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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.
Janice Rehkopf (00:51)
you
Miriam Allred (00:52)
you
All right, welcome back to the lab. I'm sitting across from Janice, who's the Director of Client Services at Comfort Keepers in Traverse City, Michigan. Janice, welcome to the stage. Welcome to Dallas. Thanks for being here.
Janice Rehkopf (01:09)
Thank you, Miriam. I am so excited about this. Thank you for having us.
Miriam Allred (01:13)
Absolutely. This is probably an experience that you haven't had before, so I'm happy to be your first to get you up on stage behind the mics. know you're a little nervous, but this is just you and me chatting about something that you're passionate about and something really, I think, that is interesting and that more people need to hear about and learn about. And so we are going to talk about your experience with a technology platform that you've been using, I think, for about a year that I also recently got familiar with.
Janice Rehkopf (01:19)
Absolutely the first.
Miriam Allred (01:41)
And again, think it's just something that more people need to hear about. let's start with, well, let's give a little personal backstory. I think people may not know you. Talk to me about your journey to home care and then working in this business.
Janice Rehkopf (01:56)
I started out in home care. Well, I didn't start out in home care. I actually started out on the floor as a CNA, on the floor working with seniors in a nursing home. And then I just, was, it was heartbreaking. So I left that scene and I went to become a director for Alzheimer's and dementia and ran an assisted living.
Miriam Allred (02:08)
Good.
Janice Rehkopf (02:26)
All time, I in the Munchie Union. And I did that for a couple of years. And then Russ and Leslie, they reached out and they said, hey, and this was back in 2005. And they said, hey, we are going to start this. We're going to do this. It was eight hours of care that we did for one senior. I was just blown away with their concept.
of in-home care and where that can go and what that means to seniors and not just seniors but their families and giving them that independence to stay at home. And I fell in love with it. So I started with Russ and Leslie 20 years ago.
Miriam Allred (03:08)
20 years ago. It's
been a hot minute and you've learned a thing or two.
Janice Rehkopf (03:14)
I've learned so much, not just from Russ and Leslie, but the caregivers, from our clients, their families, what they need, what they want. It's passion. I mean, I have a passion for what we do and what we're going to do and what we're continuing to grow and evolve.
Miriam Allred (03:34)
about what size is the business today? How many people in the office? Maybe how many clients or caregivers or hours, whatever.
Janice Rehkopf (03:40)
We have just about caregivers on staff for Northern Michigan. Probably about 16, 17 office staff. I don't have the numbers on the top of my head because it doesn't matter in my head in regards to those types of things. It matters about what we're doing and why we're doing it and the positions and the roles that they're doing to service the families, the clients.
Miriam Allred (03:53)
varies.
Janice Rehkopf (04:09)
and the caregivers.
Miriam Allred (04:11)
So a big organization and you have been at it for 20 years and your role as Director of Client Services. So just give us a little preview of what's in your purview. What are you thinking about and doing on a day-to-day basis?
Janice Rehkopf (04:23)
Day to day, I meet with almost every new prospective client, families, the caregivers that are servicing them, with my team. I help develop new programs and new... I don't want to even say that they're programs. They're solutions. They're solutions to meet the client and the family and the caregivers' needs that are in the field. Policies, procedures, I do all of that. Not individually.
I have a whole team and we utilize the TeamCare approach in everything that we do.
Miriam Allred (04:57)
And I like that word that you're using, is solutions. You're talking to the clients, the families, talking to the caregivers. You see needs and you want to come up with new ideas, solutions to bring to these people to adapt your service model.
Janice Rehkopf (05:12)
Every client, every family, and every caregiver is different. There's no one model that's going to meet anyone's needs. There's not a single model. So you have to adapt. You have to change. You have to have different solutions for every family. Your family and what your household does looks completely different than mine. So.
Miriam Allred (05:35)
If you had to quantify some trends though, you know, maybe looking back this past year or looking ahead to this coming year, what's on your radar with the clients? What are some of the kind of health trends, solutions based trends that you're thinking about and maybe going to kind of like adapt in this coming year?
