Home Care U - How Norwood Life Society Pioneered Aging Care in Chicago (Laura Shaw-deBruin Pt. 1)

Episode Date: April 15, 2024

Not too many senior care companies can say they’ve been around for 120 years. Laura Shaw-deBruin, Executive Director of Norwood Seniors Network will share the inspiration, hurdles, and strategic decisions behind the brand that’s been serving greater Chicago for over a century.Enjoying the show? Send me a text and let me know!Learn more about Careswitch at: careswitch.comConnect with the host on LinkedIn: Miriam Allred This episode was produced by parkerkane.co

Welcome everyone to Home Care U. I'm Miriam Allred, your host. This podcast is hosted and produced by CareSwitch. It's great to be with you all. Thank you for listening in. I'm really excited for today's conversation. I'm joined by the lovely and knowledgeable Laura Shaw DeBruin. She's the executive director at Norwood Seniors Network. Hopefully she's a familiar name and face to many of you. She's been in the industry for a lot of years, spoken at events, conferences, summits. And so I feel fortunate to be able to talk to her today and share a little bit more about her business, her background, how they are succeeding and thriving in the Chicago market. So we're going to get into all of that today.

Laura, thanks for being here. Oh gosh, thanks for having me and inviting me to this. We've stayed in touch a lot over the last few years. And so you feel like a friend and I am always learning from you and excited to talk to you. So thanks for giving us some time and being willing to share your story. Thank you.

It's a pleasure with you always. You're so kind. Let's start a little bit with your background. I want to introduce you to our audience so they can understand, you know, what you were doing before home care, how you got into home care, you know, what's motivating you to stay in it. Tell people a little bit about yourself. Sure. So I've been in the senior care realm for over about 25 years, from being a president of a home care company to managing an only dementia unit to here at Norwood for the past seven years. And I've done things in between. I ran community-based homes for people with disabilities. I worked for our local Department of Family Services when I first got out of college. So I've always been working with, in a service line, in community-based and helping

people live as independently and safely as they can, whether they're 95 or 14, or they live in a group home, or they live in a nursing home, or they live in their individual homes. But as far as seniors, I've been doing it for like over 25 years. So very long time. You've seen seen it all and done it all it sounds like. But one of the reasons I love talking to you is you're always, you know, fresh and innovative and have, you know, new perspective on perspectives on things. And so I think that's what excites me most is, you know, fresh and innovative and have, you know, new perspective on perspectives on things. And so I think that's what excites me most is, you know, you don't get this, you know, you've been doing this for 30 years, and you're, you know, winding down, or, you know, you know,

I'm sure you have your days, and you're tired, and there's a lot, you know, there's, there's never a dull moment in home care, but you always seem to keep me on my toes and others on their toes, which is so admirable. Thanks. I think that's it. There's everything was changes, right? Changes, you know, it happens all the time. And I just want to be better and do better and provide the best services. And honestly, we're all aging. None of us are not aging. If someone's not aging, I'd like to meet with them. Because I think that we're all aging. And I always try to think like, how would I want to age? What are the things that I would like to meet with them because I think that we're all aging. And I always try to think like, how would I want to age? What are the things that I would like to see? And I want to make sure the people that surround me, my loved ones, my family, my friends have options and they could age the way they want to age. I think that keeps me going. We can all share that sentiment. I think that's the root of it for all of us to some extent.

So today I want to talk about your business, about this really large, you know, kind of organic business that you've built over a lot of years. And so I want you to take me back to the very beginning so that everyone's on the same page today. We're going to talk about how Norwood Life Society, how Norwood Seniors Network got its start. You have a lot of different business lines and I want to just kind of cover this really like well-rounded business and how you made decisions when you brought new services on and why and how and just kind of dissect the history a little bit because I think that'll be really interesting for people to hear. So take me back to the beginning, which is Norwood Life Society. When and why did that business start? So Norwood Life Society is 130 years old

and a physician in the community who was Norwegian founded the, what was called the Norwood Park Home for Norwegian immigrants for a place to age in comfort and with dignity. Then it was called the Norwegian's Old People's Home, which we don't call it now. And it evolved in this wonderful little neighborhood. I wish I could take you kind of through the neighborhood because it's just quaint and wonderful. And the name eventually became Norwood Park. And eventually the facility became known as the Norwood Park Home. And later it is what it is called now, Norwood Crossing. So it's been through the Chicago fire, two world wars,

the great depression, you know, the aging world has changed so much and it continues to be a staple in the community and in the northwest side of Chicago in the suburbs. It used to be a very small facility. It's non-profit. It's always when we've taken anyone in the facility because that's the way the original founder would like it to be. And we have that mission always. And now it's this larger than life facility. We serve about 300 to 350 people. It's right across the street from me. And it's long-term skills, it's memory care, it's assisted living, and it has a phenomenal rehab program. Our tagline is reshaping aging. And I think that's something that's constant. We're trying to always reshape it the way it flows. And we never

kind of get stuck in one place because aging again, it's different for everybody. So we try to meet the needs of everyone. So this little home that used to have like four or five Norwegian immigrants has grown and grown over 130 years. And it really is a lovely place with amazing services and really great people. And we work hand in hand with them as well. Yeah, I love that you shared the underlying tagline, which is that reshaping aging. I think Norwood embodies that.

