Senior Care Academy
Senior Care Academy is a podcast dedicated to providing valuable information and expert advice on navigating the world of senior care for both senior care providers, and families with aging parents. Hosted by industry professionals, each episode covers a wide range of topics including healthcare options, legal considerations, financial planning, and emotional support for caregivers. If you are a healthcare provider, have aging parents, or are a senior adult, this podcast is for you! Tune in to gain valuable insights and resources to help you make informed decisions and provide the best care for your loved ones.
Senior Care Academy
From Teenage Caregiver to Industry Leader: Jared Rodgers’ Revolution in Senior Care
Can starting a career at 13 set the foundation for lifelong success in senior care? Join us for an inspiring discussion with Jared Rodgers, who shares his incredible journey from his early days in Denver, Pennsylvania, to becoming a leader in senior care, insurance, and financial services. Jared’s story is a testament to the power of dedication and human connection, deeply influenced by his mother’s work as a CNA. We also examine the transformation of nursing homes over the years and the crucial importance of treating seniors with the dignity they deserve.
Explore the fascinating growth of LifeForce Senior Care Corporation, a company that began as a small endeavor in 1989 and has since blossomed into a major player in New Jersey. Jared reveals how adopting Navy principles and focusing on self-reflection, effective systems, and rigorous training helped elevate LifeForce’s operations. Learn about the technological advancements that have revolutionized communication within the industry, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the pressing challenges home care agencies face today, from legislative hurdles to the need for attracting younger caregivers.
We also shed light on the legal responsibilities of being a domestic employer and the benefits of partnering with licensed home care agencies. Jared opens up about the seldom-discussed reality of teenage caregivers, sharing his own early experiences and the significant responsibilities young caretakers bear. This episode is a heartfelt homage to the unsung heroes in senior care and an eye-opening look at the innovations and support systems that can make their essential work more manageable. Don't miss this compelling conversation that highlights the profound impact of compassionate and innovative senior care solutions.
Hey everybody, Thanks for tuning in. Welcome to the Senior Care Academy, the podcast for anyone in the aging adult industry who wants to make the biggest impact possible on their clients. I'm your host, Alex Aldridge. I love seniors and I love helping them out and talking about services that they need. In today's episode, we chat with Jared Rogers. Jared is a seasoned professional with an extensive experience in senior care, insurance and financial services, With a career marked by a strong commitment to ethical leadership and creative problem solving, Jared has demonstrated a unique ability to translate strategic vision into actionable, measurable outcomes. He is currently leading LifeForce Senior Care Corporation, focusing on innovative solutions to enhance senior elder care services.
Speaker 1:In this episode today, we're going to be talking about some of the challenges that home agencies face, the advantages of using home agencies versus going private, and maybe what to do if this is your first time experiencing the necessity for a home care agent, and increasing our education. Without further ado, let's dive in. Jared, so awesome to have you on the show today. Thanks for being here. Thanks for inviting me. Tell us a little bit about yourself, like where you're from, where you grew up, your start in senior care. Tell us a little about yourself.
Speaker 2:So I grew up in a town called Denver, Pennsylvania, which is located in Lancaster. So a lot of people are familiar with Lancaster because of the Amish culture that it's very rich and vibrant with. And it's interesting because you made a comment about how did I start in this industry, and it was actually around the age of 13. My mother came home one day and she said congratulations, I have your first job. And I said well, I never applied. My mother was a CNA for the local nursing home, which happened to be called the Denver Nursing Home at the time, and she was a CNA there and they needed some child labor to help out with getting a lot of the outdoor maintenance maintained and taken care of. So around the age of 13, when I started working, I mostly took care of mowing the yard, anything to do with painting, anything that had to do with snow removal. So while my friends were sleeping in for the two-hour delay, I was walking to the local nursing home to shovel the driveway and make sure that no one slipped and fell.
Speaker 2:And so just being in that environment, I got to see where back in what 1980-something or early 90s, what a nursing home looked like. Now they call it a skilled care, but at the time it was called a nursing home and my mother was very, very passionate about what she did. She would bring seniors home on a regular basis that really didn't have any family members, so they'd come over to the house for weekends to have a meal, especially on a hot summer day, a picnic table on the porch. She'd bring them over on Thanksgiving. So it's something that I was always exposed to and it's something I started at a very young age.
