Building a successful and sustainable caregiver training program in personal home care demands meticulous planning and execution.
From defining leadership responsibilities to establishing a comprehensive training schedule, every aspect plays a pivotal role in shaping the program’s effectiveness.
Strong training programs and ongoing education also go a long way in retaining caregivers in an industry where every provider is trying their best to hold onto the employees they onboard.
“My old business manager used to have a saying: ‘He or she who has the caregivers wins,’” Bob Roth, co-founder and managing partner of Cypress HomeCare Solutions, told Home Health Care News. “In order to get the caregivers in the funnel, we’ve got to get them trained and get them back out.”
Founded in 1994, Cypress is a home-based care company that offers personal care, dementia programs and more.
Roth has seen a lot in his long career in personal home care. One constant throughout has been the importance of a strong training program.
In 2019, Cypress joined the Honor Care Network as a way to gain access to more caregivers, new technology and a complete support operations solution while staying an independent provider.
After leaving the Honor Care platform at the beginning of 2024, one of the main focuses for Roth was to better streamline onboarding and training for caregivers.
“I learned a lot through my experience with Honor and one of the things I learned was to take as many steps out of the process as possible,” Roth said. “That includes tasks, redundancy and workarounds. We’re really starting to focus on getting people into the system and then right back out.”
To help Cypress usher in a new era of caregiver training is Nevvon, a New York City-based home care training and certification technology platform.
“The way we approach training is always caregiver-first,” James Cohen, co-founder and CEO of Nevvon, told HHCN. “Meaning, we understand who the caregiver is so we don’t build a training program for an office employee. We wanted to make it extremely mobile friendly, multilingual and extremely user friendly.”
Nevvon’s other clients include providers like AccentCare, Addus and Help at Home, among others.
The way Nevvon builds its caregiver training programs is through two key components: compliance and membership population.
Because each state has its own set of compliance regulations, companies like Nevvon have to consider the different parameters and requirements caregivers need in different states.
For instance, New York requires caregivers to have 12 hours of training on specific topics, while California requires five hours of training on an annual basis.
After tailoring training to states, the members and patients are considered next. If a provider handles a considerable amount of dementia patients or members with traumatic brain injuries, training is more tailored to that need.
“The third consideration is mapping training back to value-based payments,” Cohen said. “We look at all the metrics that value-based payments have and then we map our training right back to it to create the best outcomes possible so we can create value and, ideally, the agency gets paid as much money as possible because they’re taking on the risk with their payers.”
Leadership, caregiver buy-in
Home care providers are constantly trying to simplify operations. Implementing a training baseline is no different.
“Communication is key,” Jessica Farra-Lardinois, VP of people and culture for Modivcare’s home division, told HHCN. “Without communication, we cannot be successful. We use multiple different methods, but what we train everyone on is the LARI method: listen, affirm, respond and inquire.”
The Denver-based Modivcare offers technology-enabled health care services and provides non-emergency medical transportation (NEMT). The company’s Modivcare Home division includes its personal care, remote patient monitoring (RPM) and nutritional meal delivery service offerings.
At the heart of any caregiver training program lies a strategic approach to leadership and organizational structure. While middle management often assumes a central role in overseeing training initiatives, the collaboration between leadership, HR departments and frontline supervisors is essential for seamless implementation.
For every provider across the country, it takes a real team effort to implement these programs.
“We have a really talented learning and development team who helps with all of our operational training across Modivcare Home,” Farra-Lardinois said. “We do monthly training with all of our leadership and all the operations within PCS on how we create a culture of care. It’s so critical to have leadership buy-in. You can’t build a pyramid upside down. If you don’t have buy-in from your divisional president, your SVP of operations, all of those leadership positions, you’ll never get anywhere.”
At Modivcare, those training sessions are done at “Connected Hubs,” which are monthly branch operation meetings. Those are held jointly between Farra-Lardinois’ people and culture team, the operations team and the engagement team.
Essentially, it’s an all-hands-on-deck approach, knowing that training is so closely tied to retention and provider success.
The frequency of training sessions post-onboarding is also critical for maintaining caregiver competency and enhancing the quality of care delivered.
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