Home Care Heroes and Day Service Stars

Too many people think of caregiving as the bottom rung of the ladder. Kirstin White calls it the foundation of the entire industry, and her career proves the point.

In this episode, host Ken Accardi talks with Kirstin, who went from caregiver to scheduler and operations manager at a home care agency. She then joined Ankota, where she worked in customer support, account management, and sales, and she is now Chief Revenue Officer. Kirstin talks about the client who shaped how she sees caregiving, the skills that got her noticed, and what she did as a manager to keep new caregivers from quitting after their first shift.

She also speaks directly to caregivers who feel stuck. She covers what to show your agency if you want to move up, and she invites you to reach out to her.

Key Topics Covered:

• Evelyn, Her First Hospice Patient: Three and a half months of 24-hour care, the life lessons Evelyn passed on (never wear flip-flops, and leave a kitchen light on for the kids), and why Kirstin still brings flowers to her grave on her birthday.
• The Reality of the Job: Covering short-notice overnight call-offs an hour from home, napping at an interstate exit, and then working a full day. Kirstin explains why a manager who appreciates caregivers is what keeps them going the extra mile.
• The Foundation, Not the Bottom Rung: The skills that get a caregiver promoted, including communication, time management, problem solving, crisis management, making decisions under pressure, working independently, and understanding client and family needs.
• Document Like You'll Be in Court: Why thorough documentation matters for the client, the family, and your own career.
• Building Rapport in a Stranger's Home: Observe first, respect their space, don't take the hard days personally, and start by asking how their day was.
• From Caregiver to Scheduler: How knowing caregivers' pain points made it easier to schedule 56 full-time caregivers, including keeping their kids' birthdays off the schedule.
• Getting New Caregivers Through the First Weeks: Attending every new caregiver's first client visit, weekly LPN check-ins for the first three weeks, quarterly in-services with awards, app training, and holiday parties.
• Bringing Agency Experience to Software Support: Talking with more than a hundred agency admins, de-escalating frustrated callers, and knowing billing, authorizations, and EVV from the inside.
• Proactive Outreach: Why Kirstin started calling customers before they called in.
• The Power of One Phone Call: A quiet customer who was three invoices behind turned out to have a husband in the hospital. One friendly call led to a payment plan, and the balance was paid off in two months.
• Missouri EVV: What changed on April 1 when visits that Sandata had not approved stopped getting paid, and how agencies got caught up.

Links & Resources:

• Email Kirstin: [email protected]. She welcomes notes from caregivers, schedulers, and field supervisors who want to grow their careers.
• Connect with Kirstin on LinkedIn (search "Kirstin White Ankota")
• Listen to back episodes at 4homecareheroes.com

Home Care Heroes and Day Service Stars is produced and sponsored by Ankota - If you provide services that enable older or disabled people to continue living at home, Ankota can provide you the software to successfully run your agency. Visit us at https://www.ankota.com

Everyone in home care fights over the same five referral sources. Gabrielle Pumpian spent 20 years in San Diego private-pay home care learning where the other 15 are. 

Host: Kenneth Accardi (Ankota) Guest: Gabrielle Pumpian, Founder of Trail Angel Partners 

Episode Summary: 

If your agency keeps showing up as one of five vendors waiting outside the same hospital room, the problem probably is not your pitch. It is your account list. 

In this episode, host Ken Accardi talks with Gabrielle Pumpian, a 20-year home care sales and business development veteran who now coaches private-pay agencies through her consultancy, Trail Angel Partners. Gabrielle makes the case that "marketer" is the wrong word for the job, that dropping off brochures is not business development, and that a new rep realistically needs 12 to 18 months to build the relationships that sustainably feed an agency. 

She also gets very practical. She walks through her top-20 account strategy, where only five slots go to hospitals, SNFs, home health, and hospice. She shows how to map a single ideal client's ecosystem to find the other 15. And she explains why her old company tracked referrals sent OUT as a weekly team metric. 

