In Conversation with Tom Maxwell to Bring His Insights on Home Care Consulting

Home care consulting is a rewarding but complex field. To thrive, you need a unique blend of skills. A deep understanding of the home care industry, including regulations and reimbursement models, is essential. But that is just the start.

Strong business acumen is equally crucial. It is vital to grasp financial management, marketing strategies, and operational efficiency to help agencies grow. Compliance is another critical area. Keeping up with the ever-changing regulatory landscape is vital to protect agencies from penalties.

Remember, at the heart of home care is client care. So, a client-centric approach is the key. Understand their challenges and provide solutions tailored to their needs.

Finally, continuous learning is non-negotiable. The industry is dynamic, so stay updated on trends and best practices. By combining industry knowledge, being business savvy, having compliance expertise, and a patient-focused mindset, being successful in home care consulting is possible.

To shed some light on the same, we interviewed a home care industry expert to bring his perspective on home care consulting.

Let us now delve into what he has to say about home care consulting:

Question 1: What inspired you to get into home care consulting?

I am a PA by training and spent ten years in the military — the Navy — supporting the Marine Corps worldwide. I was the Chief Operating Officer and Chief Strategy Officer for Homecare Homebase for ten years (from 2005 to 2016).

After we sold that business to Hearst Corporation, I decided that I was going to retire and play golf every day. That lasted only 77 days because all my customers asked me to help them with the software since I was an expert.

That is when I founded Maxwell Healthcare Associates. Jennifer, my wife, is the CEO of Maxwell Healthcare Associates.

Question 2: How to assess clients’ specific needs and tailor home care consulting services to address their unique challenges and goals?

First, listen to what is going on with them in their industry. I am an investor in eight other software and technologies in the home care and hospice space.

I was the second investor in Trella Health. We’re investors in a pharmacy company called ExactCare Pharmacy with the Vistria Group. So the customers call me for their pharmacy needs. Then, I was the founder of Muse Healthcare, which we sold to Medalogix.

And so a lot of our customers come through that. Jennifer and I also invested in Element 5. Then, we invested in Hello Levo, an employee engagement turnover company. We work a lot with them.

So, most of our customers come through these channels where they say, hey, we are struggling in a specific area. We listen to them first and then try to come up with solutions. From thereon, a lot of M&A activity takes place.

Say for example, they call me saying they want to buy an agency and need me to do the diligence. So, we do diligence and soon realize the companies can be merged, but there will be some work there.

In other cases, customers want to sell their agency and call me to get them ready to sell. We see that a lot.

Question 3: Can you elaborate on your experience implementing technology solutions in post-acute care settings and how you would recommend integrating them into the existing workflows?

I have a lot of experience doing this. I am also on the Hospice Dynamix team as we partnered with them. The real challenge is you have all these different technologies out there, and there are all these logins and passwords. And one person has to learn ten different software to use them all. So, there is a need to build software that is intuitive, connected, automated, and does what it is supposed to do. It has to be able to generate ROI but also has to make it easy for you to get that ROI.

Now, you also have to figure out how to connect the technologies. If I write a node, a coordination node in one software, it’s got to flow to the other ones.

If it doesn’t, then we’re not getting data to the person to whom it matters, which is the nurse, the caregiver, the aide, or whosoever is in the home. It’s great that we have all this data in the back office, but if it’s not impacting the person in the home, then it’s of no use.

I’ve spent my whole career connecting different software as a technologist, but also as a healthcare worker. Also, we live in an industry of high caregiver turnover. So, it’s important to make sure the tools are really easy to use and that the right amount of training has been given to each person, so they can effectively use the tool to do their job.

But most of the time, people fail because they haven’t been trained well enough or didn’t spend enough time to train them well enough. So, they don’t understand the why behind what they’re doing.

Question 4: What metrics do you use to track the success of your consulting services?

We run tons of different KPIs. The one that matters the most is the NPS, the Net Promoter Score, which means how happy or likely are you to refer me to somebody.

That is the game-changer for our business, and the other metric that we consider is asking our customers, “Will you recommend us?” and “Will you buy other services from us?”

Ongoing customer success or ongoing customer engagement is a measure that we look at constantly. Our first customer is still our customer today, and they call us for everything they need. So, we want to be your consulting partner or operations partner, not necessarily just a vendor.

Question 5: What advice would you give someone looking to get into home care consulting?

It is harder than I thought it would be, and all I have been able to figure out is to ensure you are hiring the right people with the passion to solve people’s problems. At the end of day, we are a people shop.

We spend a lot of time educating and training our staff. We have a leader in Jay Duty. He has many years of home health experience. He was the Chief Business Development Officer for Encompass Home Health for many years. Scott worked at Homecare Homebase and Enhabit for 15 years. He was the vice president of IT there.

We hire these senior superstars in the industry because we know that they know the industry well and are great leaders.

To be a good consulting company, you need to understand the entirety of the business. And then you must have credibility.

In Conclusion

Tom Maxwell, a seasoned home care consulting veteran, emphasizes the critical role of people in driving successful outcomes. Building a team of passionate experts is the key, as is understanding the industry.

Technology integration, while essential, must be coupled with effective training and a deep understanding of user needs. Success in home care consulting hinges on a client-centric approach, measurable results, and a long-term commitment to building partnerships.

Maxwell’s emphasis on hiring top talent, understanding client needs, and leveraging technology aligns perfectly with the core principles of home care consulting. His insights offer valuable guidance for those aspiring to excel in this field.