I think you embody that, just meeting people where they are. And obviously many people want to age in their home. That's not always possible. That's not always the right fit, but I think Norwood embodies this, you know, we want to meet people where they are. And sometimes that's the home. Sometimes it's not, sometimes they don't need one-to-one care and they may need meals or transportation. So we're going to get into that, just, you know, meeting people where they are and reshaping aging based off, you know, the needs of the population. So, so let's kind of

fast forward. I want to talk about the evolution of, of this brand and of this business. And so you talked about, you know, where it started. Now you're referencing what I believe is the senior center or, or what is this business, you know, you're saying is across the street, that's kind of one of the primary entities today? Across the street is the nursing home itself. Norwood Crossing is across the street. The Senior Center is down the street. So we're kind of a community within a community, right? I mean, that's why I kind of look at it. We're here, our thrift store is here, which I'll talk in a little bit, the nursing home, and then the senior center. So we're all within a mile radius of each other. And that's how we say we're a community within a community, wherever these people are, right? their homes and whether it's a nursing home or it's down the street, which would take care of

a lot of people within a five, six mile radius of the facility, it's still their homeroom. And we're all one big community. So let's talk through, you know, when and how of each of them. So it sounds like we should start maybe with the nursing home. Well, the nursing home has been around for a long time. Like I've said, 130 years. We do not have independent living. That's the only level of care we do not have. The long-term care, the memory unit, assisted living, and rehab are the primary levels of care across the street. At one time, they had a shelter care license. They don't have that anymore. Kind of became obsolete. So that's what's across the street. We care in the home care realm.

We care for a lot of the people across the street as well. So, you know, like you were saying, we meet them where they are. So if they're in assisted living and they need a little bit of help, we could help the residents across the street. Now, not so much the timeline, but we were first and then the volunteers. So it's called Norvalution is our volunteer piece of our puzzle. Then the senior center, then the thrift shop. And it all kind of comes together and we're all part of Norwood Life Society. So I would say we're under their umbrella of our care and so are those other businesses, but they're pretty much

the captain of the ship or just kind of the staff. And then let's talk about Norwood Seniors Network. So then where does that fit in? So we have been around for 30 years. In July, it will be 30 years. So for a very long time for a home care business, I have to say I'm very proud of that. A lot of home care businesses don't last 30 years, but we have lasted 30 years. And as I go on to the different businesses we have, I have to think that that has helped us last for 30 years. We grew out of the old executive director knew that they needed a home care type of business for two reasons, probably to, again, help the community at large around the nursing home. Not everyone is ready for a nursing home, but it's nice to have that relationship of being under their umbrella. So they began to trust,

they began to realize that we're a part of their team. The second piece of it was, is that we are a very good door opening for our nursing home. You know, whether it's on a wait list, if they're not ready or mostly they're not, you know, they're not ready. They're not ready to commit to a nursing home, but they do need home at care. So it was developed about 30 years ago. And we do not only service this area. We service three counties in Chicago, Cook County being our largest, and then Lake and DuPage counties where they're attached to each other, and we serve those counties too.

But our main focus is pretty much, you know, we're known as the neighborhood home care because we truly are in a, I'm in a strip mall with a lot of windows. I call it like I'm in a bubble. So people pass my office all day long. Dogs pass my office all day long. People are waving to me. We have a lot of walk-in business I mean I have dogs you know outside my my our office I have a dog bowl and we have treats so

if dogs come you know and everyone knows that we're part of it so if we weren't part of it I don't know I think we're part of the neighborhood. So we've been around for a long time and people know us. And that also absolutely helps us be viable for 30 years. We are so neighborhood friendly. I'm not saying we don't care for other people. We do in different counties. But we have a lot of clients within the neighborhood.