Speaker 1:That's incredible that your mom just came home and said hey, you got a job and you started doing all those things. Similarly, my mom started a cleaning business. I couldn't have been older than 10. And she started cleaning and senior independent livings and her clients transferred to assisted livings and memory care and skilled nursing homes and so she gradually became a caretaker and, growing up, we didn't have a babysitter and so we would go to their homes and we would help my mom clean and we would help talk to them and we would bring them to the store and they'd come over for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners and that's so cool that you had that experience too, where you kind of grew up and you were serving them at such a young age. When you were that young, did you pick up any tips or tricks that really helped you out now in your career, or did you learn anything specific back then that really stood out to you?
Speaker 2:It was a very interesting experience for me. As you're talking, I remember this one time I was. I just happened to be walking through the facility at the time and there's this old man asking me for help to change him and he needed help taking his robe off and I couldn't find anyone on the floor on the floor time because it was later in the day, and so I helped him. At a certain point I was like what's going on here? I didn't realize that this guy was maybe experiencing dementia, and so I think for me it's just from seeing that and from seeing how my mother specifically interacted with everyone, just treating everyone like a human being, no matter what they're going through in life and what their challenges are.
Speaker 2:She was just extremely patient and was able to just really show a not looking at the elements that the people are going through, because it can be very scary as a child to not always understand what someone of that age is going through. You have to realize too, like I was thinking about this, reaching a milestone of your 70s and 80s is still kind of a young thing. When my mom was working in nursing homes, it wasn't common for people to live this long, so it was still kind of a new industry, even though there was some level of nursing care. The culture has changed over time where, instead of grandparents staying at home with you, now you're finding their own place because now you're trying to figure out your own family. So it definitely was an experience that had an everlasting impression for me, because I didn't always work in this industry, but it helped me in this industry and also other industries I worked in my mom's had a big impact on me, on the career that I'm taking.
Speaker 1:I currently outside of the podcast. I work at help really, and help really is designed to do in-person care as well as senior care efforts on the digital front and it's cool to see like as we help seniors with free classes online or maybe connecting them with the correct resource that they need. It really resonates with me because of like growing up around so many seniors. Talk us through where your career went after your first job at 13, what you ended up doing where you're at.
Speaker 2:And this is a long time ago, so this is almost 25 years ago. So after high school I went right into the military. So I went right into the Navy and serviced there for several years. I was stationed in Japan at the time on an aircraft carrier. I was a search and rescue swimmer, slash boats and mate, so when everyone went to port they went to enjoy the local port. I had to stay behind and paint the ship before I could enjoy it.
Speaker 2:So some fun things about it. And then from there I went to college. I actually was injured in the service so had that opportunity to go to college because of the military and went to Penn State and from there just got into the IT business for a little bit but then mostly spent a lot of time in the financial industry, selling for private wealth management, so selling securities or insurance, helping families to plan their financial picture, and so that's where I got into it. Then from there for several years I eventually grew into the opportunity of where I am at right now and that's just getting back into senior care.
Speaker 1:Awesome Talk about. If you don't mind, could you share the position in the company, your role?
Speaker 2:So Lifeforce was a company that started back in 1989.
Speaker 2:The founder his name is Victor Everick Leanne, and he is just a very avid reader and just saw a trend and a need that families were losing their confidence and trust in senior health care. Back in the mid to late 80s. There was a lot of abuse and neglect that was coming up and he saw that there was an opportunity to bring the care into the home, and he actually shared this idea with a friend who started an agency in Maryland and then, a few months later, he started his own agency and then he organically grew into the specialty that we do now, which is the living care. So we only do living care, and that's something that he organically grew into. And then I came on board in 2011, and at the end of 2012 was offered the opportunity to purchase and own and operate the division that I currently own and operate right now, and that's Cherry Hill, new Jersey, and I oversee the entire state for our services, and we also have another office up in Parsippany as well, which is Northern New Jersey. Wow.
Speaker 1:That's a big area to cover Jersey's deceptively big. Yes, I'm from Virginia. I'm actually currently in Virginia, and so I went up to Delaware a couple weeks ago. So I just think about Jersey and New York all the time when you're up in Delaware, because it's just like Delaware, maryland, jersey, new York super quick At Lifeforce with your big operation. Walk us through day to day what you experience, what you handle, what you manage.
