Shows
Home Care Heroes and Day Service StarsSolve Your Staffing Crisis: How Adult Day Services Let You Serve 50 Clients with Just 8 StaffYou're all worried about the skyrocketing demand for home care. Here's a solution: add an adult day center where you can meet the needs of 50 clients with just 8 staff.In this episode, Ken Accardi interviews Tia Sauceda, the newly appointed Executive Director of the National Adult Day Services Association (NADSA). With over 25 years of hands-on experience running day centers and integrated care programs, Tia reveals why now is the perfect time for home care agencies to add adult day services.You'll Learn:The potential for higher margins and lower staffing...
2025-12-0239 min
Home Care Heroes and Day Service StarsSelf-Determination in Action: Giving Families Control, Dignity, and Better CareIn this episode, we’re joined by Kristianna Moralls, founder of the Self-Determination Institute and parent of a young adult with disabilities. She shares the real-world impact of self-determination, sometimes called self-direction or consumer-directed services, a model that lets individuals and families make their own decisions about who provides their care and how.Kristianna explains how her son’s transition out of school revealed the “drop-off” many families face when traditional services end and meaningful support suddenly disappears. Discovering self-determination gave her family the ability to hire caregive...
2025-11-1136 min
Home Care Heroes and Day Service StarsAI in Home Care - What you Should and Shouldn’t be doing (with Nick Bonitatibus)Artificial intelligence is everywhere right now—but what does it really mean for home care and day services?On this episode of Home Care Heroes and Day Service Stars, host Ken Accardi welcomes back Nick Bonitatibus for his third appearance. This time, the conversation zeroes in on AI—how it can truly help agencies, and where it often goes wrong.Why AI Isn’t Magic (But Feels Like It Sometimes)Nick shares the story of a home care owner who felt overwhelmed creating SOPs for her fast-growing agency. In just m...
2025-09-0340 min
Home Care Heroes and Day Service StarsHow To Build and Retain a Winning Home Care Team in 2025In the final episode of a three-part series on “Doing It Right in Home Care,” industry icon Ginny Kenyon joins Ken Accardi on the Home Care Heroes and Day Service Stars podcast to focus on a critical pillar of home care success: creating a strong, values-driven culture that drives hiring and retention. With decades of leadership and consulting experience, Ginny shares actionable insights and heartfelt stories that show how the right culture can become a home care agency’s superpower.Key learning points are as follows:Why Culture is the Foundation of Successful Home CareR...
2025-06-1834 min
Home Care Heroes and Day Service StarsWhat Every Home Care Leader Should Know About AI! [with Ankota Founder Ken Accardi]AI for Home Care: What Leaders Should KnowOn this episode of Home Care Heroes and Day Service Stars, host Ken Accardi takes a turn in the interview seat to answer an important question: What should home care and adult day care leaders know about artificial intelligence (AI)? With help from his colleague Sowpha Umashankar, Ken explores AI's current role, practical applications, and future in home care. Whether you're new to AI or already experimenting with it, this episode offers accessible, relevant insights for care professionals.Topics covered in the episode...
2025-06-1033 min
Home Care Heroes and Day Service StarsHow Great Leadership Grows Home Care Agencies: Lessons from Ginny KenyonDoing It Right with LeadershipIn the second part of her “Doing It Right” series on the Home Care Heroes and Day Service Stars podcast, industry veteran Ginny Kenyon returns to talk about leadership — not as a title, but as a responsibility. Ginny, who Ken Accardi describes as worthy of the “Home Care Hall of Fame,” shares her hard-earned wisdom on what it truly means to lead a successful and compassionate home care organization.Ginny begins by drawing a sharp contrast between being a "boss" and being a true leader. A boss, she says, issu...
2025-06-1020 min
Home Care Heroes and Day Service StarsMeet Ken Accardi - PodCast Host and CEO of AnkotaThis episode is a little different and I hope you like it. I was interviewed on another podcast called "The Millennium Spotlight" by heralded radio announcer and podcast host, Jordan Rich. I greatly appreciate you listening to Home Care Heroes and Day Service Stars and if you'd like to know a little bit more about me then please give this episode a listen.Home Care Heroes and Day Service Stars is produced and sponsored by Ankota - If you provide services that enable older or disabled people to continue living at home , Ankota can provide you the s...
2025-04-1422 min
Home Care Heroes and Day Service StarsHow to Make Your Home Care Customers Happy - Forever! (with Ginny Kenyon)In this episode of the Home Care Heroes and Day Service Stars podcast, host Ken Accardi sits down with Ginny Kenyon—a veteran home care consultant who grew her agency from the ground up and has since helped launch hundreds of agencies. The conversation, titled "How to Make Your Home Care Customers Happy - Forever!", dives into Ginny’s journey and reveals the secrets behind client-centered care that truly makes a difference in people’s lives.About Ginny Kenyon and the PodcastGinny’s career in home care spans decades, beginning with her success...
2025-03-2535 min
Home Care Heroes and Day Service StarsReimagining Home Care: The Future of Caregiving [with special guest Bob Roth]The home care industry is on the verge of a major transformation. With the aging population rapidly growing and workforce shortages intensifying, innovative solutions are needed now more than ever. In this episode of Home Care Heroes and Day Service Stars, host Ken Accardi speaks with Bob Roth, an industry veteran and leader at Cypress Home Care, about the future of home care and how technology, collaboration, and new models of care can help agencies thrive.The Aging Population and Workforce CrisisThe demographics of aging
2025-02-0437 min
Home Care Heroes and Day Service StarsHow To Build Amazing Self Direction Programs That Actually Work (with guest Melody Wray)This episode of Home Care Heroes and Day Service Stars features Melody Ray, Executive Director of ReSOARces, a nonprofit in Kentucky. Melody discusses self-direction programs for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. These programs enable participants to direct their care and lead more fulfilling lives.The episode begins with host Ken Accardi providing a historical perspective on disability services, highlighting the shift from institutional care to programs that support individuals in their homes and communities. Self-direction programs represent a significant evolution, allowing participants or their authorized representatives to manage their care and services according to personal preferences.