Janice Rehkopf (05:52)
I'm seeing that people are looking for support earlier, not later. And a lot of people say that everyone's waiting too long to get care in place. But what we're seeing is families are looking, the daughters, the sons, they're looking at this about where, what support are they going to need when they get older? So it's about early care. It's about getting started earlier, not later.
And that's why we're doing what we're doing because things are changing. Things are changing in the industry. You know, we sat here at the conference and we're talking about generations, right? And how all these generations are different and how they're looking at the future and how they're saving money and they're working later in life, you know, those types of things. But what they are looking at, they're planning for the future. And this is early care.
And this is how people want to be independent, right? We see more more seniors, they're living longer, they're still driving, they're 93, still driving, they want independence, they don't want to rely on their family. That's what we're looking at.
Miriam Allred (07:06)
I think we're talking a lot about health in our country right now, and then naturally we're talking about aging more in this country. And I think every single one of us knows someone that has turned 100. There are more more centurions right around us. And I think that's just getting everyone thinking about aging and about what they want their own aging to look like or their loved one's aging journey to look like. There's just...
heightened awareness around aging, which is so good because then there's heightened awareness about home care. And yes, it's kind of a domino effect and it's not overnight, but more awareness towards aging brings more awareness towards solutions and home care is an important solution.
Janice Rehkopf (07:45)
Absolutely. And what you're doing with home care is even more important because home care is not just a caregiver going into your home. It's about having options and solutions. It's in-home assisted living. It's dedicated one-on-one care in your own home, keeping you independent, keeping your family independent. So you're not relying on them. And they feel that they are connected.
to you as their daughter or their son, that they don't have to worry about whether you're okay or not. You know, having all these different solutions put in place, that's what Comfort Keepers is doing. Howard, with Home Psych.
Miriam Allred (08:27)
So
let's talk about this. Let's talk about home site, but let's talk about how you got here because again, you've been doing this for 20 years. You spend a lot of time and a lot of homes and we understand that the caregiver being in the home is kind of that most important touch point, that one-to-one human connection. But we're seeing a lot of technology and like supplemental solutions that can supplement the care taking place in home. And so we'll get to home site. But what were some of the problems?
or concerns or things you guys were talking about in the office that led you to seek out some of these supplemental solutions? What were you seeing and hearing that led you down this path to look for solutions?
Janice Rehkopf (09:11)
Well, one of the major problems is there's not enough caregivers. There's just not. There's not enough people that are doing caregiver one-on-one in the home. Or our seniors, they're not ready. They're not ready or they don't want to accept someone sitting in their home for a three hour block of time just to make sure that they take their medication. They don't need that. And it hinders their independence.
Overall, we have to continue to grow and change and make sure that we're meeting their needs and their family needs. So that's what absolutely over time we continue to look for new solutions and new things to bring to our families and our clients because they want to stay independent. They don't want someone having to babysit them in the home. So what are we going to do? Are they at risk for falls?
they having medication problems, they just need reminders to get through the day, but they don't need someone physically there. They're independent, and we want to keep them as independent as possible for as long as possible.
Miriam Allred (10:27)
So let's talk about finding home sites specifically. Did you seek out a specific solution to solve a specific problem or were you doing just more broad market research to see what options were out there?
Janice Rehkopf (10:39)
So with Comfort Keepers, we are always looking for new solutions to solve the senior issues. Not just senior issues, but I want to pull this back to caregiver and the family too, because it's all in cups. So we've used so many great technologies over the years.
I cannot even tell you how many different technologies we've tried and we've learned so much from them.
Miriam Allred (11:12)
Do want to share a little bit more about, which ones and what, like, yeah, I want to dig in a little bit so you can give us some context.
Janice Rehkopf (11:17)
So from video to audio to fall detection to radar, we've tried all of these different technologies and they've all had such great, great solutions to the issues there. But we needed more. We needed something that was going to grow with us, integrate, and then we found HomeSight. OK. ⁓
Miriam Allred (11:43)
Okay, so tell us what you're using home site for, like in your own words, what does it do? yeah, just start with what does it do? What does home site do? Yeah, for those that aren't familiar with what they do.
Janice Rehkopf (11:52)
What does homicide do?
