How do you know who provides quality home health care if you need assistance at home? You can ask your friends, but they may have limited experiences. Your doctor may be able to recommend some names of home care agencies, but often doctors’ interaction is primarily with Medicare skilled home health companies.
You can find more information about where to view federal and state quality data in our post on home care ratings and reviews. You will find, however, that the data on non-Medicare agencies is fairly limited. These types of agencies (known as “private duty” services) are the primary providers of long-term care and even many of the short-term support services you may need at home after an illness, injury or to assist family caregivers. So, when it comes to these services…
What is quality home health care?
Fortunately, there are independent survey companies that measure quality home health care and benchmark industry standards for private duty agencies. EasyLiving engages Home Care Pulse to consistently gauge our levels of quality. They survey our customers and caregivers on a number of measures, to get a full picture of the different aspects of care. They gather quantitative data we can use to benchmark our progress against our own goals, as well as with industry standards for quality home health care. Before hiring an agency, find out if they participate in such quality assurance methods and ask to see their data and client feedback.
EasyLiving Client Feedback on Quality Home Health Care Measures
Our clients answer questions about: the work ethic of their caregivers, caregivers’ abilities, their compassion and professionalism, confidence in our office staff, our communication, and the quality of life provided by the home health care services. They are also asked if they are receiving services as expected and if they would recommend us as a quality home health care provider. The graph below shows our results for October.
Net Promoter Score
Home Care Pulse uses the feedback about whether clients would recommend EasyLiving or not to determine a “net promoter” score. This is one simple measure to compare ourselves over time and against other providers in the industry. We are proud that we rate us significantly higher in this area than our competitors, since there is no greater compliment than a client referring someone to our services. Every month, we strive to make these numbers even better.
Caregiver Feedback
For us, another key way to check how we are doing is to find out what our employees think. We believe the only way to provide quality home health care is to focus on employees, so these measures are where we look first. We know the client satisfaction feedback will only be good if caregiver satisfaction is high.
Our caregiver engagement score (like the net promoter score, but for caregivers) was 8.3 for the month of October, compared to a 6.9 industry average. We are proud that such a high number of caregivers would recommend EasyLiving as a place to work and we look at each aspect of the categories above to pinpoint ways we can improve our systems and support.
To find out about the quality home health care services we can provide you or your loved one in Florida, contact us (727-447-5845) for a free consultation.