2025-01-1931 min
Home Care Heroes and Day Service StarsCombat Caregiver Applicant Ghosting with these easy tips (with Jen Waldron from Augusta.Care)This episode of Home Care Heroes and Day Service Stars features Jen Waldron from Augusta Software, addressing the prevalent issue of caregiver job applicants ghosting employers. Jen identifies key challenges in the hiring process and offers insights into optimizing caregiver recruitment.The episode begins with a discussion of a common question: "Where are the good caregivers?" Jen dispels the myth of hidden talent pools, emphasizing that 84% of caregiver hires originate from Indeed.com. This highlights the need for agencies to focus on optimizing Indeed as a recruitment platform. She notes that applicants coming directly from agency websites...
2025-01-0632 min
Home Care Heroes and Day Service StarsBeyond Caregiver Burnout: Understanding and Healing Caregiver-specific Trauma [with Dr. Lorre Laws]Let’s face it, every person reading this synopsis (and hopefully listening to the accompanying podcast episode) would benefit by increased employee retention in their organization. I’m sure that you’ve lamented the loss of caregivers, direct service workers or staff that you had hoped would stick with you longer and tried to think of what causes these losses. I’m sure that burnout is one of the leading causes that comes to mind.Our guest, Dr. Lorre Laws, is an author and research scientist who has focused her research on this very problem, and she has learne...
2024-10-3133 min
Home Care Heroes and Day Service StarsRisk Less / Do More: Top US Government Advocate emphasizes Covid, Flu and RSV Vaccines [with Deputy Assistant Secretary for Aging Kari Benson]In this episode of the podcast, we were honored to meet with the United States Deputy Assistant Secretary for Aging, Kari Benson. Her entire career has been focused on the promotion of Home and Community Based Services for older and disabled individuals.I asked the secretary what the most important message was that she needed to share in this podcast episode and without hesitation, her answer was to say thanks to our industry and to all that you do to enable our older and disabled neighbors to continue living in their homes.But her message...
2024-10-2727 min
Home Care Heroes and Day Service StarsUnderstanding Alzheimer's will make us Better Caregivers79 year old Sam Simon could tell that his memory was fading and finally was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's disease. Faced with this, Sam has dedicated himself to awareness of what Alzheimer's is, how it makes you feel, and how you could and should embrace people experiencing this incurable disease.Sam started his career in Washington, DC as a lawyer for Ralph Nader’s first advocacy group. He then spent 25 years as head of a public affairs firm. In that work, he was often in the news, with appearances on Face The Nation, Phil Donahue Show, Oprah Winfrey Sho...
2024-10-0238 min
Home Care Heroes and Day Service StarsHome Care Combined with Day Services is best for the Client AND Agency (with Liz Barnes - Easterseals)Home care is amazing! Older folks overwhelmingly fear loss of independence and institutionalization more than death. Home Care can save the day for folks when they lose their ability to perform Activities of Daily Living (ADLs) independently. Caregivers help with hygiene, nutrition, safety, cleanliness and so much more, all while allowing a person to stay in their home and the surroundings that they cherish.Adult Day Care is also Amazing: Another fear that outweighs death is the loss of family or friends. Day programs combat social isolation, provide nutrition, activity, movement, friends and a reason to get ou...
2024-08-1034 min
Home Care Heroes and Day Service StarsVirtual Care - A High Margin Service for Home Care to Grow and DifferentiateI was skeptical about whether "Virtual Care" would be a good service for home care agencies, but I was proven wrong. In summary, this is a great way to differentiate your agency and to add a high-margin service. Our guest is Stephan Habermeyer who is the CEO at Calico.Care. Here are some highlights of what we learned:Virtual Care provides a way to monitor the well-being of home care clients throughout the day and night.Some agencies are using this for the classic scenario where the family wants home care for their mom, but...
2024-08-0434 min
Home Care Heroes and Day Service StarsAdding Adult Day Services to Home Care brings Synergy and Margins (with Bill Zagorski - Board Chair NADSA and CEO - American Senior Care Centers)When Bill Zagorski took over his family's elder care services agency, they were mostly doing non-medical home care. Now they're mostly providing Adult Day health Services and their revenue per caregiver has more than doubled.As a research PHD, the leader of 3 adult day health centers, chairman of the Tennessee state association and board chairman on the National Adult Day Services Association (NADSA), Bill is perhaps the most qualified person in the country to talk about this, and the episode is literally a master-class for anyone interested in adult day services.This slightly extra long e...
2024-07-2037 min
Home Care Heroes and Day Service StarsFinance Expert explains how to ensure Business and Owner SuccessCarla Titus is an experienced Chief Financial Officer (CFO) with a strong passion for home care and day services based on her experience attaining the best possible care for her aging father-in-law. One of her specialties with home care entrepreneurs is making sure that they are personally successful.Some of the key topics covered in the episode are as follows:The importance of bookkeepingHow to read your statements to understand the state of your businessThe difference between revenue and cash flow (in other words how to manage the delay between the time that you earn income a...
2024-06-2427 min
Home Care Heroes and Day Service StarsCaregiver Safety: Situation and Solution (with Ali Al Jabry, CEO of Kwema.co)The safety of healthcare workers is a large issue and a large concern. Home Care workers including Direct Service Professionals (DSPs) who provide supportive services for individuals experiencing intellectual and developmental disabilities are especially vulnerable.This episode of Home Care Heroes and Day Service Stars takes on the issue of caregiver safety with our guest Ali Al Jabry, founder and CEO of kwema.co. Ali shared more detailed statistics regarding the safety issue:Workplace violence can cost up to $56B per year, and women and healthcare workers are at even higher risk (per this article in Fa...