And I'm saying like, probably, you know, again, a five mile radius, we have a lot of clients. Perfect. So let's talk more about, we've kind of talked about, you know, the life society. And now we see that, you know, Norwood Seniors Network is, you know, kind of a subset of the business. Norwood Seniors Network that you're the executive director of has had its own evolution, you know, of bringing on new business lines, experimenting with new services, etc. So let's talk through, you know, kind of your evolution of growing and developing Norwood Seniors Network into what it is today. Absolutely. So I'm lucky that when I came here, the old CEO who used to run the network had great vision and has great vision. And we were very compatible that way. And

he knew when he started the home care business, everyone was doing home care. Everyone is doing home care. The competition is ridiculous, but to stand out, sometimes you need different businesses. So the biggest need at the time when he was doing it was meals and mostly transportation. They didn't necessarily need a caregiver, but they needed meals sent to them in their homes and they needed a ride every so often. So we developed a transportation program and a meals program. So I'll start with the meals program just to give you a little oversight on that. The meals come directly from across the street. So we use their kitchen. And so they're made fresh. So each day, Monday through Friday, we have volunteers, which I'll talk about in a little bit we have a huge volunteer network at Norwood Life Society and volunteers deliver the meals and in the meals there's two meals per day

a hot meal and a cold meal and our tagline to our meals it's more than just a meal. So we make sure that we see the person, that we talk to the person, we do a wellness check. And if they're not available for some reason, whether it be at the doctors or they're out getting their hair done, they make arrangements for us to know that we won't see them. But if we don't see them and we think we should have seen them, we have a protocol. We call their emergency contact people. If we still haven't heard anything, we call 911. And I will say that every single year, at least two or three people are probably saved because our volunteers follow that protocol and made sure the person was okay. People have been unconscious.

People have fallen. When you live alone, which most of our meals people do, 90% of our meals people live alone. Sometimes our volunteer is the only person they see a day. So yes, it's more than just a meal. And it's, again, it helps the client know that they come, the meals come from the nursing home. They kind of get a taste of what's going to happen if they go there. They're trusting us. We're reliable. You know, I brag about it all the time, but during the pandemic, which was a horrible time for a lot of people, we didn't miss a day here. We showed up every day and we delivered every single meal. Because honestly,

if you can't go out, how are you supposed to get food? And when you're 97, I'm not sure you're calling Grubhub to have food delivered to you, right? You want to see the same exact people. You want to see the same volunteer. And we showed up and we provided meals, you know? So I'm very, very proud of that program. I love the volunteers. They are so loyal and dedicated. You know, Chicago has horrible weather most of the winter. We don't miss a day.

I've been here seven years, a little over seven years, and we have missed three days total of meals. And two were, it was an arctic blast. I mean, it was like the regular temperature was like, you know, 40 below zero without the windchill. And one day there was too much snow. And not that our volunteers are willing, but we have to make sure they're safe as well. A lot of times alleys and side streets don't get plowed in Chicago till the end. So we have to make sure. But us in the office will go get a meal and drop it off to somebody if they really need a meal. And I have to say, our clients understand that. But after, you know, seven years and only missing three days, I think that's amazing. Actually, I think that's totally amazing. So that business

came into after our home care business. And I will talk a little bit, I know, later about some of the challenges of those businesses. The second business that came about was transportation. So we have a car. It's not a wheelchair accessible, which is one of my dreams to have a wheelchair accessible. But we do a lot of transportation. And some examples of what we do is we do people who have dialysis. They can't get there. They're too weak to drive.

They don't drive. We do a lot of wound care. People have to go to wound care doctors and radiation and chemotherapy. And then we have one lady who gets her hair hair done every week you know she's one of the people who still gets her hair done weekly and we take them or to shopping or to the doctor's office whatever it is and the one thing about the greatest thing about it is again it's the same small group of people so you're just not having some random person coming to your house. And we pick them up. So we go to the door, wherever that is, whether it's apartment,

single family home, we pick up the person, help them get in the car, take them to the destination. There's options. We could drop them off and then come back, or we could drop them off and wait for them and then take them back. And then we do a small assessment because we want them, if there's something medical we need to know, I want the driver to know that this person has this kind of, maybe a medical thing happening, but you can't get that in an Uber. They're not looking for the training that we're trained, that we'll handle anything medical if we can. And then we know the person.

They know us. And when you're that age group, my average age of all the residents that we serve here, the clients that we serve here, is 89 years old. So it's a little bit of an older crowd. And they are scared sometimes and they don't want people just showing up in their house. So we make sure that they know that it's going to be the same person.

They know who's coming to pick them up. We have IT. So it's safe. And, again, you develop a relationship with these clients and they begin to trust you. And we hear stories and they tell us stories. And, you know, in the office here of the five of us who share that driving responsibility, I have to laugh. We've all have our favorites.

