Home care is a deeply people-centered industry, shaped by trust, consistency, and the ability to meet people where they are in their care journey. As demand grows and care requirements become more complex, the question of how to maintain quality when scaling has become more important.
Kyana brings her rare, full-spectrum perspective on how care should be navigated across all disciplines. Because her experience spans every level of care, her grounded understanding of both the operational and emotional realities of the care world brings an experienced perspective on the challenges home care agencies face today.
In this conversation, you will learn what those experiences have taught her about caregiving retention, care quality, and the role of evolving technology in the industry. She also shared approaches on building and scaling a home care agency in a way that not only adds value to the care business. But also strengthens relationships without losing sight of what lies at the center of it all – care.
To shed light on this, we interviewed a home care industry expert to share her perspective on why care is the center of a strong home care agency.
Kyana N. Wilkinson is the President and Owner of SYNERGY Home Care of Plainfield. Her career spans home care, nursing, hospice, skilled nursing, long-term care, and clinical leadership.
Her perspective is shaped by both professional and personal experience. Kyana first encountered caregiving while helping care for her father. But later worked as a home care aide during nursing school and went on to build a career across several areas of healthcare before becoming a home care agency owner.
Let’s dive into her perspective and learn what it takes to build a growing home care agency. While taking notes on why the human side of care is still integral to all care operations.
Kyana’s father was diagnosed with ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis) when she was 15 years old. As an all-American high school athlete, Kyana put track, basketball, and tennis aside to care for her father. Kyana learned so much from having home care aides and hospice in the home as her father’s last wishes were granted upon his death.
This experience changed Kyana’s life as she became a home care aide in 2013 during nursing school. Kyana went on to work as an acute care nurse in the ICU, PCU, medical-surgical, and rehabilitation floor inpatient before choosing to work in skilled nursing, long-term care, and hospice.
Since then, Kyana found a passion for being a servant leader and helping nurses, certified nurse aides (CNAs), social workers, and other interdisciplinary staff on home visits and assessments, meeting the needs of many as she managed the McLean County and Peoria County areas as a hospice clinical manager.
Kyana was awarded the Career Service Award from Heartland Community College and the 20 under 40 Leaders of Distinction Award from McLean County Chamber of Commerce in 2023 because of her unwavering leadership and commitment to home care and hospice.
Kyana and her husband Bailey are co-owners of SYNERGY HomeCare because they believe that they bring a unique experience to the home care world, having a registered nurse as co-owner. Kyana’s 13 years of home care experience, along with a hospice background, ensures that caregivers and personal assistants are trained to the top of their license to provide you with the best care possible. Kyana and Bailey are a part of the sandwich generation, juggling two young boys with aging parents; not only do they understand your needs, but they are also living it!
Clinical Excellence, to Kyana, is the ability to provide care to the patients we serve, free from harm and with clinicians who are equipped to handle the complexities that home care can bring or are resilient enough to know what resources they have at their fingertips for help. Running a successful business to Kyana means having staff and clients who are satisfied with the product that we provide.
Kyana is an award-winning leader in healthcare and takes pride in knowing that it’s the little things that provide clinical excellence, such as improved patient outcomes, staff retention, positive client and staff reviews, and that treating staff with dignity and respect goes far, just as treating clients the same. What you pour into your staff, they pour into every client/customer interaction.
The biggest misconception about retaining and empowering caregivers is believing that we are disposable. Something that I hear quite often is how attached our clients get to the caregivers that we pair them with; they are indispensable. You can hire hundreds of caregivers, but no one is going to be like the one you like or fall in love with.
This business is beautiful in this way; it shows you how powerful human connection is and how much we value it as we age, when we realize that time and money don’t mean as much as we thought they did. Kyana empowers her team to recognize that their uniqueness is their superpower and to wield that power to ensure our clients have what they need; we stand out even more when we are aware of our individual strengths.
One change that would have the greatest impact on improving care quality for older adults
would be the ability to meet them where they are and have the resources to do so. As technology continues to improve, older adults sometimes find themselves getting left behind, and that even means answering phone calls because they fear scammers. It has left communication even more strained and difficult to make connections.
Then add chronic conditions, impaired mobility, transportation challenges, and more. There are programs that Kyana is working on to improve communication barriers along with transportation, which Kyana is excited about because it has been sometimes difficult to get resources to the ones who need it most.
AI is great in so many ways; Kyana finds AI to be helpful with repetitive tasks that cause burnout in humans. The human touch can never be replaced, but it can be preserved using AI to assist with hiring and onboarding and client acquisition on the data entry side. Kyana ensures that every call is made with a warm voice on the other line because we all can relate to speaking to someone who can understand us.
Kyana understands the urge to use AI to replace a lot of jobs that humans perform, but then it begs the question of what the goal of the service is: is it to care about who calls or just to increase volume? Either way, caring about the client/customer experience is important to Kyana, and being in the people business means hiring people to care for people.
SYNERGY HomeCare of Plainfield has stood the test of time; the agency has been in operation since 1999 and has been the fastest-growing home care franchise in the nation for 6 years and counting because of its values and the people it selects to run its franchises.
Kyana worked as a home care aide for SYNERGY HomeCare of Central Illinois in 2013 during nursing school and appreciated being valued in this position. SYNERGY values the people they employ, so they value the clients they serve.
Kyana is looking forward to continued growth and sustainability through programs that meet the needs of the people they serve. The franchise provides ongoing support, training, and education to keep up to date with the latest home care trends. The most successful home care agencies pay their team well, train them, and equip them to handle their roles so that the
clients are happy and healthy at home!
Kyana’s experience points to a simple idea: home care can grow, adopt new technology & become more efficient without losing the human connection that makes the industry different.
Her approach to leadership starts with valuing the people who provide care. When caregivers are trained, respected, supported & given the tools to do their jobs well, clients benefit too.
After more than 25 years in operation and six years of being recognized as the fastest-growing home care franchise in the nation, SYNERGY HomeCare’s story also shows that growth does not have to come at the expense of people.
The future of home care is about finding better ways to support caregivers and clients while keeping care personal. AI may take some repetitive work off people’s plates. However, people, empathy, trust & relationships will always remain at the heart of home care.
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