2024-05-2828 min
Home Care Heroes and Day Service StarsCaregiver Rewards That Make an ImpactThis episode of Home Care Heroes and Day Service Stars welcomes Joe Kraus and Linda Donev, a brother and sister team who have had a long and positive impact on the Home Care industry. Joe and Linda created the home care software that eventually became the Resmed / MatrixCare solution. They're back for an encore performance with a new offering called Perks4Care. The episode starts with some fun brother / sister banter as they tell their story, but then they focus on what they learned from years of delivering caregiver rewards and how it inspired their product.
2024-04-0634 min
Home Care Heroes and Day Service StarsCreating an IRRESISTABLE OFFER: Caregiver Recruiting with Nick BonitatibusCaregiver Recruiting and Retention is the top concern of agency owners and the most-discussed topic on Home Care Heroes and Day Service Stars.In this episode, Nick Bonitatibus returns to the podcast to discuss How to Create an Irresistible offers in the realm of caregiver recruiting. Guess What? It's not the offer letter (that's far too late) and it's not only about the money.Your irresistible offer begins long before you meet the candidate. Some of the key concepts that Nick shares are as follows: Recruiting is Sales and needs to be treated that way...
2024-03-0826 min
Home Care Heroes and Day Service StarsAgency Owner adds High-Margin Revenue Stream from Facility PlacementsRob Christensen is a home care veteran who has runs 4 agencies and day services. Sadly, some clients get to a stage where they need to have 24-hour care and they can't afford to have that service in their home. Rob learned that facilities are willing to pay a handsome finders fee (generally one-month of the facility fee) for a new referral. So Rob added a service for placing clients in facilities. The results have been highly beneficial in a number of ways, as follows:Finding the best facility is a beneficial service for the client and their...
2024-02-2226 min
Home Care Heroes and Day Service StarsTrifecta: Care Coordinators add Career Path, Better Care and Profit [with Steve "the Hurricane" Weiss]The defining challenging of home care, long term supports and services, and day services is recruiting and retaining caregivers. One of the big recommendations that we hear regarding retention is to create career paths, but at the same time we struggle to make a reasonable margin at the rates that we're able to charge. Today's guest, in his 3rd appearance on the Home Care Heroes and Day Service Stars podcast, is Steve "the Hurricane" Weiss, the CEO of the consulting firm Home Care Evolution. Steve's organization is one of the preeminent home care coaching and consulting organizations in...
2024-01-2222 min
Home Care Heroes and Day Service StarsTransforming Loneliness into Connection [with guest Deb Skovron]Loneliness and Isolation have been clinically proven to have hugely negative health outcomes. Just because there's a caregiver in the home or the person participates in a day services program doesn't mean that they aren't lonely and feeling isolated. I lost my Aunt Myrna a few years back and she had in home care for the last years of her life, but while they were there to provide for her needs they weren't having conversations with her. By contrast, my mom who is 86 and has Alzheimer's disease participates in a day program, but since she has poor hearing her en...
2023-11-1933 min
Home Care Heroes and Day Service StarsIncreasing Recruiting and Retention Success with Science and AIThis episode addresses the most critical concern in home care and day services - recruiting and retention of caregivers. But as a bonus, it offers a way to improve it with science and artificial intelligence. And... as if that isn't enough there's an offer to use this technology for free AND to get amazon gift cards for the caregivers who participate... I'm excited already!Today's special guests are John Penrose, the CEO of a company called Agile Brain, and one of his chief scientists Dr. JD Pincus. Most surveys are long, boring and not very accurate. Participants typi...
2023-10-3130 min
Home Care Heroes and Day Service StarsHome Care + Day Care Services = The Perfect PairToday's episode of Home Care Heroes is exciting because we've expanded to include day services (like Adult Day Care and Day Habilitation for individuals with Intellectual or developmental disabilities). From now on we'll be calling the podcast Home Care Heroes and Day Service Stars.Christina Vlosich is the perfect guest and today's topic explores why home care and day services go together so well. As a short preview, here are some of the reasons why so many home care agencies are adding day services:Client benefits: Day Service Participants benefit from the social aspect of...
2023-07-1924 min
Home Care Heroes and Day Service StarsAchieving Balance in Home Care Management [with Becky Reel, Executive Director of For Papa's Sake Home Care]Today's episode focuses on the critically important topic of Achieving Balance in managing your home care agency. Our guest, Becky Reel is the Executive Director of For Papa's Sake Home Care, an agency that she created to honor her grandfather. Becky reflects back on a time when her life was out of balance and running her agency was creating anxiety for her and putting stress on her most important relationships. Not only has she overcome these challenges, her agency was chosen as the Top Agency of 2022 by Home Care Pulse.For Becky, achieving balance made all the di...
2022-11-1720 min
Home Care Heroes and Day Service StarsHome Care Lessons from the Life of Queen Elizabeth (featuring Jennifer Brine)By any measure, Queen Elizabeth lived a noteworthy life. She was vibrant and influential in all but the last few months of her 96 year lifetime. Today on Home Care Heroes, we talk about why...Our fantastic guest is Jennifer Brine, the CEO of ANeuFit (pronounced "A New Fit"). Jennifer is a mechanical engineer turned entrepreneur who helps individuals 50 and older to live richer lives by helping them increase their capacity for movement. Although we touch on movement, the episode covers so much more, including the following:How can we show dignity and respect in the...