Key Topics Covered:

• Marketer vs. Business Developer: Why the term "marketer" undersells the role, and why the job is community leadership, not dropping off brochures and doughnuts.
• The 12 to 18 Month Ramp: Home care is a high-trust, high-dollar, deeply personal purchase. Gabrielle explains why the ramp is that long, and what a rep should do in the first weeks: sit with the staffing manager, the care coordinator, and the recruiter, and learn every teammate's "why" before going into the field.
• Sell Your People, Not Your Features: What differentiated her agency in front of families was never the feature list. It was being able to talk in detail about the team behind the care.
• The Top-20 Account Plan: Only five slots for hospitals, SNFs, home health, and hospice. The other fifteen go where your competitors are not standing.
• Working the Client Ecosystem: A step-by-step walkthrough of taking one Grade-A client and reverse-engineering five or six new referral channels from the professionals already supporting him.
• The Aging Life Care Manager Playbook: Her number one referral source, and the collaboration cadence behind it, including paying care managers to come in and run case reviews with her internal team.
• Show Up Where the People Are: Provisors, Aging Life Care Association chapters, and estate planning councils. Plus the simple observation that attorneys and financial advisors eat lunch, and home care people eat in the car.
• Referrals OUT as a Weekly KPI: Why her team held itself accountable for referrals given away, and how saying no to a bad-fit client protects the business from churn.
• Power Partners: Building two trusted options in every category your families need, including two other home care agencies you would send your own mother to.
• Leading vs. Lagging Indicators: Thirty meetings a week is a checkbox. What was the pain point? What did you offer to solve? That is the metric that predicts revenue.
• The Trail Angel Story: The 2,600-mile Pacific Crest Trail hike behind the name, and why Gabrielle sees her role as supporting the hike rather than hiking it for you.

Links & Resources:
 

• Connect with Gabrielle on LinkedIn (search "Gabrielle Pumpian") and follow the Trail Angel Partners page
• Email Gabrielle: [email protected]
• Aging Life Care Association - find your regional chapter
• Provisors - the national professional networking organization Gabrielle credits with opening the legal and financial world to her

Home Care Heroes and Day Service Stars is produced and sponsored by Ankota - If you provide services that enable older or disabled people to continue living at home, Ankota can provide you the software to successfully run your agency. Visit us at https://www.ankota.com

Host: Kenneth Accardi (Ankota)

Guest: Lance A. Slatton, Senior Case Manager at Enriched Life Home Care Services & Host of All Home Care Matters

Episode Summary:

When a family reaches out to a home care agency, it is rarely a planned corporate transaction—it is almost always an emotionally charged crisis. What do agencies completely miss during that vital first phone call?

In this episode, host Ken Accardi sits down with Lance A. Slatton, a renowned family caregiving influencer, author, and host of the massive web show All Home Care Matters. Lance shares his perspective as both a senior case manager for Michigan's top-ranked home care agency and a former long-term family caregiver for his own father. Together, Ken and Lance tear down the wall between agency operations and the true emotional, physical, and financial reality that family caregivers face daily.

They dive deep into why intensive intake processes save cases, the severe risks of hiring un-vetted "under-the-table" care in non-licensed states, and a brilliant operational strategy involving employee "Appreciation Sheets" that has kept Lance's team ranked number one in Michigan for over five years.

Key Topics Covered:

• The Crisis Call: Why extensive, thorough history-gathering during intake protects the family and prevents scheduling disasters (and why automated placement sites fail). 
• The Danger of Non-Licensed States: Navigating home care in states like Michigan with zero government oversight, and how to protect families from liability and worker injury lawsuits. 
• Walking a Mile as a Caregiver: Lance shares his personal story of pausing medical school to care for his father, revealing why most agency owners don't truly understand the cognitive load families carry. 
• Hiring for Heart and Soul: Why professional certifications are teachable, but real empathy isn't—and how to evaluate lived experience over letters behind a name. 
• The "Cheat Code" Pitfall: Why building massive candidate pools without active shifts ruins caregiver trust, and how consistent matching drives continuity of care. 
• The 20-Item Appreciation Sheet: A highly recommended operational tip for surprise-gifting your field staff with the exact items, foods, and hobbies they love. 

Links & Resources:

• Explore Lance’s media shows and resources: All Home Care Matters
• Dementia-specific literary resource platform: AlzAutors (Note: Mentioned phonetically as allsauthors.com) 
• Read Lance’s latest articles and insights: Lance Slatton Official Site

Home Care Heroes and Day Service Stars is produced and sponsored by Ankota - If you provide services that enable older or disabled people to continue living at home , Ankota can provide you the software to successfully run your agency. Visit us at https://www.ankota.

Stephen Tweed has spent 40 years as a business strategist in healthcare at home and founded the Home Care CEO Forum in 2013. He's not retiring - he's rewiring. And his latest deep dive is into how artificial intelligence will transform the home care industry.

In this episode, Stephen lays out a framework drawn from Sangeet Paul Chaudhary's book Reshuffle that breaks AI's impact on home care into three distinct levels: individual tasks, organizational systems, and the competitive ecosystem. It's a practical way to think about where your agency is today and where the real opportunities are heading.

