Home Care Strategy Lab

#82 You might be spending money on technology that isn't solving a real problem. Dave Dworschak from Phoebe is back to discuss owners buying technology out of FOMO, implementing tools without staff buy-in, over-automating client interactions, and failing to understand whether their teams actually need additional capacity. Drawing on experience with 800+ home care agencies, Dave breaks down where automation is delivering measurable results, where human involvement is still essential, and why the last 20% of building a reliable solution is often the hardest. We also discuss whether early adopters are gaining a competitive advantage, how to build internal AI champions, and what questions you should be asking vendors before signing a contract.

• Dave Dworschak on LinkedIn
• Email: [email protected] 
• Phoebe website / phoebe.work 
• Ep #45 with Dave—AI scheduling deep dive
• Ep #64 with Phoebe customer: Nate West

#81 The first two years of home care ownership are brutal, and Adam and Marlene Bartlett aren't sugarcoating what it took to build Uplift Home Care from scratch. After investing $200–250K to launch their independent agency in California, they quickly discovered that finding clients was harder than recruiting caregivers, client churn was twice what they'd projected, and building meaningful referral relationships took far longer than expected. They share what's worked (and what hasn't) across caregiver recruiting, paid advertising, community marketing, and early office hires—including why promoting a caregiver into a care coordinator role became one of their best decisions. They've also built an unusually lean operation, using an offshore scheduler and AI to handle roughly 90% of their caregiver hiring process and 70% of their client intake and care planning workflow.

• Adam Bartlett
• Marlene Bartlett
• Uplift Home Care

Sponsors:

• Reel Home Care Consulting—meet Becky Reel and her team
• Greeley—mention the LAB for a discount on your first 3 months

#80 After nearly 15 years of serving thousands of veterans, Megan Casey has learned that one of the hardest parts of veteran care is getting fiercely independent veterans to accept help in the first place. She explains why agencies need to work around a veteran’s pride rather than try to change it, and why the best approach is simply meeting them where they are. Megan shares stories of veterans who started with just an hour or two of care before building enough trust to accept more help as their needs changed. She also gets candid about PTSD, addiction, isolation, weapons in the home, and the difficult balance between respecting a veteran’s choices and protecting caregivers. Most importantly, Megan explains why that first caregiver match matters so much—and why agencies should put down the assessment form, learn what makes the veteran tick, and earn their trust before trying to change their routine.

• Megan Casey on LinkedIn
• Email: [email protected] 
• Cell: 315-794-6501
• Momentum Healthcare and Technology Consulting

Sponsors:

• Greeley Capital / www.greeleycapital.com/thelab 
• Mention the LAB and get discounted financing for the first 3 months 

#79 Does this sound like your agency?

• You have several key office employees.
• Everyone is busy, but work still gets stuck.
• Leaders are wearing multiple hats.
• Bottlenecks are slowing growth.
• The business is beginning to plateau.

You know your agency needs to be redesigned so your best people can spend more time doing their highest-value work—but you don’t have the time or a clear model for doing it.

This session will help you identify structural bottlenecks, clarify roles and ownership, and redesign your team to support the agency’s next stage of growth.

• Debbie Miller on LinkedIn
• Download the Optimize Workbook
• Optimize Session Slide Deck
• Learn more about Helper Heroes VAs for home care
• Book a 1-1 with Helper Heroes team

#78 Does this sound like your agency?

• You’re still doing almost everything yourself.
• You have one or two office employees.
• Your processes are still evolving.
• Every new hire feels expensive.
• Growth still depends heavily on you, the owner.

You know you need more help—but you also need to make the right hires, assign the right responsibilities, and build the right infrastructure before you and your team burn out.

This session will help you understand what your agency needs now, what can wait, and how to build an office team that supports your next stage of growth.

• Debbie Miller on LinkedIn
• Download the Build Workbook 
• Learn more about Helper Heroes VAs for home care
• Book a 1-1 with Helper Heroes team

#77 Most Medicaid billing problems begin long before a claim is submitted, with breakdowns in eligibility, authorization, scheduling, EVV, documentation, payer setup, or coding. Julio Barea, founder of the Home Care Revenue Institute, explains why agencies need to think beyond billing and manage the entire revenue cycle from intake through payment. He walks through the controls behind a clean claim, including how to verify authorized hours, reduce EVV exceptions, and catch problems before they become denials. Julio also shares the daily, weekly, and monthly cadence agencies should follow, along with critical KPIs like denial rate, payment time, EVV acceptance, and scheduled versus authorized hours. He closes with practical ways agency owners can better support their billers and develop them into trained revenue cycle management specialists.