2022-10-2626 min
Uncaged ShowUNCAGED With Will HicklenWill Hicklen is the Chief Growth Officer for EasyWorkforce Software, overseeing all customer-facing and revenue-producing lines of work, including Sales, Customer Success, Account Management, and Marketing. With his relentless drive, decades of experience in sales leadership, and commitment to industry disruption, Will has led EasyWorkforce into hyper-growth, more than doubling the size of the organization by developing and rolling out new digital strategies. His favorite part of his work is empowering others and watching them succeed, fueling his passion for leadership and for delivering top-of-the-line workforce management solutions to like-minded leaders.
Prior to joining EasyWorkforce, Will served as...
2022-08-2623 min
Home Care Heroes and Day Service StarsWorld's First AI Virtual Care Assistant [featuring Miki Rosanis from SENSI.AI]Today's guest, Miki Rosanis, is an Occupational Therapist working for an artificial intelligence (AI) company called SENSI.AI. They have created the world's first Virtual Care Assistant. If you have no idea what this means, then you definitely need to check out this episode.Sensi's technology has been specifically developed to assist home care agencies in the US. The Artificial Intelligence technology senses sounds in the care environment and provides sights to the home care agency and to the client's family. A few examples shared by Miki are as follows:Falls can be detected vi...
2022-07-2024 min
Home Care Heroes and Day Service StarsBrightStar Care Proves that the Future of Healthcare is in the Home - with Founder and CEO Shelly SunWhether we agree with it or not, there is a perceived canyon between what we do in non-medical home care and what happens in the "healthcare world." We're generally not reimbursed like healthcare is. Even in the Medicaid world where there are government payments, they're called "waiver programs." But while non-medical care is often shunned, we know that an individual receiving our care will have better outcomes than someone who doesn't. Without going on too much of a tangent, there's a growing body of evidence to that effect that you can learn about by Googling "Social Determinants of Health."
2022-06-1422 min
Home Care Heroes and Day Service StarsBuilding your Home Care Agency to Run Without You with guest Gregg MazzaGregg Mazza is one of the top home care growth coaches in the industry, and he got there the hard way. Gregg started an agency and like many, he struggled early on. He was spending too much time and not succeeding and this was putting stress on his well-being and relationships. Happily, he figured it out and now he helps others to do the same.In this episode, Gregg outlines the framework for building an agency that can run without it's founder, as follows:Getting the right foundation in place (Positioning, Goals, Key Measurements, the Right...
2022-05-3132 min
Home Care Heroes and Day Service StarsGetting your Compliance Documentation Right with Temperance BruderLet's face it, our primary focus areas are recruiting and retaining great caregivers and growing our businesses. These are the topics we cover the most on Home Care Heroes. Today we're going in a different direction, but an important one just the same.Our guest is Temperance Bruder. Temperance is a home care veteran with many skills. She is a nurse, she works as a case manager for a Medicaid Managed Care Organization (MCO), she's a consultant and she runs a home care agency in Virginia.The topic of the episode in how to get y...
2022-05-2433 min
Home Care Heroes and Day Service StarsUsing Video to Attract Clients and Caregivers to your Home Care Agency - with guest Nick BonitatibusToday's guest Nick Bonitatibus runs a company called The Digital Champs, which is dedicated to helping home care agencies to create content (mostly easy to make videos) that can attract both clients and caregivers to your home care agency.Within the episode, Nick takes us through all the steps (which are easier than you think), but most importantly he tells us what clients and caregivers want to hear. The messaging is incredibly important, and it's NOT that you do med reminders and light house keeping. Instead, it tells your home care prospects (usually the daughter of the...
2022-03-1032 min
Home Care Heroes and Day Service StarsAdapting Your Home Care Agency for the Future with guest Melissa BagleyMelissa Bagley is one of the astounding home care coaches from Steve the Hurricane's team, and the topic for today is Adapting Your Home Care Agency for the Future. Interestingly we start with Melissa sharing that the Hurricane organization is adapting as well. They've historically been known as the experts in Home Care Marketing, but now they've expanded their scope to include coaching in marketing, sales, caregiver recruiting and retention, growth, revenue optimization and even selling your agency. Their new brand will be Home Care Evolution and the new website will be HomeCareEvolution.c...
2022-02-1034 min
Home Care Heroes and Day Service StarsNetworking Explosion is a Key to Success in Home CareHome Care agency owner and consultant Kinshawda Daniels has a great story! She is a Licensed Practical Nurse (LPN) who was working as a nurse case manager and she realized that there weren't enough strong home care agencies in her area so she started one. After gaining strong expertise, she started consulting. We've talked a lot about networking in the context of community outreach, but today Kinshawda goes deep into B2B (business to business) networking. She takes us through 3 models:ColaborationPartnershipAffiliate You can reach Kinshawda on the web at https://www.virtualhomecaresolutions.com/, via emai...
2021-12-2322 min
Home Care Heroes and Day Service StarsMasterclass in driving traffic to your home care website and having visitors engageIn today's market, your home care website is critically important. To be effective, it needs to attract visitors and then get them to engage with you. We have two fantastic experts to tell us how to succeed: Jason Chagnon from Providentia Martketing and Kamran Nassar from AideQuest.Key topics covered are as follows:The importance and benefit of attractive both potential clients and caregivers to your websiteHow to design your site to be found on Google with Search Engine Optimization (SEO)How to keep people on your website when they get there and have them connect t...
2021-11-0344 min
Home Care Heroes and Day Service StarsHome Care Reimbursement for increasing COVID-19 vaccinations with Burgess HarrisonToday on Home Care Heroes we hear from Burgess Harrison, the Executive Director of the National Minority Health Association (TheNMHA.org). In an effort to increase the COVID-19 vaccination rate, TheNMHA is partnering with home care agencies to identify and encourage folks in their communities to get vaccinated. The home care agency AND the caregiver are paid $25 per shot received by the participants they recruit. This program is officially offered to home care agencies serving clients in California, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Missouri, North Carolina, New York, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, Vermont, and West Virginia, but if your ag...
