Increase volume with less costly service
CA agency heeds the call of clients
The Visiting Nurse Association Support Services in Claremont, CA, has always offered patients a choice in caregiver services. One program provides housekeeping and companion care at a cost of $8.50 an hour, and the other includes full bathing and personal care, plus medication reminders, for a cost of $15 to $17.
But patients, particularly those in hospice, said they wanted something that provided a little more care than the first service at a lower cost than the second service. So the agency started its Caregiver 2 program last May, and the results have been encouraging, says Gloria Miller, RN, director of support services for the private duty division of the Visiting Nurse Association of Southern California. The agency serves an area of southern California that is below Los Angeles.
"It has become so popular that we’re finding that the community is using this service as much as the hospice patients," Miller says. "We do phone surveys every three months, and we’ve always had very good results."
Program pays for itself
The program provided 1,500 hours of care during the first three months it was implemented, and because of the high volume, it’s paying for itself, she says.
The Caregiver 2 program, costing $10 an hour, provides patients with a certified nurses assistant (CNA) who will help them with ambulation, housekeeping, companion services, and personal grooming. But the CNAs do not help patients with baths, and that is the main difference between the Caregiver 2 and the full-service Caregiver 3 program, Miller says. (See Caregiver programs, p. 7.)
"We felt if we eliminated the bath, we could do it for less money," she explains.
MIller says the less expensive service has filled a market niche that she expects will grow. "I don’t have any figures for how many clients we have, but about half of the referrals we get in a week are for the Caregiver 2 program."
CNAs provide the care, and since they are paid less than home health aides, this helps to reduce the agency’s cost.
Home health aides are paid more because they are required to take 40 additional hours of training and must learn range of motion exercises, wound care, and other skills, Miller explains.
The agency also benefits from the new service because clients who might otherwise only take the Caregiver 3 service for a couple of hours a day now are purchasing some extra hours of service through Caregiver 2.
Sometimes the home health aides who had been seeing the client for the higher level of service will agree to stay in the home at a lower hourly wage. "They would rather stay where they are than go to someone else’s house," Miller says.
The new service is a winning proposition for everyone involved, Miller says. "We want to help the community, and we don’t want people to go broke over our service."
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