At the task level, the big wins are in sales and marketing, caregiver recruiting, and scheduling. Stephen shares a striking statistic from a University of Pittsburgh Medical Center symposium - only 34% of physician prescribing decisions are based on actual medical knowledge. The parallel to home care is real: how much of what schedulers and recruiters do is based on solid data versus intuition and habit? AI closes that gap by analyzing information faster than any human can wade through it.

At the systems level, Stephen walks through his five phases of flow - attraction, conversion, staffing, caregiving, and collection - and the 12 operational systems that high-performing agencies need to have in place. He explains how AI can continuously improve those systems, using a sales example where analyzing referral data reveals that trusted advisors like bank trust officers, geriatric care managers, and estate attorneys consistently deliver clients with the highest hours per week and longest length of stay. That's the kind of insight that should be driving where your sales reps spend their time.

The conversation also covers client-caregiver matching, Stephen's "rule of threes" for caregiver types (full-time professional, halftime professional, and part-time intermittent), and the emerging world of agentic AI - where software doesn't just analyze but takes action, like reaching out to caregivers to fill open shifts.

Ken and Stephen also discuss the critical importance of respecting client privacy as AI technology enters the home - a lesson Stephen learned from his own grandmother 25 years ago in an assisted living facility: "Don't shout, I'm not deaf. Respect my privacy. This is my home."

Guest Info: Stephen Tweed - Leading Home Care, a Tweed Jeffries company Website: leadinghomecare.com Email: [email protected] Newsletter: Stephen Tweed's Thursday Thoughts (subscribe at leadinghomecare.com) LinkedIn: Stephen Tweed

Home Care Heroes and Day Service Stars is produced and sponsored by Ankota - If you provide services that enable older or disabled people to continue living at home , Ankota can provide you the software to successfully run your agency. Visit us at https://www.ankota.

Running a home care agency shouldn’t mean your agency runs you. In this episode, home care consultant and former agency owner Becky Reel shares how leaders can build an agency rooted in their values, with clear boundaries, a healthier culture, and clients and caregivers who actually fit. Becky breaks down why most owners get into home care in the first place, how things drift off-course, and the practical moves that bring you back to a business that supports your life instead of consuming it.

What you’ll learn

• The 4 core motivations that bring people into home care (and why naming yours matters)
• How to stop letting clients and caregivers set your rules, rates, and policies
• The 80/20 reality: identifying the small set of clients or caregivers creating most of your headaches
• Why “culture” isn’t parties and posters, it’s what caregivers say when you’re not in the room
• How to reduce turnover by noticing early warning signs (tone shifts, call-offs, over-documenting, fading enthusiasm)
• How to scale culture as you grow by hiring on heart and values, not just industry experience
• Why narrowing your service area can sometimes help you grow faster

A story you won’t forget
Becky tells the powerful story of a hospice case where her team did the right thing even when it meant walking away from revenue, a decision that later generated significant growth through trust, reputation, and one unforgettable review. The lesson: revenue matters, but it can’t be your only metric.

Episode highlights

• Your “why” isn’t fluff. It’s your decision filter for clients, caregivers, policies, and boundaries.
• You can’t be everything to everyone. The more selective you get, the more sustainable (and often stronger) your agency becomes.
• Caregivers don’t stay because of pay alone. Respectable wages matter, but retention comes from consistency, communication, and feeling genuinely supported.
• Support beats supervision. Checking in only when there’s a scheduling problem is not leadership, it’s chaos management.

About Becky Reel

Becky Reel is the founder of Reel Home Care Consulting and former owner of For Papa’s Sake, a nationally recognized home care agency. She now works with private pay home care agencies to improve culture, operations, referrals, and long-term sustainability through coaching and small-group events.

Resources and links

• Becky’s website: reelhomecareconsulting.com
• Follow Becky: Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn (search “Becky Reel” / “Reel Home Care Consulting”)

Call to action

Becky’s book (March release)

Borrowed Time: What Home Care Taught Me About Living
A business book with memoir elements, written for agency owners and entrepreneurs who want to build something meaningful without losing themselves in the process.

Events

• Dinner Series (Austin): February 22
  Intimate, facilitated dinners for agency owners (20–25 people) designed for real conversation and peer support.
• Book launch party (Chicago): April 16
  Details and tickets available on Becky’s website.

About the host

Hosted by Kenneth Accardi of ANKOTA, supporting home care and HCBS organizations with tools that reduce admin burden and help teams stay focused on care.