2021-09-1524 min
Home Care Heroes and Day Service StarsEVV (Electronic Visit Verification) Behind the scenes: Present & Future with Brad Levine from NetsmartThe home care industry has been doing electronic clock-ins and clock-outs for a long time, initially with voice telephony and now mostly with a GPS mobile app. But a new TLA (three letter acronym) has popped up in the past few years. That acronym is EVV (Electronic Visit Verification). This is now the official name because it's part of the law, and specifically the 21st century cures act. In a nutshell, the EVV mandate in the 21st century cures act says that caregiving services reimbursed by government payers (mostly Medicaid and VA) need to electronically capture their a...
2021-08-2525 min
Home Care Heroes and Day Service StarsTurn your home care website into a strategic asset with Valerie Van Booven [Rebroadcast]Today's guest on Home Care Heroes is Valerie Van Booven, who is an on-line digital marketing experts for home care agencies. She didn't start as a tech geek and in fact she is a Registered Nurse (RN) with a Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN). Her company is called the Approved Senior Care Network. We cover a great number of topics centered around your home care website. Among them are the following:Make sure that your site is updated every few yearsMake it easy for folks to get in touch with you when they come to y...
2021-08-1921 min
Home Care Heroes and Day Service StarsThe Power of 3 with Home Care Consultant Nicole McBee [rebroadcast]Nicole McBee has worked with over 300 home care agencies, many in her home state of Missouri but also many in Michigan, North Carolina, Florida and other locations. Her expertise and bubbly infectious personality are unmatched. In this episode of Home Care Heroes, I learned that Nicole likes to organize her advice into 3 part plans.Since we share a lot of customers with Nicole in Missouri, we tended to talk about Missouri Medicaid home care a great deal, but as you'll see from the outlines below and listening to the episode, her advice applies nationwide.Nicole's 3...
2021-07-2923 min
Home Care Heroes and Day Service StarsHow Home Care Thrives in the Post-COVID World (with Steve the Hurricane)In his 3rd appearance on the Home Care Heroes podcast, Steve "the Hurricane" Weiss takes us through some very critical topics for "post-Covid times." Steve takes us through a lot of important content, including the following:Hit the ground running: Folks are craving face-to-face interaction. Be safe but get out their and don't let the "COVID Fog" hold you backMargins: Caregivers are commanding higher rates than in the past. This is inevitable. For your private pay and long term care insurance clients you need to raise your rates for your agency t...
2021-07-2129 min
Home Care Heroes and Day Service StarsSelling a Home Care Agency - Expert Advice with Mark Kulik from The BRAFF Group (rebroadcast)Mark Kulik is a 35-year health care veteran who has spend the last 13 years helping home care agency owners sell their businesses. Mark's company, The BRAFF Group only works with sellers, and his practice focuses on all aspects of home care agencies. The most important takeaway from this episode is that if you aspire to sell your agency now or at any time in the future, you should start to prepare now.Mark walks us through the five points that agency buyers are looking for, as follows:Clean Financial Reporting: 3 years of accrual-style accounting recordsKey Performance...
2021-07-1429 min
Home Care Heroes and Day Service StarsCreating A Home Care Community with Sara Moore, Jeremy Hammel and Brian Oblinger (rebroadcast)Sara Moore had the passion to create a community where home care folks can learn from one another and she but it into action by creating the website AHomeCareCommunity.com. In this special version of home care heroes, Sara speaks with collaborator Jeremy Jed Hammel about the importance of community and core values. Then she speaks with community coach Brian Oblinger about how to grow and nurture an effective community. Finally she wraps up with a "virtual tour" of the "A Home Care Community dot com" website. Some of the great features on A Home Care Community dot...
2021-07-0722 min
Home Care Heroes and Day Service StarsSucceed by Being Different with Kamran Nassar (agency owner and author of Caring for Millions) [REBROADCAST]Today's guest, Kamran Nassar, grew his agency so fast that he was recognized as one of the fastest growing companies in America. In this episode, Kamran shares the importance of being different to stand out and succeed. Some big ideas that Kamran shares are as follows:His company's unique name, NuevaCare started conversations and also helped with recruiting of Spanish speaking caregivers.He joined groups where he collaborated with other agency owners in the area, and although they were competitors they were also collaboratorsHe brought an art-therapy program to his agency as an aide for memory care.L...
2021-06-3020 min
Home Care Marketing & Sales Mastery by Approved Senior Network®EP 128: SCI Netcast with Ken Accardi from AnkotaSend us a textEP 128: SCI Netcast with Ken Accardi from Ankotahttps://www.asnmarketingplan.com/ep-128-sci-netcast-with-ken-accardi-from-ankota/So my name is Ken Accardi. I run a software company called Ankota, and we make software for basically running non-medical home care agencies. Also, I am a college professor and I teach the next generation of the best and brightest how to do great things with computers and that’s that’s me in a nutshell.Visit our website at https://asnhomecaremarketing.com
2021-06-2418 min
Home Care Heroes and Day Service StarsTurn your home care website into a strategic asset (with Valerie Van Booven) Today's guest on Home Care Heroes is Valerie Van Booven, who is an on-line digital marketing experts for home care agencies. She didn't start as a tech geek and in fact she is a Registered Nurse (RN) with a Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN). Her company is called the Approved Senior Care Network. We cover a great number of topics centered around your home care website. Among them are the following:Make sure that your site is updated every few yearsMake it easy for folks to get in touch with you when th...
2021-06-2321 min
Home Care Heroes and Day Service StarsPut the Client First and Match the right Caregiver (with Ophelia Cole and Barbara Gaines)Agency owners Ophelia Cole and Barbara Gaines are also sisters, Their interview with Sara Moore on the Home Care Heroes Community Edition is heartwarming and informative.A central key to their success strategy is their devotion to pairing the right caregiver with the client, and to confirm the match. If the pair isn't working out well, they make a change. As regular listeners know, the core theme of the home care heroes podcast is caregiver recruiting and retention, and this strategy from Ophelia and Barbara does just that. When a client and caregiver are well-matched the caregiver wi...