So it connects, again, going back to the caregiver, to the office, to comfort keepers. comfort keepers, we can connect with our caregivers. We can connect with the family, with the client. We can do reminders, whether it's visual on screen through the TV or whether we're doing wellness checks and reminders and exercises through a video, right through their TV in their living room. So just like if it...
If back in the day, cable, you had a caller ID, the caller ID would come across the bottom of the TV saying, oh, so-and-so is calling. That's exactly what this will do. And then it will pop up. And just like I'm sitting here talking to you right now, you're going to be face-to-face with either a family member, the office, or a caregiver saying, hey, go get your medication. Go take it.
Or let's do your exercises together. Or hey, how was your day? Your daughter came over and visited earlier. How was that visit? Or what are your plans for tomorrow? Or having a calendar, we have life care coordination. So we have calendar reminders about a hair appointment. Or ⁓ that's a great haircut you got. So we know what's going on in our clients' lives. So the loneliness.
is it.
Miriam Allred (13:26)
Yeah,
the isolation. can kind of cut through that with just connection and conversation and phone call.
Janice Rehkopf (13:34)
Well, that, but you also have on the caregiver side, you have the check-ins. So you did the breakout session. Absolutely amazing. And I can't say how much that's needed for caregivers actually to be heard. And some of the things that they were saying on that panel were, we want more connection with the office. We want more connection. We want more training. ⁓
What if, you know, offices don't have a lot of staff to go out and do all these trainings and families can't afford to pay for that, right? So now you have home site that is in the home. We're able to do introductions. We can do check-in calls. We can say, hey, how was your day? We can have videos, training videos, not just all that training that they talked about on that ⁓ panel.
we can actually have a video of that individual's care. We can have a video right there. And then when they walk in the house, we can do an introduction with them. They can go to the video and they can watch. This is how the care is being done. It's individual to that person. So we can do their basic training and give them the skills and abilities to do that. But every single senior is different. And you're not going to get that without being able to.
We can give it to them right through the home site platform.
Miriam Allred (15:01)
So let's talk about kind of the rollout. So you all subscribe, buy into home site. ⁓ How did you go about implementation with all of these families? Like what was your execution on implementing this and rolling this out?
Janice Rehkopf (15:18)
Number one, was getting everyone on my team involved. So getting everyone on the team, how is it going to impact your job? How is it going to impact your role? How can this help you? And let's do it. And then bringing it to the families. You got to understand when five years ago, 10 years ago,
I was taking care of my grandma in my house. She had dementia. And I took care of her for a very long time there. I put cameras in my house just so I can watch and observe. And I could talk to her through the camera, but she couldn't talk back to me. And you gotta understand, seven out of 10 homes now either have a ring, they have cameras in the home already. This is like a secure, it has the, it's secure. You know when someone's calling you, but those seniors can talk back.
They can talk to you, they can interact with you, just like I am right now, through their TV, a familiar device, and they don't have to do anything. They don't have to use a remote. They can, but they don't have to. And so with that rollout, you already have families in the... They're already doing it. So I was talking to a woman here just the other day, yesterday, and she had said that her father was in a nursing home.
Or assisted living and she put a camera in there so she can make sure that he was taking his medication He got so confused Because he couldn't talk back. He doesn't know where that voice is coming from. Mm-hmm, right? If she would have popped up on the TV said hey Dan, hi How you doing I see you didn't take your medication go ahead and take that He doesn't need somebody sitting there all day with him
Miriam Allred (17:01)
facial recognition, absolutely.
Janice Rehkopf (17:13)
He could probably be living at home and not in assisted living. But even in assisted living, know, this problem will work. It's independence.
Miriam Allred (17:24)
So you said seven out of 10 homes approximately have cameras in them already. I do. I do. I think of my generation though, I think it's very normal now. ⁓ But smart appliances are mainstream at this point. And so I think everyone's getting familiar with it. And that was going to be my question with the implementation and the rollout. this connects to the TV and...
Janice Rehkopf (17:29)
Do you have a camera on you?
Miriam Allred (17:48)
probably 99 % of homes have TVs. And this is almost like, in my mind, it looks kind of like a webcam that sits on top of the TV, if I understand. That was gonna be my question, is there resistance from these families or from these seniors to put this in the home? Or for the most part, has adoption been simple and seamless and everybody's been on board?