So when the list comes, who needs rides? People are like, oh, I want to take her. I want to take him. And I actually had a daughter call yesterday, said her father's going through some bladder radiation. And she said that if it wasn't for us and the young people, which, you know, I have to laugh at that. I'm as old as dirt. The young people who take him have made his radiation treatments tolerable and that when he doesn't see us he misses us

which you know that says a lot i don't know in normal transportation do you feel that way so you know we put everything we can we give great customer service so transportation is um i would like to have more opportunity to do more with transportation it's just we stopped well it stopped on its own during the pandemic it took people who wanted to, but we lost probably 90% of our usual clients during the pandemic. And now we've built that back up. I want to interject just briefly here and say next week, we're going to talk in depth about these service lines. I want, you know, I'm sure I already have all these questions of, you know, who and what and when and how of these specific service lines. So just interjecting and saying, we'll go into these in more depth next week

and talk about how you actually execute. Tell me just briefly about, I wanna cover kind of all the service lines underneath Norwood Seniors Network. There's also a mobile alert program and I also believe you do some care management. So just kind of finish talking through the last couple of service lines

that fit underneath the Norwood Seniors Network umbrella. So the mobile alert is we have a contract with mobile help and we get the unit sent to us. So we are doing the installs again, that trust. We are the same people doing it. We are doing the installs, the battery replacements. And it's a less expensive way for people. I understand people's budgetary, you know, limitations. I get that probably more than anything. I've been around for a long time. So again, it gets us in the home and it gets us to get to know somebody. And it's, you know know and we do it all

we set it up we get the unit we take care of the unit and it's easy um and families have really appreciated when things are not working that it's us that comes and fix it or the battery is dead it's us that comes and fix it and that's one thing too that I've changed we had a different vendor but you know you have to listen to your audience and you have to listen to your clients of can I get a smaller you know pendant can I get a lighter pendant this is too hard you know the um when they, the sensor wasn't working as good. So I've shopped, like, just like I shop everything else, like software and things like that. We shopped the mobile internet. We've changed it this year. Seems to be working, seems to be much user-friendly. And that has worked

greatly. That program, again, you know, has peaks and flows. And I don't, that's one of my frustrations. And we could talk about that a little bit later when we get into that is that I don't know why it peaks and flows so much because it's not expensive and it literally saves thousands of lives a year. So I got to figure out how I could do that better. And the last service line is care management. Is that right? You do some care management? We do some. And that person is me.

So I have a master's in social work. And I have several clients that I help with care management. Mostly, honestly, it's not 24 hours like some other care management companies, although sometimes I feel like it's 24 hours. So I mostly manage their care. So in all, whether it be doctor's appointments or advocating for the client or make sure they're getting their meds on time, make sure they have relationships with the pharmacist. Sometimes I do a little bit of shopping. I might do some bill writing with them, help them with their bills, help them

reconcile their checkbooks. Every client I have has this very detailed checkbook. So we do that. It's a little bit more expensive service, but they don't necessarily need to have anything else. So I have a client that's all she has, and I meet with her once a month. That's it. And we kind of check in, and I'm there a couple hours. And it's just because she needs to feel like if she needed more, I would be able to get her that right away. So she's doing really well now. She wasn't, but now she's doing really well because she has everything in place now.

She has doctors and resources. And so she's in a good spot. But we check in once a month. I go down to her condo. So it could bewood Seniors Network. And so just kind of quick recap. Inside of Norwood Seniors Network, we've got the home care service line, we've got the meal business, we've got the mobile alert program, transportation, and care management. So in your purview, you know, are these different programs that all feed together? Before I ask some specific questions, I want to put you on the spot a little bit. Can you share high level, you know, are these different programs that all feed together. Before I ask some specific questions, I want to put you on the spot a little bit. Can you share high level, you know, maybe the percentages or hours that are in each of those service lines, you know, is the home care piece taking up 75% and then the meals, you know, can you just kind of break down the structure and

what that looks like from revenue or hours. Absolutely. The home care business is our biggest business. It probably is 70% of our business, maybe 65%. I'll say percent of our business. Absolutely is our biggest piece of the puzzle. Currently, it's my most frustrating piece of the puzzle, but it's our biggest piece of the puzzle. Then it is meals, and meals is probably 15, 20. And then I would say 10% transportation, although that is growing again.

It used to be like 30% of our revenue. It was huge. It was really big. But then the pandemic really knocked us out. Mobile alert is probably five. And then care management is probably five. You know, again, it peaks and flows and sometimes, but it's always meals and caregiving. Since I've been here, I've been the highest of people and revenue with a close second to transportation.

In order for our transportation to grow, it needs a lot of rides a day. And before the pandemic, I had a driver just dedicated to that. Now I'm sharing with other people. That's a perfect transition into what I wanted to talk about next, which are the people.