2021-06-1611 min
Home Care Heroes and Day Service StarsMentoring is key to the success of Home Care Entrepreneurs (with Laseandia Pounds)Laseandia Pounds has a couple of nicknames. She goes by Sean, but also goes by "Savvy Business Chick" which is her brand and website for her consulting service.Sean didn't start out in home care or even healthcare.. Instead she "grew up" in her career working in financial services and worked with stockbrokers and similar folks. But then a family friend who ran a home care agency offered to mentor Sean to start her own agency.Sean was a great student and grew her agency very rapidly to $3M in revenue in the first 18 months...
2021-06-0919 min
Home Care Heroes and Day Service StarsBlending Private Pay and Medicaid Clients (with Latoya Thompson)Today's guest, Latoya Thompson, grew up in a "healthcare family" with relatives who are nurses, CNAs and Aides. When Latoya's grandmother needed care, she couldn't find a provider with the standard of quality that she was looking for, so she started her own. One interesting aspect of Latoya's agency is that she has a blend of private pay and Medicaid clients and in fact she has two trending videos on YouTube, one about getting private pay clients, and the other about how the Missouri Consumer Directed Services (CDS) program works.Latoya studied the interesting combination of social...
2021-06-0214 min
Home Care Heroes and Day Service StarsDriving Clients and Caregivers to your Home Care Website (guests Khadira Muhhamad and Carl Rogers) - RebroadcastThis episode of Home Care Heroes is all about growing by bringing more clients and caregivers to your home care website. We feature two guests: Khadira Muhammed focuses on driving traffic to your site with Google ads and making sure that you keep in touch with everyone who visits your website. Carl Rogers talks about getting your website into some key online directories so even if your site doesn't make the first page of Google searches, you'll be in directories that do.Both guests tell the same story - that their initial intention was to help drive c...
2021-05-2630 min
Home Care Heroes and Day Service StarsSuccess Tips with Youtube's Top Home Care Influencer - Karl Pierre (rebroadcast)With 33,000 followers, Karl Pierre is arguably the top home care influencer on Youtube. He started in home care at age 14 when he was "the computer guy" for his mother's home care agency.In this episode of Home Care Heroes, Karl shares advice and perspective on questions from home care agency owners. Topics covered include the following:- Engaging caregivers for a higher purpose- Home Care Websites - what's important and what's not?- Social Media and Search Tips- Great Books for Home Care ownersYou can learn more ab...
2021-05-1929 min
Home Care Heroes and Day Service StarsCaregiver Quality Assurance - A Process-Based Approach (with Stephen Tweed)Stephen Tweed is one of the home care industry's top consultants. I met Stephen at my first home care conference, where he was a keynote speaker. In my view, two things that set Stephen apart are 1) his process-centric approach, and 2) his ability to pull agency owners into "mastermind groups" to establish best practices.Our conversation focused on Caregiver Quality Assurance and Stephen walked us through a 5-pillar approach (where he outlines each pillar in detail), as follows:Company cultureRecruiting SystemSelectionOnboardingRetentionAs a bonus, Stephen mentioned that the 6th pillar is using your Caregiver Quality Assurance p...
2021-05-1227 min
Home Care Heroes and Day Service StarsHR Expert shares insights on attracting caregivers: with Anne-Lise GereAnne-Lise Gere is one of the foremost human resources experts in Home Care. She works with Hurricane Marketing Enterprise (aka Steve the Hurricane) to teach the Momentum program (link includes discount code).Our talk with Ann-Lise comes at a time when the US is in the process of "opening up" from the COVID-19 pandemic. Some key points discussed cover the following:The improved visibility of home care as a result of Covid-19The negative impacts of the pandemic on the home care work forceIdeas on how to raise the profile of caregiving jobsThe reality that the a...
2021-05-0627 min
Home Care Heroes and Day Service StarsCaptivate Website Visitors in 8 seconds or less with Kamran NassarAfter successfully starting, growing and selling the home care agency NeuvaCare, Kamran Nassar set his sights on a new venture that would help home care agencies captivate website visitors in 8 seconds or less. That company is appropriately named Captiva8 and you can learn more at Captiva8.com.Kamran explains that many home care agencies spend a good deal of money creating their websites, optimizing them with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and driving traffic with Google Ad Words. But if those site visitors aren't instantly engaged, all of that effort is wasted. Some of Kamran's practical ti...
2021-04-2823 min
Home Care Heroes and Day Service StarsCaregiver Retention and Why it Matters (with Steve the Hurricane and Nancy Muckle) RebroadcastSteve "the Hurricane" Weiss shares great tips on caregiver retention. He starts with some very basic and actionable suggestions like adjusting your attitude to love your caregivers, speaking in the language of "shifts" and making sure that new caregivers get a lot of supervision. But then the magic comes where Steve shares some great ideas regarding career paths and puts important metrics around the benefits of retention.Steve's team is offering a top-notch program on caregiver recruiting and retention called Momentum. You can learn more and sign up at https://homecaremarketing.net/momentum and get a $500 Discount...
2021-04-1423 min
Home Care Heroes and Day Service StarsTwo Caregiver of the Month Winners share their stories.On this episode of Home Care Heroes, we feature two of our winners for the Home Care Community Caregivers award! These caregivers embody what it means to be an exceptional caregiver in the home care industry:- Chisha Elam from Exceptional Touch Home Healthcare - Elisa Casey from Silver CompanionsWe also hear from their managers who nominated them for this award, Karmisha Miller-Wallace and Leslie Rothenberg. Home Care Heroes is produced and sponsored by Ankota - the Software for the Heroes of Home Care. We truly embrace the notion that caregivers and...
