Home Care Strategy Lab

#68 When a caregiver asks, “when do I get my next raise?”, do you have a good answer? Kimberly Jones, Vice President of Help at Home Senior Care, shares the transparent four-part compensation framework her team uses to reward skill development, specialized training, long-term commitment, and leadership. We break down hands-on competency evaluations, dementia skill assessments, certification pathways, longevity bonuses, and why clear career progression has helped the agency retain caregivers for many years. Kimberly also shares the retention data behind the program, including why 66% of their caregivers have stayed for more than two years and why their highest-paid caregivers average 6.5 years with the company.

• Kimberly Jones
• Help at Home Senior Care
• Grade Us—feedback loop tool

Sponsor:

• Vitable Health - learn.vitablehealth.com/lab

#67 Ryan Whittington, CEO of Seniors Home Care in St. Louis, shares how one struggling dementia client led his team to build Sage In-home Memory Care—a completely separate brand dedicated to serving advanced dementia clients with a fundamentally different care model. Instead of treating dementia as another service line, Ryan explains how specialized caregivers, weekly care management visits, life story assessments, individualized activity calendars, and intensive training have created better outcomes for clients, families, and caregivers alike. We also discuss why consistency matters more than flexibility, how to overcome resistance to care, why advanced dementia clients require a true team approach, and the business decisions that make this model sustainable.

• Ryan Whittington
• Seniors Home Care
• Sage In-home Memory Care
• Life Story Assessment - provided by Sage
• Best Practices Booklet--Dementia Home Care (Alzheimer’s Association)
• Teepa Snow’s 6 GEMS You Need to Know For A Positive Approach to Dementia Care

#66 Adam Berry built As Close as Family over nearly a decade before realizing the business had outgrown what he could sustainably manage on his own. Rather than walking away, he sold the agency to Avenues Home Care and stayed on to focus on the work he enjoys most while gaining the back-office support he was missing. In this episode, Adam and Avenues CEO Doug Markham break down how they found the right acquisition fit, what due diligence actually looked like, and why culture mattered more than valuation. They also share how they divide responsibilities after the sale, which functions are centralized versus kept local, and why giving operators autonomy has been critical to continued growth. 

• Adam Berry / [email protected]
• As Close as Family
• Doug Markham / [email protected]
• Avenues Home Care

Sponsors:

• Phoebe.work - A self-driving alternative that fills shifts in minutes

#65 Many home care agencies don't realize they've crossed the Affordable Care Act threshold until the IRS comes knocking. Brendan Mullins, CRO of Vitable Health, explains why agencies with as early as $1–2M in annual revenue can already qualify as Applicable Large Employers, how 30 hours per week (not 40) triggers eligibility, and why variable caregiver schedules make ACA compliance especially difficult. We break down how the 50 Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) threshold is calculated, the misconceptions that lead agencies into trouble, and why penalties can quickly climb into the six figures. Brendan also walks through how ACA audits typically unfold, why compliance issues often surface years later, and the common mistakes agencies make along the way. 

• Brendan Mullins on LinkedIn
• Vitablehealth.com 
• ACA Penalty Calculator

We cover:

• Why home care leaders are moving from AI exploration to real-world adoption.
• The buy-vs-build debate and why many agencies are choosing AI partnerships.
• Helping schedulers spend less time chasing call-outs and more time supporting people.
• Supporting owner-operators as they scale from zero schedulers to their first hire.
• How AI can fill open shifts in minutes instead of hours.
• Moving from reactive scheduling to planning weeks in advance.
• Capturing caregiver preferences and scheduling knowledge through AI memory.
• Preventing tribal knowledge from walking out the door with staff turnover.
• Why AI works best as an amplifier—not a replacement—for great schedulers.
• Lessons learned from overcoming office-team skepticism and driving adoption.
• The surprising ways caregivers are embracing AI-powered communication.
• How AI is creating more proactive and human-centered operations.

Extras:

• Connect with Corey Grissom / [email protected] 
• See how Phoebe can transform your scheduler’s daily life 

We cover:

• Brady's journey from audiology to home care innovation.
• Right at Home's growth to 600+ franchises across four countries.
• Staying focused on non-medical home care.
• Why AI is exposing long-standing data quality issues.
• The importance of data hygiene and integrity.
• How bad data can erode trust and create risk.
• Common gaps in referral tracking, scheduling, and workflows.
• Making care documentation easier through voice-to-text technology.
• Aligning caregiver incentives with better documentation.
• Combining in-home observations with vital sign data.
• Moving from documentation to predictive care.
• Piloting RespirAI to identify COPD exacerbations earlier.
• Using technology to reduce avoidable hospitalizations.
• Why strong documentation is the foundation for predictive analytics.
• Solving for affordability, workforce shortages, and chronic disease.
• How home care can become the preferred model for aging in place.
• Navigating the realities of aging while embracing innovation.