Podcast: Home Care Heroes and Day Service Stars

Home Care Heroes and Day Service Stars is produced and sponsored by Ankota - If you provide services that enable older or disabled people to continue living at home , Ankota can provide you the software to successfully run your agency. Visit us at https://www.ankota.com<

You're all worried about the skyrocketing demand for home care. Here's a solution: add an adult day center where you can meet the needs of 50 clients with just 8 staff.

In this episode, Ken Accardi interviews Tia Sauceda, the newly appointed Executive Director of the National Adult Day Services Association (NADSA). With over 25 years of hands-on experience running day centers and integrated care programs, Tia reveals why now is the perfect time for home care agencies to add adult day services.

You'll Learn:

• The potential for higher margins and lower staffing requirements with Adult Day Services
• How to leverage staff across both day programs and home care for better retention
• Real success stories of participants finding purpose and connection
• The surprising cost-effectiveness advantage (and why payers are paying attention)
• Practical steps for home care agencies to start or expand into adult day
• What NADSA offers members: education, advocacy, and a nationwide support network
• Details on the 2026 NADSA Conference (Providence, RI - September 1-3)

Perfect for: Home care agency owners, operators, and administrators looking to scale without the staffing headaches.

Guest: Tia Sauceda, Executive Director, NADSA ([email protected] | nadsa.org) Host: Ken Accardi

Home Care Heroes and Day Service Stars is produced and sponsored by Ankota - If you provide services that enable older or disabled people to continue living at home , Ankota can provide you the software to successfully run your agency. Visit us at https://www.ankota.com. 

In this episode, we’re joined by Kristianna Moralls, founder of the Self-Determination Institute and parent of a young adult with disabilities. She shares the real-world impact of self-determination, sometimes called self-direction or consumer-directed services, a model that lets individuals and families make their own decisions about who provides their care and how.

Kristianna explains how her son’s transition out of school revealed the “drop-off” many families face when traditional services end and meaningful support suddenly disappears. Discovering self-determination gave her family the ability to hire caregivers who fit her son’s life, choose meaningful activities like community college and Dungeons & Dragons nights, and build supports around his goals and personality rather than a rigid system.

Key themes explored:

• Self-direction as a civil rights movement: autonomy, choice, and dignity for people with disabilities
• The drop-off after high school: why so many families feel abandoned when services shift
• Cost-effectiveness with better results: families often pay caregivers more while saving public dollars by cutting agency overhead
• Administrative reality: empowerment comes with responsibility, and many families need support learning to recruit, hire, budget, and manage care plans
• Role of FMS providers and technology: the right Financial Management Service and the right tools can make budgeting, staffing, and compliance manageable instead of overwhelming
• California’s leadership: a robust and flexible program model other states are expanding toward

Kristianna also shares how the Self-Determination Institute supports families with training and advocacy, and why collaboration between families, FMS providers, technology platforms, and regional centers is essential for scaling self-directed services nationwide.

The big message: Self-direction works. It honors people’s abilities, supports independence, strengthens families, and builds more inclusive communities. And yes, it saves money too. When people have the freedom to choose, everyone wins.

Home Care Heroes and Day Service Stars is produced and sponsored by Ankota - If you provide services that enable older or disabled people to continue living at home , Ankota can provide you the software to successfully run your agency. Visit us at https://www.ankota.com. 

Artificial intelligence is everywhere right now—but what does it really mean for home care and day services?

On this episode of Home Care Heroes and Day Service Stars, host Ken Accardi welcomes back Nick Bonitatibus for his third appearance. This time, the conversation zeroes in on AI—how it can truly help agencies, and where it often goes wrong.

Why AI Isn’t Magic (But Feels Like It Sometimes)

Nick shares the story of a home care owner who felt overwhelmed creating SOPs for her fast-growing agency. In just minutes, AI helped her map out recruitment processes and document workflows—something she thought would take weeks. Watching AI handle that task literally brought her to tears.

That moment captures what AI can be for agency leaders: not a replacement for people, but a superpower that clears away busywork so you can focus on relationships, growth, and care.

Where Agencies Miss the Mark

AI is only as good as the input it gets. Many leaders get disappointing results because they type in a vague request and expect polished content. Nick stresses the importance of better prompting—using context, voice input, and your own stories to guide AI. Without that, you risk posting the kind of generic, obviously AI-written content that turns caregivers and clients off.

AI That Strengthens (Not Weakens) Relationships

Both Ken and Nick emphasize a simple truth: home care is a relationship business. Done wrong, AI makes you sound robotic. Done right, it helps you:

• Draft SOPs and policies that once took hours
• Speed up recruiting by quickly reviewing applications
• Save staff time on visit notes and clock-outs
• Spark fresh, authentic caregiver communications and social media posts

The key is not to let AI replace your voice, but to let it make your voice stronger.

