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There are many factors that go into offering quality and effective home care. Of those factors, caregiver and client matching may be one of the most important.
It also can be one of the most overlooked aspects of the hiring process for home care providers.
“As far as recruitment and retention, things that are critical that come to mind for most people is the steadiness of the work, geography and factors similar to those,” Griswold Home Care CEO Michael Slupecki told Home Health Care News. “But that client match piece is really, really critical as well.”
The Blue Bell, Pennsylvania-based Griswold – formerly Griswold Home Care – provides personal care services via more than 170 locations in 30 states.
Securing a strong match between caregiver and client can make all the difference in a care plan, Slupecki said. But that process has evolved quite a bit over the last few years.
“It’s changed so much from pre-pandemic when we thought we had a caregiver shortage,” Slupecki said. “Then, during COVID, the only question clients would ask would be vaccinated or unvaccinated. That was the only thing clients were asking about. Then, at the caregiver crisis peak, matching was an afterthought, and all our focus and energy was on how to get a bigger pipeline of new caregivers, and how to stop saying no to client referrals.”
Caregiver-client matching is the process providers go through when assigning a caregiver to a specific client based on that client’s individual needs and preferences.
Tailoring and personalizing care goes beyond caring for just the client, too. It also extends to who is caring for them when the caregiver is not around.
Building trust, establishing a rapport and creating a comfortable environment between the caregiver and family can ultimately lead to better outcomes.
“The two things you have to weigh is matching based on skill and then matching based on personality,” Senior Solutions Home Care CEO Kunu Kaushal told HHCN. “Pre-COVID, clients didn’t really care about the skill, because I think the big assumption was that if they liked their caregiver on a personal level, they would come out on the other side and be able to figure out how to do some of their personal care tasks. During COVID, and even more so now with staffing shortages, we’ve seen this big regression and we’ve found that we really needed to lean on the skills piece of the puzzle.”
Senior Solutions Home Care is a Tennessee-based home care provider, the largest privately-owned agency in the state.
The company has recently done an upheaval in its caregiver-client matching process.
“On our side, in order to win, we invest heavily in training in the early days,” Kaushal said. “The first two weeks of employment with our caregivers is very structured skill training. Our thought process is that once they’re in the field, we’re going to win that one component because at least our people know what they’re doing. They feel comfortable in the home. In terms of matching, we have a good indication that we have a caregiver that is good at a certain skill.”
After that, personality matching can come into play for providers who have the time and resources.
Research has also shown that having a consistent caregiver for longer periods of time can lead to better outcomes.
“We’re finding the connection — from a matching side — if you’ve had lots of different caregivers, the volatility of care is much higher,” Kaushal said. “If you have lots of different caregivers, your likelihood of readmission to the hospital, a fall, not getting all your needs met — these all go up.”
There’s also a practical consideration as well. If a caregiver is the fourth or fifth person to enter someone’s home in a month, Kaushal and his colleagues can’t ask that caregiver if a client is acting differently or progressing.
“They won’t be able to know because they don’t have a baseline,” he said.
A good fit
A caregiver-client relationship is a two-way street. That’s why some providers see proper matching as a retention tool as well.
“All this is tied to retention,” Slupecki said. “In our 30-, 60- and 90-day stay interviews, we ask those questions to our caregivers: How are you getting along with the client? Is there a training class that would make you feel more comfortable with them? Is there a care need that you don’t feel comfortable with? We’ve woven that into our interviews, as well as our training programs.”
With a heightened focus on caregiver satisfaction, Griswold has also involved caregivers more in the overall care process.
“We have the ability to really impact rehospitalizations, and, in order to do that, we need to make sure we’re matching caregivers that have that desire, that aptitude, that really want to be part of that solution,” he said. “We know happy caregivers and good matches are going to result in retention, and probably going to result in lower rehospitalizations.”
For Senior Solutions Home Care, the hiring process has evolved as well.
“I still hear about agencies who require one year of caregiving history,” Kaushan said. “You could do that sort of thing when labor was at its height, but today, we’re retraining people from the service industry that really love the personal connection. We’re going to have to give them the skills to do this job, but overall, we’ve broadened the opportunity of who can be a caregiver — while still maintaining the idea that not everyone should be a caregiver.”
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