• Julio Barea on LinkedIn
• Email: [email protected]
• Home Care Revenue Institute
• Home Care Revenue Specialist Certifications
• Slide Deck that goes along with the episode

Sponsors:

• Reel Home Care Consulting / reelhomecareconsulting.com

#76 - More revenue doesn’t automatically solve cash flow—especially when payroll is weekly and payers can take 30, 60, or even 90 days to reimburse. Domenic Colavito, co-founder and COO of the $15 million OurCare Health, breaks down lines of credit, payroll funding, factoring, asset-based lending, SBA loans, and equity financing. He explains how an agency’s size, payer mix, profitability, collection time, and growth goals determine which options are actually available—and which are worth the cost. Domenic also explains factoring in simple terms and shares how predictable cash flow helped OurCare grow from roughly $6 million to $10 million without giving up equity or worrying about weekly payroll. The conversation covers the risks of financing, the billing problems it can expose, and what owners should clean up before approaching a financial partner.

• Domenic Colavito on LinkedIn
• [email protected] 
• Greeley Capital / www.greeleycapital.com/thelab
• Mention the LAB and get discounted financing for the first 3 months 

Sponsors:

• Helper Heroes / https://helperheroes.com 

#75 Keyur Shah entered home care with no ownership or healthcare experience and grew Senior Helpers of Coastal Orange County to 1,000 weekly hours in just 20 months. He walks through the agency’s growth month by month—from reaching 300 hours in Month 3 and becoming profitable in Month 9 to generating $700,000 in Year 1. Keyur explains why he opened with an office manager, added a VA recruiter in Month 4, hired a full-time scheduler near 500 hours, and waited until Month 18 to hand off client care. He also shares the ~$150,000 investment it took to reach operational breakeven, the impact of sudden client losses, and why consistent referrals took more than two years of networking. His biggest lesson applies to owners at every stage: don’t wait to grow before you hire—hire the team that can create and sustain the growth.

• Keyur Shah on LinkedIn 
• Email: [email protected] 
• Senior Helpers of Coastal Orange County

Sponsors:

• Vitable
• Reel Home Care Consulting

#74 Tribute Home Care has no engineers, so Andrew Dobson stepped up and is helping build AI tools in-house that collectively save 300+ hours per month. He explains how a scheduling dashboard evolved into an availability analyzer that helps staff new cases faster at 90–95% caregiver utilization. Tribute also used a Viv-built voice agent to fill 75% of its open weekend visits in an early test. Andrew shares how they condensed a five-system lead process into one workflow and reduced two days of financial reporting to a button press. He offers practical advice for finding the right AI projects, developing an internal champion, validating outputs, and keeping humans involved wherever judgment and relationships matter.

• Andrew Dobson on LinkedIn
• [email protected] 
• Tribute Home Care
• Claude Code

Sponsors:

• Phoebe—AI scheduling teammate that fills 75% of shifts in under 15 minutes
• Reel Home Care Consulting—my recommended consultant for startups focused on differentiation and delivering a hospitality-like experience

#73 After six home care companies merged, Caregivers of America was left with six ways of doing things, costly process gaps, and no clear ownership of the full client journey. Regional Administrator Jenni Scherer explains how the company rebuilt operations around five stages of the client journey: FirstTake, InTake, UpTake, CareTake, and ReTake. She breaks down the touch-points behind the model, including an in-home visit that converts close to 99% of prospects, five coordinator calls during the first 30 days, and regular in-person visits for VIP clients receiving 30 or more hours of care each week. Jenni also shares why the journey shouldn’t end at discharge: returning former clients have become Caregivers of America’s second-largest referral source, followed by referrals from clients’ families and friends.

• Jenni Scherer’s email: [email protected] 
• Caregivers of America
• Take5 Model ’T’ Chart

Sponsors:

• Reel Home Care Consulting // https://reelhomecareconsulting.com