2021-04-0727 min
Home Care Heroes and Day Service StarsSecrets to a Killer Home Care Website (with Jason Chagnon) REBROADCASTProvidentia Marketing makes websites and manages the online presence for some of the country's most successful home care agency. On this episode of Home Care Heroes, Jason Chagnon), the CEO of Providentia Marketing shares success tips for managing your home care website, including the following:Make sure that the site is built for the market and not for yourself: Jason shares some of the top key phrases that people are searching forMake your site attractive to caregivers as well as clientsTestimonials from happy caregivers can get you more caregivers and more clientsDon't put up a roadblock for caregivers t...
2021-03-3131 min
Home Care Heroes and Day Service StarsNew Source of Revenue Helping Veterans (with guest Cheryl Hammons) rebroadcastA subset of veterans are entitled to paid home care from the VA, but it's hard to qualify and hard to sustain benefits. This is where Veterans Care Coordination (VCC) comes in. Today's guest, Cheryl Hammons, explains how your home care agency can partner with VCC to add a new source of revenue providing home care for veterans.To learn more about working with Veterans Care Coordination, you can reach Cheryl Hammons on 855-380-4401. Her email is chammons@vcchc.com and the website is http://www.veteranscarecoordination.com/.Home Care Heroes is produced and...
2021-03-2423 min
Home Care Heroes and Day Service StarsStarting 2021 Right (with guests Steve the Hurricane and Ginny Kenyon) RebroadcastThis is a rebroadcast of the inaugural episode of the home care heroes podcast featuring two of the industry's best and brightest, Steve "the Hurricane" Weiss and GInny Kenyon, who give their best advice on how to get your agency off the the right start in 2021.Both guests are spot on with their focus on caregivers, "the Heroes of Home Care." Steve focuses on planning, whereas Ginny focuses on recruiting. You will come away from this episode with ideas that you can put into action today!Steve runs Hurricane Marketing Enterprises (https://homecaremarketing.net). Steve...
2021-03-1729 min
Home Care Heroes and Day Service StarsThe Power of 3 with Home Care Consultant Nicole McBeeNicole McBee has worked with over 300 home care agencies, many in her home state of Missouri but also many in Michigan, North Carolina, Florida and other locations. Her expertise and bubbly infectious personality are unmatched. In this episode of Home Care Heroes, I learned that Nicole likes to organize her advice into 3 part plans.Since we share a lot of customers with Nicole in Missouri, we tended to talk about Missouri Medicaid home care a great deal, but as you'll see from the outlines below and listening to the episode, her advice applies nationwide.Nicole's 3...
2021-03-1023 min
That's What I'm Saying PodcastEp 15: Sara Moore, COO for a Software Company - On Community & Unique Career PathsSara Moore, PMP, Chief Operating Officer at Ankota LLC, a home care software company shares her insights as she progressed from building community in the art world, managing a home care agency, and becoming the COO of a tech company.
2021-03-0434 min
Home Care Heroes and Day Service StarsSelling a Home Care Agency - Expert Advice with Mark Kulik from The BRAFF GroupMark Kulik is a 35-year health care veteran who has spend the last 13 years helping home care agency owners sell their businesses. Mark's company, The BRAFF Group only works with sellers, and his practice focuses on all aspects of home care agencies. The most important takeaway from this episode is that if you aspire to sell your agency now or at any time in the future, you should start to prepare now.Mark walks us through the five points that agency buyers are looking for, as follows:Clean Financial Reporting: 3 years of accrual-style accounting recordsKey Performance...
2021-03-0329 min
Home Care Heroes and Day Service StarsMissouri Agency adds COVID Vaccines to their 2021 ServicesOn this episode of the Home Care Heroes Community Edition, Sara Moore interviews Carlita Vassar, CEO of At Home Care Missouri. The episode is all about service to the community. Carlita has followed her passion for community service in many avenues. It was only natural for her agency to step up and set up COVID vaccine clinics across Missouri. We're especially excited about the community podcasts! Your host, Sara Moore created AHomeCareCommunity.com to unite the home care community, a site offering resources, communication forums and more including the Caregiver of the Month award. The origin story of...
2021-02-2418 min
Home Care Heroes and Day Service StarsCreating A Home Care Community with Sara Moore, Jeremy Hammel and Brian OblingerSara Moore had the passion to create a community where home care folks can learn from one another and she but it into action by creating the website AHomeCareCommunity.com. In this special version of home care heroes, Sara speaks with collaborator Jeremy Jed Hammel about the importance of community and core values. Then she speaks with community coach Brian Oblinger about how to grow and nurture an effective community. Finally she wraps up with a "virtual tour" of the "A Home Care Community dot com" website. Some of the great features on A Home Care Community dot...
2021-02-1722 min
Home Care Heroes and Day Service StarsSucceed by Being Different with Kamran Nassar (agency owner and author of Caring for Millions)Today's guest, Kamran Nassar, grew his agency so fast that he was recognized as one of the fastest growing companies in America. In this episode, Kamran shares the importance of being different to stand out and succeed. Some big ideas that Kamran shares are as follows:His company's unique name, NuevaCare started conversations and also helped with recruiting of Spanish speaking caregivers.He joined groups where he collaborated with other agency owners in the area, and although they were competitors they were also collaboratorsHe brought an art-therapy program to his agency as an aide for memory care.L...
2021-02-1020 min
Home Care Heroes and Day Service StarsSelling a Home Care Agency - Expert Advice with Mark Kulik from The BRAFF GroupMark Kulik, a 35 year healthcare veteran has spent the last 13 years of his career helping home care agency owners sell their companies. In this episode of Home Care Heroes, Mark shares expert advice on how to prepare your agency for sale, what buyers are looking for and how valuation works. Mark lays out the following outline for what buyers are looking for:Clean accrual-basis financial statements for at least 3 yearsKey Performance Indicators - what metrics are you using to run your agencyLow turnover in your staffA Leadership team that can continue to operate and...
