The Future Leaders Awards program is brought to you in partnership with Homecare Homebase. The program is designed to recognize up-and-coming industry members who are shaping the next decade of home health, hospice care, senior housing, skilled nursing, and behavioral health. To see this year’s Future Leaders, visit https://futureleaders.agingmedia.com/.
Lindsey Van Gompel, executive director of specialty programs at Advocate Health’s Continuing Health Division, has been named a 2024 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 wellbeing.
Van Gompel sat down with Home Health Care News to talk about the future of the home-based care space, and how leaders can successfully navigate it.
What drew you to this industry?
In simple terms, I knew I wanted a profession where I could help people. I was fortunate to attend the University of Iowa where there is a strong College of Public Health presence and was encouraged as a potential route to stay in the health care field, but not quite providing direct patient care.
I was able to get a bit more experience through various internships and haven’t looked back since, it’s been great!
What’s your biggest lesson learned since starting to work in this industry?
Stay curious – this industry is multi-faceted and nuanced, what the processes/rules/regulations are in one area could be the complete opposite in the next.
Staying curious and seeking to understand has been a great lens to keep during my health care journey.
If you could change one thing with an eye toward the future of home health care, what would it be?
I would say the ability to implement and adopt new technologies. We know tech/AI is changing the industry on a daily basis – the ability to stay towards the head of the curve will continue to help us deliver on both the patient and teammate experience.
Unfortunately, adopting new technology can often present itself in hardware/software needs that can be fairly cost prohibitive – a more seamless solution would lead to easier adoption.
What do you foresee as being different about the home health care industry looking ahead to 2025?
The importance of it.
Those of us in the industry of providing care in the home know how critical it is to meet patients where they’re at. I feel that others are starting to recognize the importance of it and are starting to create relationships/models to help support more of this type of care in the community.
In a word, how would you describe the future of home health care?
Necessary.
What quality must all Future Leaders possess?
To be a good communicator. ‘Good’ meaning the leader recognizes the stakeholder group they are communicating with and speaking/writing to them in a way that resonates.
There’s a number of ways for communication and no one way to do it; but rather, keeping the communication frequent and transparent truly helps make a difference.
To learn more about the Future Leaders program, visit https://futureleaders.agingmedia.com/.