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Is there a single right way to run a home care agency? We sure don’t think so. That’s why we’re interviewing home care leaders across the industry and asking them tough questions about the strategies, operations, and decisions behind their success. Join host Miriam Allred, veteran home care podcaster known for Home Care U and Vision: The Home Care Leaders’ Podcast, as she puts high-growth home care agencies under the microscope to see what works, what doesn’t, and why. Get ready to listen, learn, and build the winning formula for your own success. In the Home Care Strategy Lab, you are the scientist.
Miriam Allred (00:55)
All right, Jenny, we're here at HCAOA live from a stage in Dallas. Welcome to the lab.
Jenny Cambra (01:03)
Thank you, super excited.
Miriam Allred (01:05)
I'm so pleased to meet you in person coming all the way from Hawaii. I think you may be the furthest one coming to Dallas. Jenny Cambra, Senior Helpers of Honolulu. Yes. Tell us a little bit about yourself, your background starting your home care company just a few years ago.
Jenny Cambra (01:19)
⁓ Yes, I'm Jenny. My last name is Cambra and I adopt this name since I moved to Hawaii. I used to work in hospitality and that's actually what got me from China to Hawaii for the very first time. ⁓ And after I opened the resort in ⁓ Colina, ⁓ I found my husband via a dating app called Coffee Meets Bagel. And ended up staying after getting married.
But after working at the hotel for a decade, ⁓ I felt there's something else I wanted to do, but I wasn't sure what it was. During COVID, I think that's where all the dots started to connect. Thinking about my background in hospitality, learn about financial planning during the years that I left hotel, and seeing the economic environment during COVID, what was essential, what is still
⁓ you know, like fulfilling or helping people. And ⁓ that's when I started to explore opportunity with senior helpers and decided to open up a home care agency in Hawaii.
Miriam Allred (02:25)
And it sounds like you had some personal experience with your own parents or grandparents family members a little bit about
Jenny Cambra (02:31)
My grandparents both had dementia. They were physically healthy. They were in the 80s, but they suffered from dementia for eight years, eight plus years. And they had total disorientation with time, places, and they didn't recognize me when I go visit them. It got to a point where they got kicked out from a facility.
They just couldn't care for them because of their, you know, not going with the flow. And my mom has to take them out. And we at one point hired three nannies to do 24 seven care for them. And it didn't work out. And my fear for my mom was I don't want her to suffer her entire retirement to have to care for both of them. ⁓ So, you know, luckily we found them a newer facility who will just do for the sake of money. But ⁓ that was
my little conviction of caring for families who had dementia without knowing how to handle that disease puts a total toll on myself and my mom. And I was angry. I was like, don't touch your gauze. You're not supposed to rip it off. But my grandma wouldn't listen because her mind was gone.
Miriam Allred (03:41)
And you mentioned your background in hospitality. I imagine the transition to home care, there was some parallels, definitely a steep learning curve. But talk about, I guess, yeah, the pros and cons going from hospitality to home care.
Jenny Cambra (03:56)
Yeah, I find a lot of similarities, you know, in hospitality compared with home care. It's very service based, right? It's deeply rooted in people on both end. I am a firm believer there's a lot of things can be taught, but the personality and the heart is hard to be taught. So you're going to have to have that right before you start this job or this like entrepreneurship. I see, you know, our little home care company as bringing hospitality to a different setting.
I've learned myself, I've taught, or I went to the nursing school and learned from the bottom just to kind of see what I would be doing if I am the caregiver going to the home so that I can also better relate to our caregivers. And there's a lot of little things that we do in our daily lifetime that we can be a help to senior in their home.
It's not medical, right? There's a lot of instrumental ADLs that we do, you know, helping them with grocery shopping, ⁓ driving to appointment, know, doing meal prep, you know, talk story with them all the way to helping them take a shower, change all the, you know, personal care stuff. ⁓ But it is a heart that really matters and compassion. And that's really, I think, something we're looking in, in every caregiver that we hire.
Miriam Allred (05:19)
And you're three years in. Yes. I'd imagine there's been a surprise or two. And maybe this is a loaded question, but what has been maybe one of the biggest surprises getting into home care?