2021-02-0329 min
Home Care Heroes and Day Service StarsDriving Clients and Caregivers to your Home Care Website (guests Khadira Muhhamad and Carl Rogers)This episode of Home Care Heroes is all about growing by bringing more clients and caregivers to your home care website. We feature two guests: Khadira Muhammed focuses on driving traffic to your site with Google ads and making sure that you keep in touch with everyone who visits your website. Carl Rogers talks about getting your website into some key online directories so even if your site doesn't make the first page of Google searches, you'll be in directories that do.Both guests tell the same story - that their initial intention was to help drive c...
2021-02-0330 min
Home Care Heroes and Day Service StarsSecrets to a Killer Home Care Website (with Jason Chagnon)Providentia Marketing makes websites and manages the online presence for some of the country's most successful home care agency. On this episode of Home Care Heroes, Jason Chagnon), the CEO of Providentia Marketing shares success tips for managing your home care website, including the following:Make sure that the site is built for the market and not for yourself: Jason shares some of the top key phrases that people are searching forMake your site attractive to caregivers as well as clientsTestimonials from happy caregivers can get you more caregivers and more clientsDon't put up a roadblock for caregivers t...
2021-01-2731 min
Home Care Heroes and Day Service StarsGuru of Home Care Tech shares what to watch for in Private Duty (featuring Tim Rowan)Tim Rowan, a 30+ year home care veteran and publisher of Home Care Tech Report is the clearing house for technology advancement in home care. In this area of home care heroes Tim advises agencies on 3 key items:Managing the online reputation of your agency,A new breakthrough in screening for caregivers with the right mindset, and The emergence of client/family engagement technologies in Private DutyThe best way for you to work with Tim is to start with his free services including the Home Care Tech Report weekly newsletter. (You can subscribe at homecaretechreport.co...
2021-01-2422 min
Home Care Heroes and Day Service StarsCaregiver Retention and Why it Matters (with Steve the Hurricane and Nancy Muckle)Steve "the Hurricane" Weiss shares great tips on caregiver retention. He starts with some very basic and actionable suggestions like adjusting your attitude to love your caregivers, speaking in the language of "shifts" and making sure that new caregivers get a lot of supervision. But then the magic comes where Steve shares some great ideas regarding career paths and puts important metrics around the benefits of retention.Steve's team is offering a top-notch program on caregiver recruiting and retention called Momentum. You can learn more and sign up at https://homecaremarketing.net/momentum and get a $1,000 Discount...
2021-01-1423 min
Home Care Heroes and Day Service StarsNew Source of Revenue Helping Veterans (with guest Cheryl Hammons)A subset of veterans are entitled to paid home care from the VA, but it's hard to qualify and hard to sustain benefits. This is where Veterans Care Coordination (VCC) comes in. Today's guest, Cheryl Hammons, explains how your home care agency can partner with VCC to add a new source of revenue providing home care for veterans. To learn more about working with Veterans Care Coordination, you can reach Cheryl Hammons on 855-380-4401. Her email is chammons@vcchc.com and the website is http://www.veteranscarecoordination.com/.Home Care Heroes is produced and...
2021-01-0923 min
Home Care Heroes and Day Service StarsSuccess Tips with Youtube's Top Home Care Influencer - Karl PierreWith 33,000 followers, Karl Pierre is arguably the top home care influencer on Youtube. He started in home care at age 14 when he was "the computer guy" for his mother's home care agency. In this episode of Home Care Heroes, Karl shares advice and perspective on questions from home care agency owners. Topics covered include the following:- Engaging caregivers for a higher purpose- Home Care Websites - what's important and what's not?- Social Media and Search Tips- Great Books for Home Care ownersYou can learn more ab...
2021-01-0629 min
Home Care Heroes and Day Service StarsStarting 2021 Right (with guests Steve the Hurricane and Ginny Kenyon)This inaugural episode of the home care heroes podcast features two of the industry's best and brightest, Steve "the Hurricane" Weiss and GInny Kenyon, who give their best advice on how to get your agency off the the right start in 2021.Both guests are spot on with their focus on caregivers, "the Heroes of Home Care." Steve focuses on planning, whereas Ginny focuses on recruiting. You will come away from this episode with ideas that you can put into action today!Steve runs Hurricane Marketing Enterprises (https://homecaremarketing.net). Steve and his team run boot...
2021-01-0529 min
Practical Wisdom for Leaders with Scott J. Allen, Ph.D.Ken Accardi - AgileSend us a textKen Accardi is the CEO of Ankota. He's a technology executive with a broad experience base. Ken has served as CEO, CTO, CIO, VP of Business Solutions, Director of R&D, and VP of Process/Quality. He teaches at Babson College and has several specialties, including healthcare (specifically avoiding preventable hospitalizations for elderly at-risk populations), new product introduction, software engineering management, value innovation, product management, lean Six Sigma, quality management, strategic planning and execution, software pre-sales, professional services, technology training, and acquisition integration. Quotes from This Episode"Because w...
2020-12-2843 min
Futurized - thought leadership on the futureThe Future of Elderly CareFuturist and author Trond Arne Undheim interviews Ken Accardi, CEO and founder of Ankota.
The takeaway is that the future of elderly care, and home care specifically, is going to be shaped by predictive population health which will prevent and intervene early rather than wait until it has to deal with chronic disease, treating the symptoms, and enduring the effects of aging.
After listening to the episode, find out more about Ankota, check out Ken Accardi's faculty profile at Babson College, where he lectures on Technology, Operations and Information Management or connect with him on Tw...
2020-07-2845 min