The Future Leaders Awards program is brought to you in partnership with PointClickCare. The program is designed to recognize up-and-coming industry members who are shaping the next decade of senior housing, skilled nursing, home health, and hospice care. To see this year’s Future Leaders, visit https://futureleaders.agingmedia.com/.
Joseph Cauterucci, the president and CEO of Avalon In-Home Nursing and Rehabilitation, has been named a 2022 Future Leader by Home Health Care News.
To become a Future Leader, an individual is nominated by their peers. The candidate must be a high-performing employee who is 40-years-old or younger, a passionate worker who knows how to put vision into action, and an advocate for seniors, and the committed professionals who ensure their well-being.
Cauterucci sat down with HHCN to talk about the personal inspiration behind his company, how his organization has kept turnover low and why it’s important to rely on your clinicians.
HHCN: What drew you to this industry?
My mother actually owned a home health agency. It’s been around for 28 years. Unfortunately, she passed away in April of this year. Three years ago, I decided to open up my own company and just kind of hit the ground running in the family business.
What’s your biggest lesson learned since starting to work in this industry?
Your clinicians are the most important part of your organization. They are what represents the company on a daily basis and can decide whether you’re going to get future referrals. The basis of the company is on our clinicians.
Making sure that we do enough training, where they feel like they’re growing in the roles that they’re in, is very important as well. I have noticed over the years, our physical therapists, nurses, etc., always want to keep growing in whatever field that they’re in. I think the education that we’ve given our staff is what’s kept our turnover rate very low.
If you could change one thing with an eye toward the future of home-based care, what would it be?
I would love for Medicare to give more resources to home health care. Seeing everything that happened during the pandemic, and seeing how much home health care has helped during that time, I would think that there would be more emphasis on getting more funding and awareness for home health care. I’d love to see that happen more.
What do you foresee as being different about the home-based care industry looking ahead to 2023?
There’s going to be more emphasis on home health care just because, again, what happened during the pandemic. The transition from hospital to home is going to be much more important these next few years.
In a word, how would you describe the future of home-based care?
The future is bright. Before the pandemic, there were a lot of people that never had a clue of what home health care was. Now, a lot of people have done their due diligence. They go to the Home Health Compare website and just have a better understanding of what home health is. I would expect that home health really becomes a focal point in our health care system going forward.
What quality must all Future Leaders possess?
I think a willingness to listen to their team is very important.
You hire people and put them in place to do their job and I think it’s very important to listen to your clinical staff. They’re there on a daily basis dealing with the clinicians, dealing with the referral sources, dealing with our patients and things like that. They have a better understanding of what needs to happen.
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