What Most Home Care Agencies Get Wrong About Scaling

What Most Home Care Agencies Get Wrong About Scaling

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Hello dear listeners, Welcome to CareSmartz360 On Air. I’m Dennis Gill, Senior Sales Consultant at Caresmartz. Scaling a homecare agency sounds exciting until the cracks start to show. Many agencies grow fast but few grow right. So in this episode we are joined by C Kara Fairhurst, Business Owner at Senior Helpers, who brings real world insights from leading a trusted care brand to serving private pay LTCI and VA clients. So she breaks down what most agencies get wrong about scaling and how to build systems, teams and care experiences that actually

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sustain growth without losing what matters most. So welcome to the podcast Kara. >> Hi, thank you for having me. Now we’re really glad you were able to take out the time today for our listeners and I hope this session is a pretty fruitful one for all listeners who are listening to us from all over the world. Okay. So without wasting any time I’ll straight away jump in the first question for you. Uh so when agencies say they want to scale what do you think they actually mean and where do they start getting it

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wrong? >> Right. So in my experience um most agencies thinks growing is just adding more sales and more hours to the books. >> Mh. >> But it’s actually what is important is the real growth is doing it the right way. >> Okay. >> So the caregivers, the system and communication all needs to work together. >> Okay. For example, an agency might add several clients to their books in one week, but if they don’t have the right caregivers and the system in place,

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>> you will see that it will cause last minute scheduling problems. Caregivers are going to get stressed and ultimately that’s going to result in clients having negative experiences. My experience is my slogan will always been happy caregivers, happy team, happy clients. >> Yeah. So correct. >> I think that’s what the biggest issue growing too fast without actually having the system in place. >> Okay, got that. Got your point. And at what point does growth begin to hurt

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more than it helps? And what are the early warning signs agencies that often ignore? >> That’s a great question. growth starts hurting when the quality drops >> and you’ll see open shifts, you’ll see caregiver burnout. You’ll see your family started complaining and early warning signs of growth hurting um your quality of service is constant scheduling issues, >> caregiver turnover, your family’s started to complain and that usually means that your foundation is not

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supporting your growth. Okay. >> And growth without foundation will burn out your team and your business. >> Definitely correct. Correctly said. >> Yeah. >> Foundation is very important in every aspect. Not only I would say in the home care agency even if you’re building something in a building also foundation is the base thing. If that is not correct the building would obviously not be in the right place that it should be. It is and I think it’s more so relevant to what we do because we’re in a people

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business. >> Yeah. >> You know that you have to have the structure. You got to take it take your time, learn it and you know grow in pace. >> Definitely. Definitely. And uh how should agencies rethink their operations before scaling especially around scheduling, caregiver management and care consistency? >> You know the way I do it here we focus on three areas. >> Mhm. the hiring, scheduling and consistency of care. >> Now, hiring is critical like you need to you need to hire the right caregiver

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before you grow. >> Got it? >> No, you grow and then you know, you’re right. You have to get the right people in the right place before you grow. So, you can grow. >> Got it. >> And scheduling. Second part. Of course, scheduling and hiring goes hand in hand. So, the scheduling needs to be efficient. It needs to be proactive, not reactive. >> Like here, we do schedules two weeks out at the minimum. We like consistency. We like the same caregivers so that they

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can build that relationship with their clients. So therefore, we make sure we set this schedule out at least two weeks but more so that we the caregiver knows I have these shifts and the clients knows I have the same caregiver. >> Okay. >> And a consistency of care. All of our care plans are individualized. They are relevant to our clients and they’re updated regularly because that doesn’t only help your clients. That helps your caregivers. Remember, we want to keep our caregivers happy. We want to

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keep them working with us. And if they have the right care plan in hand, then they can deliver that quality care we need for our clients. So, those three areas I highly recommend. That’s my bread and butter. That’s why I focus day in day out here in Senior Helpers. Okay, good to know that. And uh many agencies expand revenue streams like private pay, LTCI, VA while scaling. And what mistakes do they make in managing their peer mix specifically? >> Yes. So, I mean, we love different

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payers, of course, you know, private pay, long-term insurance, VA, and there are other things that you can do, work with the counties, >> but again, if you don’t have your system in place, >> and because every payer is so different, what documentation they ask, the timeline they pay, um, you know, their expectations is very different. And if you take on more than you can handle and you don’t have the system in place, then you’re going to run into billing issues. then it’s going to lead to cash flow. So