Janice Rehkopf (18:09)
It's been pretty simple and seamless with having it. It is getting the ⁓ clients on board with it. But the way ⁓ that it works is introducing the family and getting the family on board. So this and the caregivers and bringing everyone together as a team to make it work together. Because if you have a family member calling you, multiple family calls.
members calling you. You can have seven, eight family members at the same time on your TV. And that absolutely has happened. I can tell you a story about that one. But yeah, having the families, getting them on board. So you get your team on board, then you onboard your family and you onboard them early before you even hook up the wellness hub. And then.
Now you have your caregiver support, you have your family support, you have everyone on the same page, on the same team. And families love this. Clients love this. This has saved lives.
Miriam Allred (19:22)
Let me, yeah, we'll get to that story because I want you to tell that story. I think what draws me to home site is it's the television. There's a lot of new technology coming on the scene and you've looked at and probably vetted a lot of these companies. A lot of them are trying to introduce a net new screen device in the home, which isn't a problem per se, but the TV is already there and the senior knows how to navigate the TV, giving them a new touch screen.
even if it's simple and straightforward, looks like maybe an iPad, for example, it's just something that new and there's just going to be that change management, that resistance to a new platform, whereas the TV is native, they're comfortable with it. And it's kind of like a one size fits all. It's everything in one in this device. ⁓
Janice Rehkopf (20:10)
Not just that, but they don't have to do anything new. They don't have to learn anything new. ⁓ With the reminders that pop up, hey, or a family member sending a picture, you know, it comes right up on their TV. And then after the call or after that reminder, their TV shows can come right back on. So they don't have to do anything. So it can be used for early dementia, late stage dementia. It can be used for hospice.
can be used for just interim care, hey, maybe they don't need any care at all. Maybe they just want family connection or interaction.
Miriam Allred (20:50)
In your experience, this is curiosity question, in your experience, ballpark of your clients, if you can think about them, how many of them have smartphones? Most of them, would you say?
Janice Rehkopf (20:59)
A lot of them. I
would say, I would say about 60, 70 percent.
Miriam Allred (21:07)
Okay,
and they're pretty confident and comfortable navigating those or would you say their usage of those is pretty limited, pretty simple?
Janice Rehkopf (21:14)
simple. I would say it's simple.
Miriam Allred (21:15)
Okay. Because a minute ago you were saying the families really are on board with this and buy into this. You think of like FaceTime and the ability to do kind of simple video calls. Is this, is there kind of a, yeah, like a one-to-one comparison of that or is this, yeah, easier for the senior to maybe navigate than even their smartphone per se?
Janice Rehkopf (21:36)
So they'll have a smartphone, but they most likely have one or two buttons that they push. But with a smartphone, you have to actually navigate over, figure out how to accept or decline, and you have to hold it there or charge it. There you go. Yeah. We get that one a lot, charging your... So that's another thing that we can do through the TV, charge your phone type thing.
Miriam Allred (22:05)
Reminder.
Janice Rehkopf (22:06)
Yeah, with
the TV, they don't have to do anything. They're already watching their TV. They're already sitting in their recliner. They're sitting there. They're just popping up.
Miriam Allred (22:16)
What
about, these are just technical questions coming to mind, what about when the television is turned off? Is there an ability to get notified? What does that look like?
Janice Rehkopf (22:25)
We have the ability to automatically turn on the TV. So if, hey, they're not watching TV or they're in another room or whatnot and we decide, okay, we can see their movement, maybe they haven't woke up or whatnot, we can actually turn their TV on and video in. We have that capability to auto answer and auto turn their TV on.
Miriam Allred (22:49)
Okay,
that's amazing. And then the shutter, yeah, to open it and close it when a video call is coming in. I think there's some level of ⁓ approval, acceptance to open the shutter. Can you explain that?
Janice Rehkopf (22:59)
There's
two ways that they can do it. So the families can opt to have wait for, wait to accept. And on the remote, there's a green button that the client can push so that they can accept that. Or most commonly it's auto answered. So it'll ring, caller ID comes across and then it will automatically pop up. So most families choose that side versus using the remote because a lot of our clients that are using it.