You referenced multiple times that it's the same people that all of these clients are interacting with. So tell me a little bit about, you know, maybe like org chart in the office because it sounds like there's some dividing and conquering. And then down to the caregiver level, you know, are there the same people delivering meals that are providing care, transportation, et cetera? Talk about, you know, your people. So in the office used to be a little bit bigger, but when I came in seven years ago, I felt we were very top heavy and too many people with not enough work to do. So I was

kind of given the task to re-look at that and reorganize. And I did. There is myself. I have a operations manager who's been here for 10 years, 11 years. I have a schedulers, obviously for the home care part, which is the biggest part. I have two women who share that role. I have a person who does like the HR aspect of our business. And I will say that that takes not only her, but we do, you know, screening and pre-hires, interviews. We vet them a lot. And I wish I had more caregivers, but the caregivers that we have, we work really hard to get them. I have a gentleman that does part-time meals. So he's our meals manager. So I say part-time because he's in the kitchen a couple hours a day, and then he's scheduling the next day

of the meals. And he inputs all the menus and things like that. And then the five of us here share the transportation role. So it's about availability. Like I said before, maybe we like somebody, you know, we have our favorites, our schedule, their schedule. Some of us are probably more comfortable with some of our transportation residents than others. So we do a pretty good job in rotating that. Our meals manager, since he's a part-time in the meals program, he does a lot of the afternoon transportations because he's in the kitchen in the morning. And then I have a volunteer

who does some administrative assistant work for me, filing, putting together some marketing pieces. And then through Norwood Life Society, I contract, part of my budget goes to the marketing department, the accounting department, the business office, IT. So those staff are housed across the street, but I have a certain percentage that I use with them, which makes sense because we're not as big as them, but I need those services. I need that.

You know, we, in our office, we do the billing, but then the accounting department sends it out and does all that kind of stuff and answers all those kind of questions. So we're a small but mighty team in here. So when I say it's the same people, it truly is the same people. Our office manager is kind of in charge of the life unit. So she does all the installs and sets that all up you know any one of us could go do that we're all trained in it so we could go change the battery you know i'm a big believer of making sure everyone's trained in a lot of things because none of us you know things happen and people get sick or people leave their job.

And I never want somebody not to have one of those roles be able to do because I don't want to stop the services for any of the residents or the clients. So then it goes down, I guess, to the caregiver level. Of course, we have caregivers who drive, but they do not are not part of the transportation, mainly because we have insurance and we're on their insurance of the transport. And some of our caregivers, you know, a lot of our caregivers have been here a long time. And I would say the past couple positions we've had in the office, caregivers have been promoted, which I think that's important. So there is a little bit of a career ladder if that's something you want to do, whether it's scheduling, because it's nice to have a caregiver who was a caregiver and now is a scheduler. There's a

different type of, I wouldn't say attitude, but maybe empathy sometimes and clear expectations and what to do. So that has worked out really well as well. And I have done that three times in my time here of promoting people within when there's opportunities for people who they want, if they want to take those opportunities. Yeah, that was perfect. Thanks for breaking that down. Like you mentioned, there's a lot of facial recognition, which builds the community. People recognize the people that are coming in and out of the home and in the office. And so that goes a really long way when there's a lot of continuity and recognition across the team and in the client's homes. I want you to talk a little bit about how these service lines fit together. They're maybe siloed in nature because the service that's being provided, but like you mentioned earlier, the mobile alert is a great way to get into the home, to build that kind of trust relationship, and then that can turn into in-home care or same

thing with transportation. So how do you see them fitting together? How do you see some of those like lines flowing together and generating new business or, you know, maximizing hours for clients? Great question. And I will say that I want everyone to use all the businesses, but that's not, you know, that's my pipe dream, but a lot of people use one or more. I would say about 60% of our clients use one or more businesses. And again, that's how it's flowed. I might start with Life Alert. And then perfect example with that is we have a client who just was using Life Alert. And it kept going off all the time either she was touching it like

needing help or she was falling a lot of times so when somebody when I get a report about somebody we follow up so if they're in the hospital I'm going to go see them in the hospital if we can get in there they keep falling you know older people want their dignity and their privacy. They don't want to burden their children. I hear it all the time. But if I feel that they're in danger or something might be wrong, I'm going to reach out to the family. So this particular client, she was one of those people. Don't bother my daughters. Don't do this. don't do this don't do that but she kept falling and that was a concern of ours and even though they their daughters were their emergency contact both lived out of town so it's not that they could run and see mom you know and here I'm like going to the hospital I'm

more I'm like literally worried about this I I mean, I was worried about her, worried about her. So I met, I called the daughters and we talked about it. So now she has caregiving and the life alert is kind of a, you know, another service. So she doesn't have care every day, but it's kind of a fill-in care. And now she has transportation once a week because her caregiver doesn't drive, but she didn't need driving services. But now she does. So what do we do? She don't want the caregiver to leave. She liked the caregiver, but the caregiver doesn't drive.

So you call the family and say, okay, well, we have this transportation program. Why don't we have a regular transport on Thursdays at noon? And the caregiver is not working there because what I've tried to do is have some sort of care every day. So as, or as many days as we can get that. So there's a caregiver a couple of days a week. She has the life alert. She has the transportation.

And eventually I'm sure she'll get meals. So when I'm doing a service plan or families that I can only, we can only afford two days a week and we want meals. So I'll say, well, let's do meals Monday, Wednesday, Friday, caregiving on Tuesday and Thursday. That's five days of somebody is making sure that mom is safe and home and she's not falling. So that's how they flow. If you have that mentality of making, arranging that. And I do. I'm like, I'm always looking for how we can, not, you know, not only, I mean, I am a business.

