Sun Berkowitz: The Opportunities, Growing Problem In Store For Home Care Providers 

Shelly Sun Berkowitz, founder and executive chair of BrightStar Care, has stayed involved with the home care field even after selling her company and stepping from the CEO role into her current position as executive chair.

The home care veteran still works directly with families to connect them with care, and she recently bankrolled a survey of 1,000 Americans with an aging parent or grandparent to analyze how people research and choose an in-home care provider. The survey’s results show that demand for in-home care is set to accelerate, creating strain on the home care workforce, and that accreditation is a critical differentiator for providers wishing to stand out from the crowd.

The survey found that 56% of respondents were planning for their family member’s care, though only 10% were currently using an in-home care provider.

“That just says that there’s going to be an acceleration of demand,” Sun Berkowitz, who is also the founder of business consulting firm Founder 2 Founder, told Home Health Care News. “We’ve got to continue focusing on the supply side of our caregiver workforce, because that’s going to become that much more of an issue moving forward.”

While the survey’s data shows that providers will continue to face staffing challenges, it also highlights an opportunity.

For 57% of respondents, the most important brand-related factor of choosing a provider was that the home care provider was accredited, a process that Sun Berkowitz said is neither easy nor cheap.

“But if at the end of the day, our responsibility is making sure that families are receiving the highest quality care, I think it’s a really great thing that there’s a big sister looking out to make sure, in a third party, unannounced survey way, that what you expect of your franchisees and your policies, procedures and technology is actually being followed,” Sun Berkowitz said.

While Sun Berkowitz herself invented a technology stack and deployed it across BrightStar franchises, which she says ensures consistency and rigor, accreditation provides an additional level of assurance to the company and to families.

“I’m not in [franchisees’] offices knowing they’re doing everything that I’ve asked them to do and that they’ve signed on to do. Joint Commission gives me the way to make sure we can say to discharge planners and the families, we’re having someone third party come in and inspect us, and we’re paying them and asking them to do it and giving them permission to do it,” she said. “To my knowledge, I think we’re still the only one at a national scale that has done that voluntarily.”

Sun Berkowitz said she would love to see more of the home care industry opt to become accredited.

One of the survey’s findings surprised Sun Berkowitz and did not align with her professional experience. According to 66% of respondents, the person who would ultimately decide which home care provider to employ was the older adult receiving care.

“In my personal experience, that’s less the case,” she said. “It sometimes is more the adult child.”

In Sun Berkowitz’s experience, the person set to receive the care oftentimes “fights” receiving the care.

“Not because they’re unwilling to have someone in their home that gives them greater socialization, because I think they like that,” she said. “I think [the issue is] letting the child pay for it.”

In some of these cases, Sun Berkowitz helps the child of the person receiving care “fib a little,” suggesting that Medicare covers the cost of care, while ensuring that the person who will pay for the care fully understands that services are private pay. Concerns about payment are one of the biggest hurdles for families to overcome, Sun Berkowitz said.

She suggests that the difference between the survey’s findings and her experience is that 90% of respondents had not yet engaged a caregiver for their family member. They therefore did not yet understand the friction points that may be in store for them and opted to believe that their parents would make the final call.

Still, the survey’s findings were reassuring for how home care providers spend their marketing dollars, Sun Berkowitz said.

Over 80% of respondents looking for care for their parents were between the ages of 45 and 65, according to the survey. Only 8% were between the ages of 35 and 44.

“I was glad to see that who we are generally advertising to, with the messaging we have and the channels that we’re on, if it’s TV or our social sites that we’re going after, that the demographic is not changing rapidly,” Sun Berkowitz said. “We’re starting to get more of the grandchildren involved in that journey, but it’s not so much so that you would change who your target focus is for advertising and marketing experience.”