Speaker 2:So I think how I like to address that is just give you a timeline of how I started this branch and what it evolved into, if that's okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that'd be, perfect.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so when I started the branch, it really was just myself a desk, a computer and a phone and I started doing a lot of grassroots work and calling people, seeing people, and I learned a lot of this hustle and hustling with being in the financial industry.
Speaker 2:If you watch Boiler Room or Wolf on Wall Street, it's a very intense environment to work into, but it conditions you well for something like this.
Speaker 2:So coming into this industry where people were receptive to what you were saying was a lot easier to work with. So I was really in a small space at the time I think maybe it was like 600 square feet and over time I started adding staff as we started to grow and then it got to a point where I'd say about three years ago, I had to shift my mindset from being a business operator to a business owner and just really put myself in more of a 30,000 foot perspective and help manage a company. And that was a real challenge for me just to trust people to do their job and their responsibilities well, to do their job and their responsibility as well. And I'm very fortunate that I do have people that are really passionate about this just as much as I am and took on their roles and, yeah, it was a very evolving process. So that's an interesting topic on its own with how do you evolve from a business operator to a business owner? And then also, this industry is very challenging in itself as well.
Speaker 1:You bring up a really good point, that 30,000 foot view, I mean, so to speak. What were some of the things that helped you climb up to that view? What were some of the obstacles you overcame to develop that trust in others to do their job?
Speaker 2:There is something that Robert Downey Jr was talking about. He talks about hugging the cactus, which is like a lot of just self-reflection, and so a lot of it just had to take ownership of what I did well as a business operator, but also some of my shortcomings as a business owner and really put a lot of effort and work onto those things.
Speaker 2:So I work really hard in putting systems in place. I think to be successful as a home care agency or any business, you have to really master communication and expectations, and so what I had to do was utilize my past experience, and one of the biggest things that really helped us make this great shift in our agency is reflecting on my time in the service. So when I went into the Navy, they didn't put me on the first aircraft carrier that became available. They said before we send you anywhere, we're going to put you through training for about 16 weeks to give you at least an idea of what you're going to be facing, and also work on again hugging the cactus. What are those characteristics about you that we need to really refine and make stronger so you can be successful? And when I took the time to step back, I was good at training our caregivers, that's it. I wasn't working as much on my staff as well. So we took a step back. We redefined their mission, we went through the vision, we went through calibration just to make sure that we're all on the same page. We reviewed everyone's job description. Make sure that the job description match exactly what they're doing, because a lot of times people sign that job description when they come on to the job and that's it. We actually review that every year to make sure that people are staying within the parameters. And what are they missing? Is there a part of their job description that they have fallen short on? And what's that accountability, and how do we improve upon that? So I think just taking the time to take a step back and do that and being grateful for the systems that did work well, that's what I think has really helped us to get to the level that we are at today and I think that's extremely important for any agency is just to be able to really take a break and say, hey, let's look at how we're running as an organization instead of living the day-to-day moment.
Speaker 2:We try to control. I love the saying you can't control the wind, but you can control the sales. So what in our business can we control? We can't control a client having a bad day, but we can control how a caregiver responds when they experience that. We can't control that our patients are passing away. So what are the aspects of our business that we can control? So just finding what we can control, putting those systems in place so we're effective and it's really, really working on communication. It's a big thing in expectations. You have to be able to set expectations with your employees, with your caregivers, with your nurses and even with families and even with clients. You have to be comfortable with that. Even when it's uncomfortable, you have to be comfortable with setting expectations.
Speaker 1:I love a lot of what you just said. I think the first thing that I love the most was your clear line of communication. I think it's vital and I feel in my work and in my day-to-day life, like when people set expectations with me. It creates a space that's black and white and it either is or it isn't, and with good leadership and with good leaders around me, I've learned that when things aren't and when I falter on an expectation, like they're there to bolster me up and they're there to help me achieve that expectation and it's clear to me and it's well-defined what it is that I need to do and it creates a super good frame for me to work, in which is amazing.
Speaker 2:The biggest thing is conditioning your staff to be solutions-oriented. I think it's human nature to get really fixated on the problems that we're facing. It takes a little time to get people fixated on what's the solution. Okay, the problem's here, let's not focus on it anymore, let's focus on what's the solution to that. So kind of following in what you're talking about.