Jenny Cambra (05:29)
Well, we got our first client on the second day. Okay. Literally after I post my new journey on Instagram and someone that I used to know in hospitality referred her own family to me saying like their situation has made them or made the referral partners hard to find them a right provider. They have five dogs in the home, a lot of cats right in the garage. The grandpa is a veteran and needing
know, full hands on personal care and ask if I'm willing to help them. And at that time, I haven't really done the full training for my operational system. I was like, my God, this is real. ⁓ But luckily we have hired a dozen caregiver at that time just to anticipate, you know, that need and things started to go, you know, on the second day. It was magical, but it was just the pressure's on.
Miriam Allred (06:20)
⁓
We're doing this. We have to show up at the home and act like we know what we're doing.
Jenny Cambra (06:30)
Right, but I think it's really just not to overthink because you know, it's a human interaction. Home care for me is deeply human, physical, emotional. As long as you listen to what they need and also hear what they want and just kind of deliver that, that's where we start to build relationships with families that we serve.
Miriam Allred (06:54)
Let's talk a little bit about affordability for care. Hawaii's not exempt to what's happening in this country. You're leading the way, probably. The cost of care. There's a lot of ⁓ pushback, concern from these families about the cost of care. And so I'm curious how you're experiencing that and then how you're working through that with families.
Jenny Cambra (07:00)
We're leading the wave.
I think that's a fair question. The cost is rising nationwide from grocery gas to household or even labor. So it's not a surprise, right? Home care will anticipate some increase in pricing over the years. But I always wanted to be very transparent with our clients and their families. ⁓ We never wanted to be the cheapest in the market, right? If they're doing price comparison. And I always encourage them to do so.
And I would tell them why we price at this range for a reason. ⁓ We believe in taking care of both client and also caregiver. And we typically do start with taking care of caregiver first because ⁓ without them, there's no quality of care that we can offer. And we want them to have a career, not just a part-time job. We offer fair wages, ⁓ 401k, which is...
not pretty common, I think, in some of the home care space. And we offer them a reward program based on performance. And there's a lot of events that we organize in our office using our Center of Excellence, which is a hands-on training facility to help train them and ⁓ to help them continue to grow in their career paths. And we promote from within. There's a lot of small things and good things that we do.
to ensure that the caregiver see a career path, feel this is where they belong and continue to give their heart so that it can fully show up to our clients.
Miriam Allred (08:53)
And these are all costs to you, but these are things that you have to explain to the client or the family so they understand why you're charging the rates that you are. It's these differentiators that keep the employees, keep them happy, that run the operation smoothly. And so you maybe just have to explain these things to bring the families around.
Jenny Cambra (09:11)
explain
based on their concern, right? Sometimes people say, hey, you know, you're only paying caregiver this much, right? This range and what about the rest? And I also wanted to be very transparent with them, right? We are a mission driven, but for profit company. We wanted to stay profitable, maintaining the reasonable margin, but there's also lot of liability we carry, right? We don't have supervisors to go in every shift to check on the caregivers and how things are going.
We rely on communication, a lot of tools, right, to be able to get that information and nothing comes for free. And we also provide our in-home assessment using a data-driven outcome-focused software called Life Profile. And we're the only company in the whole home care industry are using that. And with that, we can really deliver a tangible outcome because, you know, we talk a lot about, you know, the little things we do, but what is the end goal?
The end goal is to ensure that they have the tools and resources to continue to live in the comfort of their own home ⁓ with dignity and independence. And funny thing is, statistically, people in Hawaii generally live three years longer than the national average. What does it mean? There's a lot of demand and you may not know what your mom needs or wants. I think it's the wants that really kind of move the needle or trigger.
Miriam Allred (10:38)
A couple of quick questions. How do you structure hours? Some companies have a minimum. Do you all have a minimum in place?
Jenny Cambra (10:44)
We started
with no minimum because we believe whether it's four hours, eight hours, 24 or one hour, there's a need, right? We wanted to do the right thing to fulfill the need. But over time, based on our light profile assessment and all the report that we're seeing, the little drop in visit doesn't really drive a tangible outcome. It does help to address the need immediately. Like say, you know, this client hasn't been showered for months.