They have advanced dementia.
Miriam Allred (23:32)
So I know you've already shared some of these, but I want you to kind of re-articulate some of the most common use cases. So you're talking about the family calling in, know, video call through the TV with the family. Then you're also talking about these reminders and notifications that the agency can establish. ⁓ What about... And then you were talking earlier about the caregiver's interaction with it. The caregiver can see videos, training videos, information displayed on the TV. Those are kind of the three use cases that you talked about. Are those the most common three? Are there any other...
use cases.
Janice Rehkopf (24:03)
So the main, the most use is our actual wellness calls. Where we have a set of a team of caregivers that all they do is wellness calls. So they are videoing in, they're calling, they're providing reminders, like verbal reminders and visual, making sure you're taking your medications. Let me see your pill box.
How's that going? All right, did we do our exercises today? Let's do that. We're going to do them together, one-on-one, the exercises that PT or OT has put together for them, their individual plan. So we're making sure that they do that. Or we can see, can see you didn't change your clothes from yesterday. And sometimes those can be four times a day. It can be...
three times a one time a day. It just all depends on that senior situation because again, every senior in every family is different.
Miriam Allred (25:04)
Okay, lots of questions about these wellness checks. This is interesting. Who are these caregivers? Do you have a group of caregivers in the office that this is their primary role? Are these wellness checks? And how many, what's the ratio?
Janice Rehkopf (25:16)
They actually do it from their home. Yeah. So you can have these wellness checks anywhere from all over the world. So our group actually are home-based caregivers that actually video in at a certain time. So they're scheduled. And it's on their reminders that pop up on their TV that you have a scheduled video reminder. You're going to have a video call with Comfort Keepers at a certain time. So they video in at that time.
Miriam Allred (25:18)
Okay.
Janice Rehkopf (25:42)
They follow the care plan, just like if a person was there in the home. So they follow that care plan.
Miriam Allred (25:49)
Are
these your maybe, I guess I think there might be a certain like level of criteria for these to be the right fit caregivers for this job. It's not hands on. It's not like this just feels like a very different. Maybe, maybe it's not so different, but are these a certain caliber or caregiver lead that's doing this or anyone can be qualified to do this virtual wellness check?
Janice Rehkopf (26:11)
So within our office, we have two full skills labs, hands-on and classroom. So they have to be credentialed to do this. They have to be signed off by our nurse to say, you have the skills and abilities to meet these needs. Whether it's going through the dementia training with Alzheimer's Association or all of these different skills and abilities, they have to be met. again, going back to every client.
every family is different. So the people that are doing these virtual calls, but still have to have the same skills and abilities as if they were in the home.
Miriam Allred (26:48)
And how do you find the caregivers that want to do this or get to do this? Are ⁓ they also spending time with the clients in the home, these caregivers? Are they spending time in the home and also doing the virtual wellness checks or are those two different caregivers doing two different roles?
Janice Rehkopf (27:11)
Most of time it's two different caregivers doing two different roles. But we do like to introduce them in person also, because you're going to see them on the screen. You're going to get used to them. And we use the Team Care approach. So we try to make the team as small as possible for our clients. So they get to know you. You get to know them. So they're building a relationship over time. So.
So we do like to introduce them in person also. But most of time they're on the screen, they're not doing the hands-on in the home.
Miriam Allred (27:41)
Okay, I'm asking a lot of questions, but I want to really understand this model. How do you package this and sell this? Is it a bundle of hours mixed with a bundle of remote wellness checks or the wellness checks baked into the hours? Like how do you package this and sell this to these clients and families?
Janice Rehkopf (28:01)
That's a great question because there isn't a packet.
Miriam Allred (28:04)
Okay, that's where my mind goes. So explain. Yeah, how you're thinking
Janice Rehkopf (28:08)
Okay. So again, going back to that in-home assisted living model of care with dedicated one-on-one caregivers and dedicated solutions to each senior's need. So one senior
Thursday, last week, I was in a client's home. And this is an ongoing client that we've had. She used us periodically just for transportation here or there, right? And her family was seeing some memory decline. She was seeing her own memory decline. She's like, we need more support in the home. Traditional caregiving would have been, okay, three hours every day making sure that, you know, she took her medications, that...
