Home care, hospice and senior care
When a caregiver gets hurt, the schedule gets hurt with them.
For home care, home healthcare, hospice and nursing homes. One injury turns into an uncovered shift, overtime for whoever picks it up, and a patient or resident who gets someone they don't know.
Start a conversationThe Employer Success ProgramTwo settings, two different sets of problems
Most of the injuries come from the same place: moving people. But a caregiver alone in someone's home and a nurse aide on a facility floor get hurt in different ways, and they need different fixes.
In the client's home
- The caregiver is alone. No second set of hands for a transfer, and nobody to ask.
- The home is whatever it is: stairs, clutter, a tight bathroom, a pet, no lift equipment.
- Driving between visits, in every kind of weather, on a tight schedule.
- New caregivers sent out before they know what an unsafe home looks like or what to do about one.
In a nursing home or facility
- Transfers and repositioning, many times a shift, often one person doing a two-person lift because the floor is short.
- Residents who fall, resist or strike out.
- Night and weekend shifts with the fewest people and the least supervision.
- Wet floors, carts and equipment in hallways.
What one injury turns into
The caregiver is out, so the shift is open. Someone picks it up on overtime, or it goes to agency staff at a higher rate, or the visit moves. The patient or resident gets a stranger. The administrator spends the day on the phone finding replacements instead of running the agency.
Then the claim lands on your experience mod and stays there for three years, so you pay for it again at every renewal.
And there's the part that doesn't show up in the numbers. You got into this to take care of people. That includes the people who do the caregiving, and when one of them gets hurt on your watch, it weighs on you.
Where we usually start
- When in a caregiver's first weeks the injuries happen, and what that says about hiring and onboarding.
- A home safety checklist, and a clear process for what a caregiver does when a home isn't safe.
- How transfers are actually done on each shift, and what equipment is there to do them.
- Transitional duty. Most agencies believe they have no way to bring a hurt caregiver back early. They almost always do.
- The auto claims from driving between visits.
- Whether injuries get reported the same day, and who handles the claim from there.
What it looked like for one home health company
More than 200 employees, 16 injuries a year, and a mod of 1.516 with a renewal offer of $421,000. Many of the injuries happened in a new hire's first few weeks, and many came from conditions in clients' homes. The company believed it had no way to bring injured employees back to work.
We set up pre-employment screening with a fitness for duty exam, a new home safety checklist with a process for unsafe homes, a frequent repeater program and a Zero Lost Time Program using an alternative workplace. Injuries went to 10, then 5, and for the last four years the company has had 1 or 2 a year.
The dashed line is 1.00, an average mod.
What nursing home, hospice and home care leaders said
In all my years doing this, I had never gone through a process like what Duncan put us through. They came on-site, did a full Risk Assessment, and found blind spots in our fleet, our employee safety practices, and our facilities that we did not know we had. They conducted a Coverage Analysis and found gaps our previous agent never caught. Then they went to market with a version of us that was better positioned because of the work we had done together. That is not how other insurance agents work.
Joe Cilone, BSN, LNHA, HSE, President & Co-Owner, Inspira Health Group
Before working with Duncan Financial Group, we were struggling with understanding our coverage, dealing with multiple individuals for a single claim and inconsistent answers to our questions. Their team took the time to understand the unique risks of hospice care and provided us with detailed, but easy to understand explanations regarding our coverage and assigned us a point person to contact with all of our needs and questions.
Because of their guidance, we now feel confident that we are fully protected and have a partner to help us when problems arise.
Bridges Hospice
As the owner of Pento Homecare Agency, Inc., finding the right commercial insurance partner was critical to protecting our patients, staff, and mission. Before working with Duncan Financial Group, we were struggling with not knowing if our company was fully protected. Their team took the time to understand the unique risks of hospice care and provided us with coverage improvements and cost savings.
Jesse R. Pento, Owner & CEO, Pento Homecare Agency, Inc.
Where the Employer Success Program comes in
It starts with a Diagnostic and Plan. We read your loss runs, your mod worksheet and your key contracts, and we talk with the people who run the work. You get the pattern behind your claims and a short list of what's worth fixing first.
From there our claims, HR, safety and fleet people work alongside yours, and you get a Score Card at the start and every year after, measured against your own starting point.
Start with a conversation
If caregivers keep getting hurt the same way, or every injury turns into a day of finding coverage, tell me what's happening. I read these myself and reply within two business days.
Rather pick a time now? Book a 30-minute discussion on your injuries. It's on Teams.