3 Ways to grow your home care agency during challenging times

The last few years have been challenging for the home care industry. First with the pandemic and now the upcoming post-pandemic recession, many home care agencies are looking for ways to remain resilient and successful during the recession. Thankfully, there are still opportunities for home care organizations to grow, even during the recession.  

Here are 3 ways to still grow your home care agency during challenging times.  

1. Expand the service offerings of your agency 

During the pandemic, it unlocked major growth opportunities for home-based care agencies in the form of revenue diversification. The pandemic had shed light on patients and clients requesting more types of care services to be available at home. During this post-pandemic recession, you should consider taking advantage of these new opportunities to expand on the service offerings of your agency. 

“Diversification is always good, you may be investing in two or more markets that have their own volatility, so [operating] across those different payer sources is a good way to balance out a business.” – Adrian Schauer, CEO of AlayaCare.  

If organizations wish to continue to grow during the recession, they will need to think about the service lines that will continue gaining potential. For example, during the pandemic several home care agencies expanded their offerings to do temperature checks, facilitating PPE, and conducting other elements of COVID-19 screenings for local businesses. Post-pandemic, while it is important to identify your specialty areas, that doesn’t preclude you from seeking methods to diversify your revenue.   

In order to diversify more quickly and broadly than your current business model you can look to grow through diversification acquisition, where a company you are acquiring already offers services your agency does not, therefore opening new streams of revenue. 

Where do I start? Try first by asking yourself these key questions: 

• Have you identified your current areas of specialty? 
• Where are natural areas that you could seek to grow? 
• What non-traditional diversification opportunities would support growth? 
• Do you have the resources necessary for diversity? 
• Would a merger or acquisition be an option to help diversify revenue? 

If you’re interested in learning more about revenue diversification and other growth strategies, check out our on-demand webinar partnered with Home Health Care News (HHCN): Webinar.  

2. Training to improve skills and service offerings  

Investing in your staff to improve and enhance their skills supports the expanded services we spoke about above as well. If there are staff accredited to offer new services because of the training they received, it can open new revenue lines.  

There are several training and development resources available that allow home care agencies to provide easy access to certifications for their workforce. For example, there are many online home care training and education companies, such as CareAcademy or Nevvon, that specialize in providing home care agencies with the tools to provide their caregivers with proper training and career development.    

With virtual training, you can  

• Cut training costs,  
• Have caregivers trained faster, 
• Open them up for more opportunities to provide specialized care to clients with complex diseases  

Check out this video on CareAcademy’s integration with AlayaCare home care software to see how you can utilize online training for your caregivers: 

3. Utilize home care software technology 

Investing in the right technology or upgrading to more robust technology can not only improve workflows and efficiencies quickly, but it can also save money in the long term. There are many ways the right home care software solution can help you improve efficiency in your organization providing you with space and an opportunity to grow during the recession. 

Electronic billing  

Manual billing and invoicing are tedious tasks that take up a great amount of time. Using home care software makes billing practices far more efficient by cutting down on manual processes. See how Lake Ridge Community Support Services eliminated manual paper processes using a one-platform home care software technology in the video below: 

Mobile supported software systems 

Field workers are generally always pressed for time. They need fast and easy access to client information in order to complete visits efficiently and effectively. Mobile solutions give care workers all the necessary information they need to efficiently complete a visit at the point of care, while also eliminating paper time sheets and increasing safety. This can also reduce your spending and save employees valuable time to focus on providing quality services for your clients.  

We live in an age where everyone carries a mobile device on their person, so why not use its potential to make your caregiver’s job easier? Watch how Avivo: Live Life’s staff value mobile technology to improve their day-to-day operations: 

Schedule and route optimization tools 

The home care industry presents a particularly challenging optimization problem given some visits are time specific, while other clients require home care workers with specific skills and training. Furthermore, the government (payers/insurance) asks home care companies to schedule services with a high degree of continuity (have the same home care worker deliver services to the same clients).   

New advancements such as optimization and predictive analytics allow agencies to anticipate future events and enable invaluable decision support.  Finding a home care software that computes and factors these important employee variables for shift/visit placement, ensuring that you’re coordinating the most informed and efficient visits possible: 

• Employee skills 
• Licenses 
• Certifications  
• Pre-existing continuity of care data 
• Capacity and labor constraints 
• Employee home proximity, travel distance, and even mode of transportation 

See how First Day Homecare improved efficiencies with a home care software that provides optimal processes for scheduling and finding nurses: 

Our current economic climate can leave home care agencies facing uncertainties and challenges, but there are still opportunities to grow and be successful and resilient in the home care industry.  

Curious about other ways to grow your business in the home care industry? Check out our guide on our top 10 growth strategies for home health care providers. 

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