She had something to eat, you know, she's still driving. She's 90 some years old. She's still driving. Wow. And, you know, so I'm sitting there and I'm listening to her and I know her from the past because we've worked with her over the years. Like she is super independent. She is not going to like someone being in her home for three hours and her home is immaculate. She has a housekeeper that comes in already. So her package, what that included.
is someone to help her organize her day. So we have life care coordination. They come in, they manage her calendar for her. They make sure that nothing was overlapping. She makes sure that she knows where she's going. She makes sure this doctor is here at this appointment. know, so we have the life care coordination coming in. We installed the wellness hub and all of those appointments, all of those
⁓ her hair appointment, her, when she's supposed to take her medications and then her blood pressure, right? So I put all of those into her wellness call. She's now getting reminders, take her blood pressure because she wasn't doing it before. And then we have a wellness call every evening at four 30. The reason that we have that wellness call is because she takes a late afternoon nap. And when she wakes up, she's confused. She doesn't know what time of day it is. ⁓
And she thinks it's the next day and she's calling her family and she's super confused and family very, very busy. They can't do that. And plus they live far away. So now we can come in, we can make sure that she's oriented and the time, the date, all of that is on her TV, on the screen right there. And so we found out because she wasn't taking her blood pressure, she started taking it because she was getting reminders and we're on video with her.
And we're saying, okay, we can see whether she taking her blood pressure or not and where, what the blood pressure was. And it was sky high. Sky high. So we were able to say, okay, we need to do something about this. was a trigger for us. Got a call of her doctor. They increased her medication. Then we found out that she wasn't taking the medication the way that she should have been taking it the first place. So again,
put health care coordination. Now we have health care coordination. We have the blended care. We have the life care coordination. And we have daily check-ins. Her doctor called me today, two day, said, can I have the readout of all of her medications? We just prevented a stroke from happening. No hospital visit.
No long-term care. None of that. We prevented that. And she's still living. She's at home. Thriving. She's doing great. And it's tailored to her. There's no one solution for any senior or any family or any caregiver out there.
Miriam Allred (31:56)
and it's tailored to her.
Which I love this. My mind goes, my logistical mind goes to like, how do you package this? How do you sell this? But you're like, no, it's the assessment process. We meet them where they are. We hear what they want, what they need. We create a care plan tailored to their needs. And this model, this hands-off virtual model is perfect for someone like her that doesn't need someone in the home, know, breathing down her neck, or she doesn't need all of that assistance. She needs the reminders. She needs the check-ins.
And that's perfect for her.
Janice Rehkopf (32:34)
So let me tell you this story. So we had a client. It's very early. It's like one of our first clients that we started with, with home site program. So we installed the wellness hub because she, again, in our late nineties, she was still doing everything that she needed to do, but she needed a couple of days a week with hands on care, help her with getting in and out of the shower and transportation. Very minimal.
But her family was, we need to be more connected and they're all over the world. So they, we had this program, family's calling in. We weren't even doing wellness calls at that time. And so the family wanted this for other reminders. And so they could just check in. Time went on a few months later, she transitions. She's into hospice now. She's in our living room. It's mother's day this last year.
And so many family members were able to come together as a group, all together on the TV. Everyone could see each other. She could see them. They're singing hymns. They're having, you know, Mother's Day dinner together. She passed away late at night. With her whole family surrounding with her with.
I can tell you stories after stories about how it's impacting families and our caregivers. And there was this gentleman that literally just had the screen in. It was a physician that contacted us and like, hey, we're going out of town. Can you just come over every day and just check on my dad? We're going to be gone for a while. And I was like.
He's super independent. mean, he has his med list and everything just checked off so perfectly. I he's doing so well. We put an emergency response pendant in and for just to make sure that if he fell, you know, something would happen. And it's like, well, how about we just do, you know, some check-ins and because you're so worried about him, you can check in even when you're overseas, you can check in and call him and say, Hey dad, how are doing? Hey, look where I'm at. Or you can send him pictures of.
wherever you are. And so one evening the caregiver called in and was checking on him and they, he wasn't there. He wasn't, we couldn't see him. And, or he wasn't responding. So we were looking around, you know, at his area. We saw that he was actually on the floor. There was a huge ice storm, snowstorm.
