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/.
David Chandler, senior director of strategic programs at the Towson, Maryland-based Senior Helpers, 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.
Chandler sat down with HHCN to talk about the importance of communication skills, how senior living eventually introduced him to home care and why he’s excited about the future of reimbursement.
HHCN: What drew you to this industry?
Originally, I started in senior care as a resident assistant and a private caregiver. I saw that there was a lot of opportunity for improved care for the seniors. Through that opportunity, I wanted to make a difference. There had been some negative preconceived notions of what it’s like to go into nursing homes or skilled nursing, or even senior living communities. I wanted to be a leader of senior living communities and make them a place that is really fun. I wanted to make them a place where I’d enjoy living when I got older.
That was what originally drew me. As I continued to advance in my career, I saw that there was an opportunity to grow in leadership, and I really enjoy helping people to recognize skills and talents that they may not have been aware of. Throughout my career, I’ve had a lot of opportunities to help promote people and see them advance their careers.
What I’ve really enjoyed about being in home care is helping seniors to identify their risk for not being able to remain independent. That way they can stay home safe and age in place for as long as they can and have the best quality of life.
What’s your biggest lesson learned since starting to work in this industry?
The biggest lesson that I’ve learned is that the employees want to feel known, they want to feel heard and they want to feel valued.
Throughout my career, one of my mentors always used to teach me to manage by walking around. What that meant was, you’re not sitting in your office. It means you’re taking time to go out there and have conversations with your employees and try to understand what challenges they’re facing and what are ways that they want to grow.
If you could change one thing with an eye toward the future of home-based care, what would it be?
I’m really excited about the potential opportunity in the future with reimbursement. If you hear our CEO Peter Ross, he often talks about how years ago, he never saw us entering into the government reimbursement arena, and his sole focus was on private pay. Over the last few years, we’ve seen our reimbursement rates from government payers significantly increase to where we’re now receiving upwards of 30% of our revenue from government payers.
What we’ve learned is that 55% of all medical payment in our country comes from the government. We’re working on collecting a lot of data to show the value of private care, and how private care can affect rehospitalizations and ultimately save Medicare significant amounts of money. By working with the government and government payers to prevent hospitalizations, keep our seniors at home safe, improve their quality of life — ultimately it would be a value to receive more reimbursement for the services that we’re providing.
I really see those conversations continuing to increase in the future.
What do you foresee as being different about the home-based care industry looking ahead to 2023?
I think that there’s going to be a continuing trend into a focus on technology. There’s a lot of private care companies, Senior Helpers in particular, focusing on the technology around our assessments, being able to take the data from our assessments, and translate that into how we’re preventing rehospitalizations, preventing unsafe occurrences and improving quality of life.
I think there’s also going to be a lot of advancements in things like medical condition monitoring. We’ve known about telehealth for a number of years, but I think that we’re gonna continue to see that trend increase in ways that enable physicians to partner with private care companies.
In a word, how would you describe the future of home-based care?
I would say opportunity.
What quality must all Future Leaders possess?
I would say communication skills.
When you work in home care, there are so many people that you have to communicate with. Oftentimes, we’re communicating across generations as well. The ability to communicate with them can really have a significant impact on the success of your business. This goes across the line for your being able to successfully communicate with clients, families, referral partners and employees. Having that ability really gives you a significant advantage.