A Look Ahead

Ken closes by sharing some of the ways Ankota is embedding AI directly into agency workflows—from smarter shift recommendations to faster visit reviews. Both he and Nick agree: AI isn’t here to erase the human side of care. It’s here to give you more time for it.

👉 Listen to the full episode to hear the practical do’s and don’ts of AI in home care, plus a preview of new AI tools coming to the industry.

Home Care Heroes and Day Service Stars is produced and sponsored by Ankota - If you provide services that enable older or disabled people to continue living at home , Ankota can provide you the software to successfully run your agency. Visit us at https://www.ankota.com. 

In the final episode of a three-part series on “Doing It Right in Home Care,” industry icon Ginny Kenyon joins Ken Accardi on the Home Care Heroes and Day Service Stars podcast to focus on a critical pillar of home care success: creating a strong, values-driven culture that drives hiring and retention. With decades of leadership and consulting experience, Ginny shares actionable insights and heartfelt stories that show how the right culture can become a home care agency’s superpower.

Key learning points are as follows:

• Why Culture is the Foundation of Successful Home Care
• Recruiting for Culture Fit, Not Just Credentials
• The Secret to Retention: Making People Feel They Belong
• Creating a Learning Organization That Grows Together
• Answering the Phone Is Culture Too
• Peer Accountability and Shared Ownership
• Culture is the Key to Growth

Final Thoughts from Ginny Kenyon

Ginny closes the episode with heartfelt advice: build your culture from your values, hire people who share those values, and empower your team to learn and grow together. That’s how you create a workplace people don’t want to leave—even when other opportunities come knocking.

Home Care Heroes and Day Service Stars is produced and sponsored by Ankota - If you provide services that enable older or disabled people to continue living at home , Ankota can provide you the software to successfully run your agency. Visit us at https://www.ankota.com. 

AI for Home Care: What Leaders Should Know

On this episode of Home Care Heroes and Day Service Stars, host Ken Accardi takes a turn in the interview seat to answer an important question: What should home care and adult day care leaders know about artificial intelligence (AI)? With help from his colleague Sowpha Umashankar, Ken explores AI's current role, practical applications, and future in home care. Whether you're new to AI or already experimenting with it, this episode offers accessible, relevant insights for care professionals.

Topics covered in the episode are as follows:

You’re Already Using AI — Even If You Don’t Know It

• Amazon suggestions (“people who bought this also bought…”)
• Netflix recommendations
• Voice assistants like Alexa and Siri
• Mobile check deposits that read and verify your handwriting

"AI isn’t new or scary; it’s quietly integrated into our lives already."

AI in Home Care: Support, Not Replacement

• Home care and adult day care are human-centric industries. So why use AI at all? Ken emphasizes that AI shouldn’t replace personal relationships — it should enhance them by removing repetitive or time-consuming tasks.

Trying AI is Easier Than You Think

• To show how accessible AI is, Ken gives a live demo using ChatGPT, where he asks for a multiplication quiz for his son. Despite a typo in the request, the AI delivers a perfectly usable quiz instantly.

Voice Interaction: Talking to AI

• Ken demonstrates that you can also speak to AI on a phone app.

Three Practical AI Use Cases for Home Care Managers

1. Summarizing long articles
2. Creating training materials
3. Screening resumes

AI in Software: Behind the Scenes

• AI is also being integrated into home care software systems, often in ways users may not notice. Ken gives two examples from Ankota:

Trust but Verify: The Risks of AI

• AI isn’t perfect. It can make errors, especially if asked complex or ambiguous questions. Ken emphasizes that AI should not make final decisions alone in home care.

Choosing AI Tools Wisely

• Before adopting a new AI tool, Ken advises home care leaders to ask a few key questions

Pro Tips for Getting the Most from AI

To get better results from AI tools like ChatGPT:

• Define the AI’s role ("You are a home care leader...")
• State what you want ("Write a blog about Memorial Day activities for seniors")
• Set expectations ("Keep it under 800 words, suitable for caregivers")

This practice, called prompt engineering, helps you shape the output more effectively.

Final Thoughts: Give AI a Try

Ken wraps the episode by encouraging listeners to stay open-minded. Like Google or Google Maps before it, AI may soon become indispensable in your daily life. The key is to start small, stay curious, and test responsibly.

Home Care Heroes and Day Service Stars is produced and sponsored by Ankota - If you provide services that enable older or disabled people to continue living at home , Ankota can provide you the software to successfully run your agency. Visit us at https://www.ankota.com.