So not only grow the business, but have the person stay where they are, meet them where they are, right? Once again, and help them. Again, they're not ridiculously expensive services and it's not all home care. 90% of the clients that I see in any of the businesses tell me, I don't need help. You know, I'm okay. I don't need help. And they could be a frequent flyer to the hospital. They can fall in 20 times. They always give me a list of people that can use the help. You know, their neighbor, their next door neighbor, their cross street neighbor.

But they don't need help. So sometimes starting small and growing it and gaining that trust, gaining the same people. You know, not only do I do all the evaluations and all the assessments, I also do a lot of the supervisory checks. So I come back, I'm always like, you're gonna see me again, I'm like a bad penny, I'll show up. So they see me again. And then if there's a new service to they want, I'm the one that goes in there. Let's talk about the services. So it would be great for everyone to have everything, but they don't necessarily need, you know, and when people are saying, listen, my mom has this amount of money, how do I use that budget? And I always tell people, you know, I always tell families,

let me meet you with in your budget and we could do it, you know? So maybe it's only one day care and four days of meals. At least somebody's coming in. The weekends are a little bit harder because we don't do transportation, nor do we have the meals program. So only caregiving would probably be that one that would make sure someone's being seen. But it all does flow. And then when I think of something else i'm like oh that has to be my next business you know i want i want to i want to be able to bribe everything and also it's also collaborating with other people you know i have really good relationships with home

health so if our client is getting a home health and physical therapy is coming on Monday and Wednesday, then we'll have the caregiver there the other days. Because again, if it's about making sure that your loved one is safe and you have only a certain amount of resources, we're going to divide and conquer and work together. So that's how it's kind of flowed. Normally it works sometimes. No, nothing is perfect, but when it doesn't work, we'll fix it. It's just a conversation or changing of a caregiver, changing of a, you know, they had meals three times a week. Well, let's do meals five times a week to make sure they have, it's covered. Let's have a lifeline. Yeah.

The beauty of multiple service lines is that people have options and you don't have to put people in a box. You can, like you're saying, meet them where they are, create a schedule, a service line that fits their needs. You know, you're not forcing people into a box. You're, you know, creating kind of customized packages. And this isn't for everyone. You know, this obviously takes a lot of time and effort and coordination and different skill sets. But I think you've, you know, established your wheelhouse really well. These are the needs of our community. These are the

services we can provide. And there's a lot of flexibility in how we structure and organize everything. So I think that was perfect to understand. You can maximize these clients. And in home care, we talk a lot about how do you get more revenue per client? Bringing on additional service lines is one way to go about that. It may not be giving them more home care hours, but offering them other services that supplement or complement the home care to create, you know, more opportunities for you and for the clients themselves. I want to shift gears a little bit and talk about challenges. I know you've learned a lot and grown a lot as you've implemented these new service lines. What are just maybe a few of the challenges that come to mind that you face that you'd like to, you know, kind of advise other owners to be aware of when bringing on new service lines and diversifying in this way?

Great question. So, you know, again, I think I mentioned before, like, you know, peaks and flows, like my challenges sometimes peak and flows. But like, currently, and it's going to be everyone's challenge, is the labor pool. I have more business than I have caregivers. So what do you do? And how do you provide the level of quality that you've been providing for the last 30 years the same when you have less and different people coming in the door. I will, and I think mostly every owner of any business will say, it's just a different group of people, definitely in home care. So it's working, you know, I'm a big believer in retention. I'm a big believer. I think that that's an important thing to look at, is why do people stay? You know, I do stay interviews. I ask them, why do you stay? Why do you want to still be here? What can we do? As you know, that's how we met. I do the home care poll surveys. I think that has

helped some of my challenges because I look at trends, I look at, you know, I'm very strategic and I'm very numbers oriented. And I think that if you don't take the time to be strategic and you don't look at data and you don't measure things, nothing is ever going to work. But that's coming from my perspective. So that labor pool has been a definite challenge. Another challenge is that families sometimes don't really understand. They want to see what they want to see. So if our caregiver is saying, you know, your mom, Mrs. Smith is exhibiting this behavior on a consistent basis. And I bring it up to a family and they say something like, oh, I never see my mom do that or she doesn't do that. Well, you know, part of me wants to say, well, we see your mom six days a week.

Do you see your mom six days a week. Do you see your mom six days a week? And I'm not judging the family by any means, but you're hiring us to do a job. You're hiring us because you trust us. We are bringing in good people to take care of your mom. So sometimes I feel like it's hard to help when families don't think mom or dad needs help or the nephew or they don't see the change. So they're continuing with the same level of care, say one or two days. But during the days we're not there, you know, she's falling. She is leaving the house. She's not eating dinner. She's keeping food too long. I mean, there's so many things. When you're in somebody's house every day, you see what's going on, truly see what's going on.

