the CQA discussion group on LinkedIn.  This is a closed group, and limited only to memers of the CQA program.

The hottest topics of discussion in the group recently have been:
  • Tips on navigating the CQA dashboard
  • What are some sure fire ways to say "no thanks" to applicants
  • CQA Members get a discount on Liability Insurance
  • Is anyone tracking benchmark data for assessment results related to caregiver performance
  • Using the pre-employment assessment to match caregivers to clients.
  • How has using the assessments impacted your company?
  • Exit interviews - are they part of the process?

If you would like to be part of an interactive group discussing tools, tips, and techniques to recruit, select, hire, train and retain the highest quality caregivers, you'll want to become a member of Caregiver Quality Assurance

 

Caregiver Quality Assurance is a division of Leading Home Care ... a Tweed Jeffries company.  Members of the CQA program use the online assessment process to hire and retain high quality caregivers.  They then use the CQA Seal and the elements of the program to create competitive advantage in the marketplace.

If you want to have a business built on caregiver quality, and the ability to create competitive advantage in your local marketplace based on caregiver quality, then you'll want to become a member of Caregiver Quality Assurance.
In This Issue
Home Care Aide Shortage Coming Back
Caregiver Quality Assurance Expands to Home Health and Hospice
CQA Members Use LinkedIn Discussion Group
Upcoming Events:

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September Webinar:
 
"Serving More Clients:
Strategies and insights to grow private pay, non-medical home care during turbulent times"

With Stephen Tweed

September 27, 2012
4:00 pm - 5:00 pm

In these times of turbulent change in home care, the strongest, fastest growing companies will survive.  In this high impact, interactive workshop, Stephen Tweed will share with you the latest insights from the research conducted by Leading Home Care.  Then he will guide you in developing a highly effective sales, marketing, and public relations strategy to get more referrals, convert more admissions, and serve more patients.

 

In this interactive learning process, you will experience a proven process for communicating with your customers and potential customers. Whether it's persuading a discharge planner to refer clients to your company, creating a direct mail advertising campaign, or making an appearance on a local TV talk show, you'll find these skills invaluable to your success.
 

Read more and register today!

 
 
Get the
Best:
9 Steps to Hiring High Quality Caregivers

What do you get when you combine the latest behavior and attitude assessment technology with more than 30 years of first hand experience? You get 9 steps that will help you create a private duty caregiver recruitment, selection and retention system that will take your company, and your bank account, to the next level.

This 82 page e-book contains everything you'll need in a simple step-by-step format. Not only will you learn the 9-step process for selecting quality caregivers, but you'll also have all of the forms you'll need to get started. Finally you'll have a primer on the legal issues you'll face when using pre-employment assessments and behavioral interviewing techniques.

Order Your Copy Today!