Speaker 1:That's an amazing point you bring up, because solution conditioning I think part of like what you're saying really resonates with me and also hugging the cactus. I remember I watched that award ceremony where Robert Downey Jr gets up and he talks about overcoming his addictions and he said he called Mel Gibson and Mel Gibson told him you just got to hug the cactus and you got to love the part of yourself that sucks. And at the time when I heard that I had no comprehension of embracing my weaknesses or embracing my faults, and hearing you say that phrase just brought me a lot of joy, like a lot of happiness, because it just reminded me of a part of my life where I just I had to learn to grow and to accept that the problem is what the problems exist, and that's okay. There's always going to be problems, but let's start getting solution oriented.
Speaker 2:I'm getting a little bit off topic, but when you take the time to live in the world of gratitude and just count your blessings, you start counting the blessings that were the most difficult times of your life. You start being grateful for those challenges. So absolutely.
Speaker 1:Yeah, a hundred percent. I definitely think that's on topic. I think, being in the senior care space, you learn a lot from the seniors and you learn a lot from the older adults that their lives are full of things good, bad, ugly, happy, joyful, and most of the time in my experience with the seniors they're very grateful people, very humble, to have lived as long as they have, very happy to be alive, very excited to experience new things, to be able to express their stories. So I think gratitude, living in that state of gratitude, is totally on topic. With what we do, switching gears a bit, could you go into detail about what Life Force does, what type of care you guys provide and the services you do?
Speaker 2:Absolutely, we'd love to. So what Life Force does is in-home care. There is medical and non-medical care. We focus on the non-medical care, the needs of our clients, and we strictly do live-in care. So there's hourly, there's 24-hour care, there's live-in care, but what Life Force does is we exclusively provide live-in care services to our clients throughout the entire state of New Jersey, and there are other branches that are located in Pennsylvania, delaware, maryland, but for me, I'm responsible for New Jersey, so that's exactly what we do.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's wonderful. I know things are growing in the senior space. How does technology play a part in Life Force's growth as a company?
Speaker 2:So in terms of technology, there's still an opportunity for us to utilize a lot of that because we have our support systems in place. We have our nurses, we have our social workers to provide support to families, to provide support to caregivers. And one of the things that you'll find with technology is that, as I mentioned, culture has changed a lot where the children of our clients they don't live in New Jersey, they live in Virginia, they live in Florida, they live in California. We even had one that was in Germany. So just having that right technology to help communicate and connect the family so they're able to have conversations with doctors COVID was a very challenging time, but from that came ingenuity.
Speaker 2:So just the solutions of okay, we've always had some level of okay, our clients have a hard time getting to hospital or to a doctor's appointment, so you're having a lot of visiting physicians. Covid took it to the next level. So now you have a lot of telemedicine. So just making sure that our clients and mostly our families have those resources in place. So when we come across that we have social workers and our nurses, but our social workers know those companies that we can connect them with and say, hey, here's a solution that's for you, with helping to manage medication, with helping to manage those doctor's a point where you have to talk to the families and say, okay, how do you spend down, so then they can support, so it can support you to be comfortable, because none of us get out of here alive, right. So we want to make sure that we have those resources in place, and technology has become a huge part of that lately and still trying to figure out how to implement it with our industry.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know that the senior care space is growing with technology. There are so many different tech companies that are working with seniors. There are so many different referral agencies that are utilizing technology. There's wearable technology, there's AI. There's a lot to implement in the senior care space. You kind of brushed over two ideas that I'd love to touch on. You touched on COVID being like a challenge and overcoming that and I'd love to talk about that, and then you also talked about educating the families and helping them understand, like, what's going on. Can you talk about the challenges that are facing home care agencies and what Lifeforce does to mitigate those challenges or maybe overcome them?