So I always think to myself, I mean, my mom taught me this when I first started working. Never judge. You don't know. There's always three sides to every story. And you want to be empathetic and you want to understand the relationships. Everyone has different relationships. But my challenge is, is that I want to give the best care. And sometimes I feel like I'm banging my head against the wall. And it's not only family. It could be the neighbor. It could be the neighbor. It could be the physician.

You know, it doesn't really. And a lot of times it's the client. Like they're not seeing the things that we're seeing. And they don't want to believe that maybe they're aging or they're. So that is another one of my challenges. So, you know, I would say that you got to kind of. One thing I love about our company is that we do have these pieces and sometimes it just takes a little bit to grow that trust, to grow that family trust, because if you don't see it, you're not going

to buy into us, right? And we have to, we have to prove prove ourselves so whether it's dropping off two meals a week we're going and caregiving once a week we have to prove ourselves that they are going to want to work together and that's been and during the pandemic it was worse because families did not see their families so it was like we were the you know know, we were the person saying it. They're like, oh, my mom would never do that. Or my mom doesn't do that. Okay, you know, work with that and be patient and a little empathetic. The literal eyes and ears in the home. Yeah.

The thought that's coming to mind with the two challenges that you've identified is, you know, they're inherent in home care. And they're basically what keeps us on our toes. It's just the daily challenges of dealing with real people, you know, a really diverse, evolving workforce, diverse and evolving clientele and families. You know, I think that's what, you know, maybe we love and hate about home care is that, you know, there aren't any silver bullets when it comes to how to communicate with, with our people, but that's, I think what keeps it interesting. And we have to just see, see the good in it, you know, see people for who they are and what they bring to the table and, you know, be flexible and willing to work with them. I think that's,

you know, kind of the beauty and the curse. You know, I also think that, again, I have been doing home care for 21 years, like truly home care. And as much and one of the things that I was so attracted to it, it was like you could do anything you're doing in your home. And no one's going to tell you you can't do that and I'm not saying not to have oversight or the federal government or the state government getting involved I'm not saying that but I think for people now it's become so hard to really do what we used to do you know it's become very governmental oversight. You know, and I know a lot of people, a lot of families are like, why can't you do that? Why can't you do that? And I'm always like, well, call your governor, you know, call your representative. Again, I don't want to do anything

that's out of the scope of what we're doing, but some things have become ridiculous. So sometimes it's very hard to say no to families because that's out of our scope and they don't understand it. To you and I, or maybe to, you know, they're like, well, you can give your mom my meds. Well, no, we can't do that, you know? And so, you know, you get a nursing license and you do other things to have that happen. But it's still very difficult. Before the Department of Public Health oversaw us in the company I worked for, we had JCO accreditation. We didn't need to do that. But we want you to stand out when you are making sure someone's watching your store.

And I don't care who watches it. Come in. I invite it, come in. You know, I invite you to come in. I want to know. And I think oversight is good, but not to the fact where you don't feel that you're at home anymore. And I think that's really important to try to work that out with whoever it is, because, you know, I, you know know I've sat on HCOA boards I've sat on home care boards I've sat on leading edge just because I so believe it like we're home have oversight yes but don't have things that are going to take away that no one could afford to stay at home there's a huge education piece here at play you know we we as a you know a population still don't know enough about home care and so that's a huge part of your role you know you're doing it every

single day is just educating families on what is home care what's in your purview what you can and can't do and so I think that's just you know a much larger conversation that we're having as as a nation and will continue to have for probably many more years. Just a couple of questions before we wrap up. Knowing you, you've shared a couple of times today, you have dreams of what you want and what you wish you could have. My question to that is, how do you stay focused? How do you avoid distractions? You have this really well rounded business with multiple service lines. Knowing this, you know, really well rounded business with multiple service lines, knowing you, you probably have your eyes or sights set on

maybe other service lines. How do you stay focused and not get distracted when maybe new flashy opportunities arise? I stay focused because I follow our mission and it's ingrained. My mission is always ingrained. So I stay focused there. I stay focused by listening. And I mean, I want to know what's going on. I want to know what the good, the bad, the ugly. I say that every day, all day long. I want to know.

I think that clear and constant communication is imperative to any business, but specifically when you're working with people's lives and happiness and where they're going. So I, I stay, you know, I'm very, again, I'm strategic. I have goals written down every day. I check off those goals. I highlight those goals. I check myself at the door. You know, I mean, I know that sounds kind of weird, but I don't have an ego. I don't. I never have. I probably never will.