Some extras:

• Connect with Brady Schwab / [email protected] 
• Learn more about Right at Home
• RespirAI—the COPD pilot that Right at Home is conducting
• See how Phoebe AI can eliminate missed clock in/outs and save your team hours each week

We cover:

• Team Select's growth across 15 states, 9,000 employees, and 5,000 patients.
• Meghan's transition from physical therapist to technology leader.
• Using operational technology to reinvest dollars into patients and caregivers.
• Building a new enterprise data warehouse from the ground up.
• Why successful AI starts with a strong data foundation.
• The launch of CareSight AI and Team Select's partnership with Questa.
• Using AI to identify patient deterioration sooner.
• Predicting potential readmissions 3–5 days in advance.
• Combining vitals, documentation, and AI-driven insights.
• Reducing avoidable hospitalizations through earlier intervention.
• How clinician buy-in accelerated adoption.
• Lessons learned from implementing AI at scale.
• Overcoming AI skepticism and technology resistance.
• Why clinicians should lead healthcare innovation.
  • Start: Put clinicians first and solve their biggest workflow challenges.
  • Stop: Boiling the ocean—focus on one problem at a time.

Some Extras:

• Connect with Meghan Willson / [email protected] 
• Learn more about Team Select Home Care
• See how Phoebe AI can nearly eliminate scheduling call-outs

Bonus episode recorded live @ Home Care Innovation Forum in Palm Springs, CA
Key topics include:

• Why weekly new revenue is the most important sales measurement and how it provides a real-time view of where new business is coming from.
• Ensuring sales activity stays aligned with referral accounts that are actively generating new business.
• What success looks like for new sales reps, including tracking the number of new referral accounts established.
• Brad's "controlled shotgun" approach to account management:
  • Tier A: 10 key accounts 
  • Tier B: 10–15 growth accounts 
  • Tier C: 15–20 contingency or "just in case" accounts
• The role of sales, operations, and branch leadership in building referral partner relationships and ensuring smooth transitions to start of care.
• Why great sales professionals focus on being present, not just visible, when engaging referral partners.
• How leaders can better equip sales teams with meaningful data that supports conversations and decision-making.
• The growing complexity of patient care and why sales professionals need a stronger understanding of clinical and complex-care scenarios.
• Positioning home care organizations as outcome-driven partners who help referral sources solve patient care challenges.
• Why organizations with service models that solve the widest range of problems are positioned to win.
• What to stop and start measuring:
  • Stop: Overloading sales teams with insignificant data. 
  • Start: Viewing revenue as a measurement of performance rather than the sole metric of success.
• How experienced reps focus on long-term referral source retention and relationship management.
• Why response time may be the most important quality assurance metric in home care sales—and why speed matters.

Extras:

• Connect with Brad Gilmore on LinkedIn or via email: [email protected] 
• Learn more about Family Tree Private Care
• See how Phoebe AI can double your scheduling output
• Home Care Innovation Forum 2027 / Pasadena, CA on May 16-18 for Orgs $30M+

#64 Most home care agencies are still operating the old way: phone calls, spreadsheets, reactive scheduling, and constant firefighting. Nate West, owner of Heritage Home Care in Arizona, joins me to discuss how he's transformed a well-established agency from what he jokingly calls "the Stone Age" into a modern, tech-enabled operation in just two years. 

He talks about eliminating edge cases, transitioning from reactive scheduling to proactively filling shifts days and weeks in advance, and the role AI is playing in caregiver communication, shift confirmations, and open shift management. And maybe more importantly, we discuss what happens when technology frees schedulers from constant firefighting and allows them to focus on relationships, retention, and the overall client/caregiver experience.

Nate explains the results Heritage has seen after six months of using Phoebe, including:

• Median open shift fill time of just 9.7 minutes

• No-call/no-shows reduced from 8 to just 1 year-over-year

• 830 caregiver touch points per week handled by AI

• 2,800+ shifts confirmed with a 97.8% confirmation rate

• Nate West / [email protected]
• Heritage Home Care
• Phoebe—AI scheduling assistant for home care, mention the ‘LAB’ for a discount

#63 Most home care agencies treat dementia care as a service line. Full Bloom built an entire company around it. Jim Kimzey, Co-Founder of Full Bloom Home Care, shares the systems, training, and care philosophy that allow his team to successfully serve some of the most challenging dementia clients while helping caregivers, families, and staff thrive.

Jim breaks down the three levers that drive better dementia outcomes, an eight-step process for overcoming care refusal, and the gold standard for supporting complex dementia clients at home. He also explains how a dementia-first approach can reduce caregiver burnout, ease operational strain, and create better experiences for clients and families. This conversation is a practical roadmap for delivering better care to anyone serving dementia clients and families. 

• Jim Kimzey
• Full Bloom Memory Care
• Breakthrough: The Full Bloom Method for Overcoming Resistance to Care
• Best Practices Booklet—Dementia Home Care (Alzheimer’s Association)
• Danny Meyer's Salt Shaker Theory of Leadership

Sponsors:

• Mertz Taggart—Home Care M&A Experts