Choosing a Home Care Provider - August Newsletter

Choosing a Home Care provider can be an overwhelming task. Often clients come to me after they’ve searched the My Aged Care website for service providers in their area and come up with a list of 50 to 100 to choose from. Understandably when you’re faced with a list of hundreds of providers and no experience in the area, it can feel impossible to know what to look out for and decide who might provide you with the best care.

For this reason, the theme I’ve chosen for August is

“Choosing a Home Care Provider”

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As with many things aged care, I don’t believe there’s a one size fits all approach to finding a home care provider. I tend to find providers for clients based on their location, needs and prior experience. Some providers have a strong focus on nursing, some are very localised to a particular area, some have a wide range of allied health services that can all be delivered in house. The best fit provider looks different for every client, which is why I generally recommend clients focus on four key areas:

1.     Recommendations or experience

2.     Pricing

3.     Customer service

4.     Service availability

Recommendations or experience

The best way to get feedback about local providers is by speaking to your friends, family and neighbours that may be receiving services. I find this is the best way of receiving current recommendations and better understanding which providers already have a strong presence in your area.

Likewise, if you’ve had some experience with providers (through programs like CHSP or TCP), you may already have an idea about providers you like or wish to avoid.

Pricing

When looking at home care pricing it can feel impossible to compare apples with apples. However, on the My Aged Care website you can use the ‘Compare Home Care Packages’ tool to line up providers side by side. This can be a great way of comparing their different hourly rates and management charges.

Ultimately, if you want a more individualised look at how the services you want will fit within your package, you can request to meet with providers and ask them to put together a draft budget for you.

E.g. you might have a Level 3 and want showering assistance 3x/week, a shopping visit 1x/week, fortnightly cleaning and monthly gardening. The provider could then key this into their budgets and let you know how much of your funding this would utilise.

Customer Service

I often encourage clients to contact a few providers and take note of things like:

• Call wait times

• If they can’t answer your question immediately, how long does it take them to call you back?

• Did you feel supported and understood when speaking with the provider?

• Do they offer a home visit to go through things in greater detail?

• Were all of your questions answered?

These early experiences can often be indicative of the service that you’re going to receive from a company, so if you find each time you contact them you’re waiting 10 minutes on hold and then they can’t answer your query, they might not be the best provider to meet your needs.

Service Availability

Home care providers offer a wide variety of services, but they are not always delivered by in-house staff. This might not necessarily matter for you and often depends on the type of services you’re planning on receiving. If you know you’re going to need significant nursing input, then you may wish to go with a provider that has a strong nursing focus. If you’re focus is on rehabilitation or wellness, then you may want to find a provider that has in-house physiotherapist and OT’s.

The benefit of keeping services in-house is that then all your notes are documented on one-system. Your coordinator, customer service team, nurse and physiotherapist, can all see your file and communicate directly with each other. Whilst it’s not awful to have things outsourced, there is typically a delay in information being passed between organisations which can lead to less timely care outcomes.

Providers will often outsource services like cleaning or gardening, however these are arguably less integral to your overall care management. In my experience, you often receive a better cleaning or gardening service when it’s outsourced to a company that specialises in these services.

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Lastly keep in mind that you always have the option to change providers. If you’re not happy with the service you’re receiving, you’re not locked in with one provider. You can move your package and your services across to another provider at any point in time with most providers requiring two weeks written notice for this to occur.

It’s not uncommon to change providers at some stage, so don’t feel like you have to examine every single detail about every single provider before giving one of them a go.

I tend to recommend that clients have interactions with maybe 2 to 3 different providers, unless there’s a clear stand out from the start. That way you can trial interactions with a few different places, but not get too overwhelmed in analysing 10 different options.

If you would like a more tailored services and recommendations about Home Care providers in your area, please feel free to contact me. I would sit down with you to discuss what services you’re looking to receive, how this would fit in your allocated funding and recommend service providers in your area that are best suited to your needs.

As always, please feel free to pass this newsletter on to friends or family. If they want to subscribe, they can do so via my website.

If you want to have a look through some old podcast episodes, you can search for ‘The Truth About Ageing’. I release episodes sporadically which are available through your favourite podcast app (Apple Podcasts, Spotify) or at www.navigateagedcare.com.au/podcast.

Occasionally I also post updates on socials, which you can find at:

Facebook - @navigateagedcareau

Instagram - @thetruthaboutageing

Big love,

Kate.