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Starting a home care agency can seem exciting, especially when you know that you’re the boss of your own who dreams of helping the elderly with quality care.

While running a home care business has its perks, it comes with new responsibilities and many questions. What if your agency grows slower than you like? What if the competitors are more fierce than you anticipate?

Here are five ideas to help you retain and attract new clients:

• Build a Strong Presence in your Community:

  Home care agencies need to make a mark in the community. The most straightforward way is participating in community events. You may clean a park, run for cancer, or have a booth to talk to potential clients.

  By getting involved, you, as a responsible home care agency, show that you care about the community and the people involved. To get started, look for opportunities to get going with your agency’s growth.

• Set Clear Goals and Assign Plan Actions:

  Setting clear goals (short-term or long-term) can grow your home care agency. These can include recruiting skilled caregivers, finding new clients, and forming long-lasting relationships.

  Before starting your approach, write, define and develop S.M.A.R.T. goals that represent Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-oriented goals.

  By laying S.M.A.R.T. goals, caregivers get an objective measure of when they’re expected to complete their tasks. Agencies also benefit from S.M.A.R.T. plans as they help clients make informed decisions about care goals.

  Action plans are necessary to abide by discipline. Items not assigned are often missed, leading to gaps in care.
  

• Use Technology to your Advantage:

  The home care industry is poised for growth and provides many services to meet older adults’ needs.

  In this changing atmosphere, demands and growth potentials arise. Can you scale your agency to grow in this industry while providing quality care? The answer, time and again, lies in shifting toward the right technology.

  The first step for a small home care agency to scale is innovation and efficiency. Some aspects that help a home care agency grow are:

  1. Scheduling:

  Scheduling is an area for tremendous agency growth. An all-in-one home care software can help an agency deliver better care using some existing scheduling resources.

  Schedulers can expand the number of clients and caregivers they manage weekly with well-managed software. Tech optimizes schedules and routes for caregivers, delivering huge efficiencies in travel gaps.

  2. Administration:

  For an agency to pave the path to success, the back-end operations must be efficient.

  Manual processes like entering data, completing timesheets, processing referrals, reporting compliances, and outdated software consume a lot of time, leaving little for serving new clients.

  Home care agencies must use software suites explicitly designed to meet clients’ needs and streamline administrative tasks efficiently. An all-in-one home care software, automates tedious workflows, methodologies, and approvals, leaving more focus on operation optimizations.

  3. Electronic Visit Verification:

  Electronic Visit Verification can be a hurdle to efficiency because of the strict federal and state mandates. With the right software, home care agencies can easily weave Electronic Visit Verification into their administrative processes.

  GPS-enabled EVV home care software provides access to real-time information and data entry at the point of care, ensuring complete accuracy.

  4. Human Resources:

  Efficient human resource practices help scale operations. Home care agencies must match suitable applicants with in-demand positions. While hiring and retaining staff can be highly challenging, letting modernized software do major work is the key.

  It is common for H.R. staff to find it difficult to stay on top of skills, training, or licensing. But, with a software solution, tracking these core competencies can be managed more easily.

  Investing in the right technology can be the first step toward growing a home care business.

• Emphasize More on Recruitment Process:

  Since the caregiver turnover rate is at an all-time high, retaining existing caregivers is as important as finding and hiring new ones. Promoting a vibrant company culture, providing meaningful incentives, fostering leadership skills, and employing new technology can make caregivers feel valued, preventing caregiver churn.

  Consider developing a reward program for your existing employees who can help you find and hire qualified caregivers.

  Clearly understanding the pipeline and client needs can help with effective recruiting. Individual recruitment is ideal if your clients need specialized care services. So, focus on group interviews, employee referrals, and orientations to gain skilled caregivers.

• Improve Constantly:

  Looking closely at your strengths and weaknesses can make your home care business stand out from the crowd. Recognize the aspects that make your agency stand out from the competition and improve constantly. Find out where the competition is lacking and make those your strengths.

  Strong marketing, customer satisfaction, incentives, and giveaways can grow your business more successfully, unlocking new benchmarks.

Final Thoughts

Growing your home care business can be significantly challenging, especially when you’re not moving in the right direction. Start by recognizing what’s sabotaging your way forward, and then implement these steps, one at a time. Believe when experts at Caresmartz say that these can make your business pick up and gain a competitive edge over the others.

Start by showing your potential clients your business purpose, mission & vision so they can understand what you strive for. Remember, growing your home care agency is easier than it seems. All you need to know are some growth strategies to get going!

See how our home care software can expand your business to heights of success!