Speaker 2:So when you look at a living caregiver versus an hourly caregiver, you're going to come across some different dynamics, and for a lot of our living caregivers, a lot of them are foreigners. They're typically from West Africa, caribbean, jamaica, haiti. We have some for the Philippines, and so we've been around since 1989. So a lot of our caregivers have been with us for 20, 30 years and a lot of those West African caregivers specifically have been here on refugee status. So that means their situation was very harsh. The stories that I hear or heard on a regular basis, or hear on a regular basis from people that have lived that life it's unfathomable. The caregiver that actually took care of my mom who passed away in 2017, her story I mean she was a midwife and was working in a hospital when gorillas were coming through the hospital and just shooting anyone and everyone they saw helped a mother deliver a baby, put the baby on top of the mother and doesn't know what happened after she left. So what we have grown up to is very fortunate. So what you'll find is a lot of those individuals had the opportunity, on refugee status, to come to the us and they provided a living for themselves, but they also were very adamant about providing a better quality of life for their offspring. So a lot of our caregivers their children have gone off to be doctors or nurses, or attorneys, accountants so what you're finding is not a lot of them have encouraged their children to become caregivers.
Speaker 2:So the biggest challenge that we're having is finding a younger generation looking to get into this particular industry. So the caregivers that's great. They've been with us for 20, 30 years, but some of the physical demands they just can't keep up with anymore. So one of the biggest challenges, the individuals that would be interested in passing on the legacy that the home office have kind of before. So that's a challenge. I think the other big challenge that we're facing right now is just a lot of legislative changes and labor law changes, and it's really has created a lot of costs. So here in New Jersey back in 2011, when I started, we were charging around $175 a day. Now we're up to about $400 a day and so what we're really doing is families who can afford us.
Speaker 2:So it's forcing us to be in a position that you can only use if you can afford us. If you can't, sorry, we're not an option for you, and every state runs their Medicaid program differently. New Jersey doesn't cover our type of service. If you have a family member that gets to a point where they need a large amount of hours of service throughout the day, they can't afford it, whether it's living or not then they're kind of forced to Again. They grew up when there was neglect and abuse and so there's a lot of fear associated with going into a facility.
Speaker 2:A lot of changes have happened. When I started when I was 13 years old, the nursing home I worked in was a very hospital-like setting. Now, if you go into a skilled facility, they're making it more to a residential experience. It's a challenge of shifting that mindset with families. So I think the other biggest thing again is like legislative labor, it's the labor law it's just not keeping in mind, because what happens is someone has to pay for this, and the families. So it's becoming very for families wow, that's difficult.
Speaker 1:That's really difficult to do with. Do you like foresee things changing? Do you foresee, like, maybe, smaller home care agencies getting absorbed by bigger ones, like what kind of shifts have happened in New Jersey as a result of these changes?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So when I started in 2012, I remember reading an article and they said that living, specifically, was going to grow by 70%. We didn't realize that all these other demands were going to come on to us financially. I mean, you got inflation now too. So I think you're going to find more creative options on the investment side. You have long-term care insurance, but there's other products out there, I think, that are going to start to come to surface that will allow families to be able to offset some of the costs for the long-skilled care that they receive. I think you're going to find the government reevaluating how they spend their Medicaid dollars and maybe getting more involved with helping families out who need the service. Like I said before, we are in a time period where we're living longer than ever expected, so the longer you live, the more ailments you uncover that you never experienced before, because people weren't reaching 90 years old on a regular basis.
Speaker 1:And now what does that look like? Yeah, let's talk about the advantages of utilizing an agency versus going private. Can you explain what going private means and what utilizing an agent means? I think who?
Speaker 2:was managing her trust. So we had a client who was at the time. She was around 40 years old, she had MS, multiple sclerosis and muscular dystrophy and the reason that her cousin came to us is because he had a fiduciary responsibility to properly manage the trust and at the time he was using a private aid, so he was doing things by the book and making sure that the payroll taxes were being paid and all these things. And he's like I don't want to deal with that anymore, Because when someone goes to a Craigslist or goes to Facebook and they find someone that's willing to come into home and say, okay, I'm willing to take care of your mom under the table, Reality is that person has become a domestic employer for that family and it's above age 18, give them more than 600 bucks, so they're either cleaning your home or they're doing any type of service, especially in-home care, which is a lot more expensive than cleaning home.
Speaker 2:You now put yourself in a category called domestic employer. So as a domestic employer, you are legally obligated and required to meet federal and state requirements of what that means, which typically means making sure that payroll taxes are getting paid. And so what you're finding, I know in the state of New Jersey. They're actually cracking down on that a lot, because if you're having a lot of these individuals working privately, what does that mean for the state? That means they're missing out on a lot of these individuals working privately. What does that mean for the state that?