Right? That one four hours may help, but overall it does not quite change the trajectory of their wellbeing. And that's the message we bring to the family suggesting, Hey, would you be open to have us come in twice a week, three times a week on a regular routine base so that we can slowly change the trajectory of their retirement life.
Miriam Allred (11:39)
So that being said, have you instated a minimum or you keep it open?
Jenny Cambra (11:43)
Well, we generally suggest to have the consistency and to be able to achieve a tangible outcome, we're recommending starting eight hours a week. That is either ⁓ four hours, twice a week, or we can even do three hours for three times a week. But if they really can't meet the minimums, and we make sure we at least hand off with additional resources to them.
whether they might be qualified for VA benefit, long-term care insurance, or some client has dementia or Parkinson's, maybe qualified for a guide, we help them to get to that resources. We never wanted to leave them empty-handed.
Miriam Allred (12:22)
All right, that was going to be my next question about payer sources and it sounds like you do have a good mix of private pay.
Jenny Cambra (12:27)
LTC,
Medicare Advantage plan. We just started on guide program, know, helping people to explore that benefit.
Miriam Allred (12:38)
And
yeah, you don't want to leave anybody hanging. Whatever they come to, whatever needs that they have, you want to be able to meet those needs. What about other kind of like wraparound services? There's a lot of great services that supplement the home care. I'm curious if you've got any other kind of service lines that wrap around and anything unique to Hawaii maybe that fits with the culture, with the demographic of the people.
Jenny Cambra (13:01)
⁓ We do 90 days reassessment, right? Every time when there's a condition change that we send our care team into the field to really capture that and modify our care plan so that it can stay relevant to the care needs. And we do that as complimentary to our clients. We also share a list of DME equipment recommendations with them. Part of the assessment that we do is to really look at the home environment.
because no one's home is built to be a nursing home to begin with. But as they age in place, is ⁓ some areas, especially in the bathroom, that we need to really take a deeper look. Do you have the grab bar? Do you have all the durable medical equipment in place allowing us and the family member to provide a good care to people who are in need of that service? And ⁓ what recently been added to that piece of material is
what can you get from Medicare, right? And that's a lot of education component we offer to the family to help them get to the equipment and services that they need. We also offer organize community events, bringing them or introducing them to some relevant service provider like there's Parkinson's specific gym next door office. They do amazing program helping people to stay
active and they have really good program offer to Parkinson's clients or patients. We hook them up, right? I think it's just if we can make this easier and better for our clients and families, we feel like we're doing a good job.
Miriam Allred (14:48)
It's
all positive. It is. When you think about, I guess, going into 2026, what's top of mind for you? What are you thinking about? What are you worried about? you know, just going into a new year, what are you thinking about, like, strategically?
Jenny Cambra (15:03)
We wanted to be CHAP certified. So that's a big thing that ⁓ it's on my mind. CHAP certification is a good indicator that we're doing a patient-centric care. ⁓ You know, we're focusing on what really matters to them. And that's a whole kind of new mindset shift of it's, yes, we're running the business, but I think our focus will be fill a need first and the come, I mean, the business will come around it.
And that takes a lot of trainings, ⁓ know, education to our caregiver, clients, families. We can embrace that and we want to be the first home care company become CHAP certified employee.
Miriam Allred (15:45)
Wow, amazing. And yeah, for those that aren't aware, it's an accreditation. And it does take quite a bit of work to go into it. But you are trying to elevate your business. You're trying to differentiate, but also elevate your business and focus more on service delivery.
Jenny Cambra (15:59)
And we're going
to do more events in our center of excellence, bringing referral partners, bringing family members, because there's a lot of unpaid family caregivers in the field. If you're not running 24-7 care with agencies, there's a lot of time the family need to step up to provide care. But no one's trained to be a caregiver.
Miriam Allred (16:20)
Exactly. Jenny, this has been so good. Thank you for joining me live in Thank you so for having me. This so special. I think you're the first person that I've interviewed from Hawaii, so the pleasure is all mine. Absolutely. Enjoy your time in Dallas. Thank you so much. Thank you.
Jenny Cambra (16:29)
I hope to come again.
Miriam Allred (16:48)
you
Jenny Cambra (16:49)
you