But I want to do what's best. And sometimes what's best is always not what I want to do. Right? So I have to stay focused. I have to learn or I have learned to pivot. The pandemic was a perfect example with pivoting. Losing a really good staff member, you have to pivot. People can walk out the door. You know, we did have another service line. We lost it during the pandemic. I was crushed. I was crushed. I would love to get it back, but there's no interest in it right now. And I don't know why. I don't know if I have to go out and sing and dance and meet everybody. I don't know what I have to do because I felt it was an amazing service line of connecting older people with social outings,

getting them to meet new people. So that was a huge distraction for me. But then I needed to like, okay, no one wants to do it. You know, you think they want to do it. It's not about you. It's about what the clients and the people that we're serving want to do. So I had to kind of take that off my back and just focus on what we do have. You know, I do that.

And I look at trends. And I'm not a girl of sitting back and waiting. I believe in action. And not about everything. I am not, you know, I'm not reactive. I'm very proactive, but I don't want to sit around and wait for something to happen. You know, sometimes you have to make it happen. And I want to look at those trends and we need to fix it because it's only going to get worse. You know, it's like maintaining your home. You maintain your business, you maintain yourself um and then i really honestly miriam it goes back to the the

mission and why am i here why am i been doing this type of work all my adult life i've never done anything else but to to service people and so i don't know anything else um i probably could learn you know i'm a little bit old but i probably could learn but i believe in the mission of helping and caring and you know i am not and i believe in leading that vision and um and if I don't lead and believe no one's going to follow. So like you said, some days I don't want to do this. I mean, you know, some, we all have our bad days. We, you know, years ago I had an amazing group of people and like four at the same time had all these different things happen. And they all left within like three weeks. And I thought myself, oh, my God, I'm never I'm going to be here seven days a week, 24 hours.

I might as well just move in. But you kind of realize like, OK, but you work with other people and you can give other people those. And you kind of have to give up like all the control and let kind of things happen and it you know took a lot of time and work but I just focused what the mission was and it always goes back to the clients and with daily I think that's what makes you such a great leader you emulate a great leader because you're your mission you're mission driven you know you keep your eye on the vision you also said you know data oriented you're not, you know, you keep your eye on the vision. You also said, you know, data oriented, you're not just, you know, flying by the seat of the pants,

you keep an eye on trends and data. And I also love what you said about being proactive. You know, a lot of, a lot of home care is reactive in nature because things happen in real time, but you are focused on being proactive and trying to control, you know, what you can in regards to being proactive of, you know, looking ahead of scenarios, situations that are forthcoming. And so my last question just in this maybe last minute is knowing everything that you know now with all this vast experience, is there anything that you would do differently or any advice you'd give knowing what you know now? I have no regrets. I will say that in any part of my life, because that doesn't do any good. What I would do differently probably is set more boundaries within myself. I learned that later. I wish I learned it younger.

You know, I would say anyone going into it, you don't need to be people's best friends. You don't need to be their drinking buddy. They don't need to, you know, I mean, that's great. I just don't do that because when you have to make hard decisions like layoffs or losing your job or whatever, you have to have that objectivity and I do have that I'm not saying it's easy but years ago I didn't I was everyone's you know I wanted to fit in I wanted to and I still want to well I'm not so sure I want to be liked as much as I want to be respected now years ago I would want to be liked you know you like me for i am and you don't like you know that is your choice no but i would have set some boundaries i would also maybe take in

more time to do more intensive need surveys like um really what do you, what do you need? What do you versus what do you want? You know, I think sometimes it's all the bells and whistles, but we're missing some of the some of the program, because what we want, a lot of times is different what we need. So when I began, I didn't really do any lead surveys. And then I started collaborating with hospitals and home health. So we work together. And I would say, if you're looking to do this, do it in the front end, not in the middle or the back end. And just because you think you know what other people need, you do not. You're not in those shoes. You know, eventually we might be, but everyone, you know, one thing about the world is everyone's different and everyone needs a little bit of something different. So I would say to myself, my younger self, you should have done that younger than you're older. So those are two, a few's really good for people to hear. You know, you have been doing this for so long. You have such vast knowledge and experience and you've learned some hard lessons.

That's just the reality of doing something for so long. And so it's really great for other owners and operators to hear what you've learned and what you would do differently. Laura, thank you so much for sharing all of this. What an incredible story and an incredible journey that you've been through with this, this brand, you know, this business in Chicago. I think it's admirable. And it's so unique to see this kind of well-rounded business that's had a lot of organic growth and provide so many service lines. Next week, we're going to dive into really specifically these three service lines that are in your purview and talk about really how you're executing on them, how you're maintaining quality when your, you know,

attention's divided. So I'm excited to dig into those. So thank you so much for being here. It's been a great conversation. Thank you, Miriam. That's a wrap. This podcast was made by the team at CareSwitch, the first AI powered management software for home care agencies. If you want to automate away the menial of your day-to-day with AI so that you and your team can focus on giving great care, check us out at careswitch.com.