Speaker 2:means they're missing out on a lot of tax dollars that they could be collecting right. So New Jersey is very strict on the services, so as our caregivers are required to be licensed here, if they're placing their hands on a patient to help with bathing or toileting, that individual has to be licensed in the state of New Jersey, which has to be supervised by a nurse. And if you go out to a family and you work privately, they will pull your license. So not only will the family be financially, but the caregiver could also lose their license. And what has happened is I've come across situations where families for some reason were audited by the IRS, were uncovered that they had a domestic employee and ended up paying back taxes and fines for that. So does it come across all the time? No, but these are things that families have to think about. We had one family that was hired a private aid. That aid got hurt and so there was a lawsuit. So you put yourself at risk. I know you can save some money, but you're really putting yourself and your family's financial well-being at a risk when you start looking at private.
Speaker 2:So, as an agency, we're licensed by the state of New Jersey, so we are licensed to hire licensed home health aides that are supervised by nurses. We have a social worker. That's not required by the state, but we do that as an extra support for our caregivers. So if an emergency comes up for the family, or the caregiver gets sick which happens or they have a family emergency, the families can call us and we will solve that problem for them. They don't have to worry about that stress.
Speaker 2:We take care of all the training. Monthly we're doing orientation. Actually, in the other room If you hear some commotion it's because we're doing clinicals right now, making sure that our caregivers are familiar with a Hoyer lift, how to properly pay the client, how to properly change a bed if someone's in it and we demand that our caregivers do this on a yearly basis. Coming from the military, we did a lot of training of the same stuff over and over again and we do the same thing here. So when you're working with an agency, you have a better chance of having someone competent in doing what they're doing. I had many times this is actually not too long ago a family calls hey, our caregiver has to leave and we don't know who to go to.
Speaker 1:That's pretty amazing. I feel that I understand that a lot better. I feel like my understanding is increased. At least specific to the state of New Jersey, private pay is way risky because a lot of things could happen and the family then becomes liable for the things that happen, not necessarily the employee. Versus, like a home agency, where the same level of care is guaranteed and it's licensed, you have a big safety net, you have a bunch of resources, you guys provide a lot more than what one individual can buy themselves, which I think is amazing.
Speaker 2:So they protect the family financially as well. So now they don't have this extra financial hardship because someone got hurt or something got damaged on their property. So absolutely.
Speaker 1:I feel educated on that topic. What does Lifeforce do to educate families? I know you guys regimen your training and so you do a lot of training and a lot of clinicals, which is amazing. How do you educate the family, or maybe the senior themselves, on what resources are available to them?
Speaker 2:The biggest thing for us is just being the guide. So I would always hear this analogy is if you've ever done any whitewater rafting, you don't typically just jump in a raft and go down the river for the first time by yourself. You typically have a guide, a guide that knows every bend that's in that river, where those rocks that you need to avoid. So we really take the time to train our regional account managers who establish those relationships with families and just provide that education. A lot of times what happens is it's the first time that their mother or father are in a hospital. It could have been a fall, it could have been dehydration. You know, you saw that a lot with a lot with COVID. And so families are getting questioned. Okay, so what are you ensuring that mom's going to be safe when they go home? What are you going to ensure that your husband's going to be okay when you bring him from the hospital and the family's like I don't know. And so what we do is we train our staff on how to properly guide families. So when we sit down with them, we ask those questions. So what's the personal needs of your mom, of your dad, what are your concerns, what's your understanding, so educating. Hey, have you ever spoken to an elder law attorney? I understand it costs money, but they're going to have all the legal documents in place, like your wills and your advanced directive and your financial directives. They're going to have all those things in place. So when you do need to speak on their behalf, you have the ability to do that. When mom or dad gets home, what you want to do is you want to call your physicians and your medical specialists and make sure that they know that they were in the hospital and have them reevaluate, because when they go in the hospital, they may get new medications and your mom's physician has been working with her a lot longer than that emergency room doctor. Just make sure that everyone's on the same page when they come home. What resources are available to you? Okay, well, you qualify for a visiting nurse who can bring in PT and OT and speech therapy. What kind of medical equipment do you need to put in your home?