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as a business owner we already have lot going on and if you start worrying about your cash flow then that’s going to compromise your quality of care but our only focus should be quality of care our caregivers and then hopefully you know the finance will take care of itself but be slow down get your system in place before you take on another payer because you know every payer has like I said their own expectations timeline and you know so you don’t want to outstretch yourself before you state your system in

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place. So we can say step by step they should move into it not going in all for all the payers in one go that can also >> absolutely I understand I’m a private pay seems pretty straightforward but again there are things check payers a payers the the ones that wants to pay on the day of the the is due and the other ones wants to pay later on. So there’s so much more to it and long-term insurance is the same. You have to have your care logs in place. They have different schedules. So if

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you’re already worrying about cash flow and you’re adding these payers, remember you already paid the caregiver. Now you’re going to sit down and wait for getting paid from these third parties. >> Yeah. >> So my recommendation is before you add in another payer, understand their expectation, understand their timeline of how quickly they pay before you go down that road. So you’re not worried about your cash flow because worrying about cash flow will affect your quality of service.

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>> Definitely it does. Definitely does. >> And as we move into 2026, we’re already into three months into that. What will separate agencies that scale successfully from those that struggle to sustain growth according to you? >> To me, these are what I’m going to focus and I just want to share it with everybody. So my three areas of focus this year is the caregiver retention. >> Mh. >> So that is so important. We’re looking at different ways on how we can improve

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our caregivers’ quality of life. How we can make it different, you know, difference in their lives and how we can make them choose our agency compared to the other agencies. Efficiency in our systems, you know, we’re always looking for ways to improve. We have our regular meetings and we grow. We’re in a growth stage right now, but again, I’m taking my time making sure I don’t grow too fast where I’m stressing my office team and my care team. Third one is the consistent client

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experience. >> You know we technology will help our and it’s helping but the human side of what we do. Building those relationships talking to our clients is one of the biggest differentiators of any agency. You have to care for your clients as much as you care for your caregivers and keep that human touch. Keep that >> relation. Human touch is definitely qu. Linking to that only uh my next question would be for you that AI AI >> AI is becoming a big part of home care now every business not home care every every

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business. So where do you see it helping agencies scale smarter and where should they be cautious about it? >> Yeah you know I AI um I like AI and I know there’s no going away from it. It is what it is. um is there and I think it can definitely help in regards to maybe scheduling maybe some documentations um maybe prediction of um staffing needs um and it can definitely help the operations >> and maybe even help um you know caregivers >> but we are very much a human-driven

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business the relationships that sets us apart so we have to be careful we want to I want to I will use AI and and other agencies should use AI. Why not? It’s there. It’s great. It will help your operation. But you don’t forget this is a very much of a business relationship-driven business. >> You have to keep your relationships strong with your families that you care for as well as your caregivers that delivers that care for you. >> Yeah. >> So, that’s my only take is I’m going to

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I’m going to work, you know, I’m going to work with technology. Of course, we’re open to AI and, you know, help with the day-to-day operations, but yeah, human touch is always going to be there for what we do. We’re in healthcare. You know, it’s about people’s loved ones. >> I know. I know because I’ve been into this industry for 70 years. Human touch and human emotions is a very major part of this industry as you are already aware about that. and AI

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I know it would come up handy again as you were saying ba basically into the day-to-day scheduling it can be or somewhat other things but that’s human touch should not be missed by any of the agencies that are growing or even if they have grown already >> absolutely like we have 24/7 lines here and most people call us they’re seniors you know they’re hard of hearing or they they you know when they say hey I’m Susie and the person answering the phone oh hi Susie how are you how is your cat

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How is your dog? How is your daughter that AI can’t take >> that AI can’t. Yeah, >> that is Yeah. And that will set us apart here too. You know, we don’t use um call centers. We answer our own phones. >> So I feel like that’s one of one of our success here that human touch onetoone communications that we have. >> Perfect. Good to know that. Good to know that. Uh it was great talking to you today hara. I know it was a small session. In future we would love to have

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much longer session and understand more about your working style and that could help our listeners more on that. We would definitely have to again on our session with you. >> No thank you for having me. You know I appreciate the time and I’m happy to share my experiences. Yeah. So >> thank you. Thank you for your time and thank you to all my listeners today. So I’m Dennis Gill signing off today and I’ll be meeting you shortly then. Bye-bye. >> Thank you.