Speaker 2:We do a lot of training just from experience and education of how are you going to set this up to succeed? So, like, when an employee comes in, how am I setting them to succeed in their position? When we're bringing a client home. How can we set them up to succeed so they can stay home longer? And hospitals appreciate that because if they get readmitted that's a penalty for them. So they appreciate working with an agency like us that does live in, that takes the time to say, okay, do you need a shower chair? How are you going to help mom get in and out of the house easier? And so we don't specialize in all that, but we have the social workers and nurses that have the education, other resources that are in the community. So we specialize in what we specialize in.
Speaker 2:We bring in people that know about setting up a home to maybe add some ramps or grab bars. We bring in another person that's a quality of DNA that visiting nurse association that can set up PT, ot and ST on speech therapy. Maybe mom is not able to get out of the house anymore to go to the doctors. A lot of them don't know that now there's a lot of visiting physicians that will actually come to the home and provide that medical support. Some places provide imaging. They'll bring a van and do imaging. There's dentists, there's eye doctors, there's podiatrists. There's people that are willing to come in home and a lot of families don't know this, and it's very overwhelming when you're going through this for the first time.
Speaker 1:Definitely. I can agree that it's overwhelming. I mean, grandma was admitted to the hospital for open heart surgery and we didn't really know the first place to start, like what to do, the type of care that she needed. So it's amazing that you guys are able to educate so well and that your staff is so well trained. I personally love structure and regimen, and the stricter the environment, the better I thrive, and what you're saying is just sounds like music to my ears, like I'd come work for you for sure because of the training and the regimen that you guys provide for your caregivers and your staff. What would you say to, maybe, a leader in your position somewhere else in the States or in the world, like, what would you say to them in order to start implementing this style of leadership that you have? What advice would you give to them? If they're struggling to educate or if they're struggling to get people to understand the vision, where would you point them?
Speaker 2:I would say first really understand the expectations you have for yourself. A company will only reach the level of your threshold, so you have to know what is the thresholds that you want and what are the expectations on how to get there.
Speaker 2:Communication is really big for me as well. Just clear communication, documenting everything, every conversation being systematic. Putting those systems in place, because it's easier to evaluate a system to say, okay, you know what we did A, b but C, we got to maybe change or we have to master it more. So I think, having those right systems in place, I think also just setting people up to succeed.
Speaker 2:When a staff member does not, or when it's a caregiver, nurse, office staff, when they don't reach the expectations I have for them, I take the time to analyze did I set them up to succeed or did I not? And you'll find in management where a lot of times the reportees they don't set them up to succeed. So, putting that training in place and making sure that you communicate what's the vision, let people know what's the why of what you do, and if someone's not meshing well with your culture, you've got to be kind of quick to get rid of them and bring people in, because there's a lot of people out there that want to do this, and so I think that's extremely important just being able to have a clear training program in place, because you can always use it to recalibrate, you can always use it as a measurement of how your staff are doing. I think also getting a business mentor. I think that's also good If it's new. I know that I've leaned on other people in the industry that were willing to just talk.
Speaker 1:I'll ask you this before we wrap up. I always ask this to all my guests Today's episode's been wonderful. I think we highlighted a lot of important leadership points and a lot of important educational points. If you had a magic wand and you could wave away a problem, what would it be and why?
Speaker 2:I think I'm going to go for the industry here. It's just the cost of what we do, because it really limits us to be able to serve people that could really use not just Life Force, but other home care agencies out there.
Speaker 2:I just wish there was a way to really wipe away a lot of that unnecessary cost, and I don't have an answer for that right now. There are young kids. I was 13. I was working at a nursing home. There are 13-year-olds that come home from school and what they're doing is they're being a full-time caretaker for their guardian, their mother, their father, their grandmother, a full-time caretaker for their guardian, their mother, their father, their grandmother, because they can't afford an agency to come in and take care of their mother, father. And so there are a bunch of teenagers out there. That's their life and a lot of people don't know about it. So I think that's the big, that's what I would if I had that magic wand. I think that's what I would do.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. I'd wave that wand with you. I know a lot of people personally in my life would take care of their guardians because they're ineligible and it's a tough position to be in that young and that's an amazing thing to want to solve. Thanks for sharing that. I appreciate it Everybody. It's been the Senior Care Academy podcast. We've had Jared Rogers on leader extraordinaire. We're so excited to have him on. Thank you so much, Jared. Really appreciate having you today.
Speaker 2:It was a.