And the power, the power for the, wasn't any cell service there. So the emergency response pendant didn't pick up his fall. He was on the floor. We found out he was there for six, we saw him. Our caregivers actually called 911. We saved his life. This program saved his life. Not just that, but then he goes and he's, he's in rehab, getting stronger. Now he's home. He's home.
We're doing wellness checks on him every day that we're not there. He's thriving. He's great. If that site, if this wasn't in his home, he wouldn't be here. The other woman that I talked about, she wouldn't be here. She would have been in the hospital stroked. She would not be independent. She would not be driving. She wouldn't be where she is today.
Miriam Allred (36:08)
done.
Janice Rehkopf (36:20)
that family wouldn't be able to come together and say their goodbyes for that one last moment.
Miriam Allred (36:26)
So powerful. So powerful. It's so special when technology comes together to connect people in a way that literally saves lives and changes lives. think it's incredible. A minute ago, you used the phrase blended care. Is that what you all internally use, externally use? I'm just curious about like kind of like the messaging and the positioning.
Janice Rehkopf (36:49)
The blended care is basically multiple solutions to meet your needs. It's not just home care with one straight line of caregivers or a nurse coming into your home. It's from nutritional support to home delivered meals or emergency response tendons, more technology, whether it's the wellness hub.
All of these different solutions, putting them together as up-ended, it's up-ended care solution.
Miriam Allred (37:21)
like that. I like that a lot. And it's so, again, so customized, so tailored to the needs of the client. We just went long on that use case, but I'm glad we did because I think that, like you said, is the primary use case. And so I wanted to understand how you structured that. What other use cases come to mind as kind of the other top ways that you use this technology and the impact that it's had beyond the wellness check?
Janice Rehkopf (37:43)
So the wellness checks, you also have all of your, ⁓ your blood pressure, your glucose, your, you know, all of these things that can be monitored through our healthcare coordination or families can do it themselves. It doesn't have to be comfort keepers doing it. Families can do this. And you know, that's a, that's another great thing that we can monitor. We can monitor whether they're getting up multiple times during the night. So all of these, ⁓
graphs and charts about, you know, their movement within the home and how often they're getting up. You know, if we're seeing, if we're starting to see a change in their behavior and when they're moving and they're getting up six or seven times during the night, we know we have something that we need to, we need to address that. We need to address it now. That could be a UTI. It could be, you know, anything could be changing within that. So we need to do a reassessment. We need to go out to the home or video in and say, Hey,
And we can do reassessments with families that are super busy, that live far away. You don't have to move them into an assisted living to have that 24 hour care. You can have this program and still be able to monitor and make that solution without having to pay these outrageous prices and not have live in your own home. You know our seniors worked their entire life to be in their own home and have their independence. Why not continue to give that?
Miriam Allred (39:08)
To make sure I understand monitoring the blood sugar, blood pressure, glucose, measuring all of that. Is that through this wellness hub device?
Janice Rehkopf (39:17)
Everything is through the wellness.
Miriam Allred (39:19)
Explain
how that works though, actually monitoring those levels.
Janice Rehkopf (39:23)
So it's Bluetooth
to the wellness hub. And then we get instant results in the back office. Family gets instant results on their end. So, and our caregivers that are doing the, if they're paired, you know, they have to be part of the team. Then they can, they can see the results of what they're doing, whether they took it or they didn't take it. ⁓ so again, with the blood pressure, that's how we were able to, to see, you know, that the blood pressure was skyrocketed.
So we can see that in real time. It's, it's instant within one second. can see where their weight is. they're outside congestive heart failure, you know, if you're outside of parameter, except those physicians puts in place, we can see that.
Miriam Allred (40:07)
I guess my question is, they, how are they, they're capturing all that information and then inputting it into, I guess, yeah, how, like how is it being? It's Bluetooth. The device to what though? The wellness hub is Bluetooth to what other devices that they're capturing that information?
Janice Rehkopf (40:19)
Wellness.
blood pressure cuff, your scale, the glucose machine.
Miriam Allred (40:29)
Does home site provide those tools or you get those tools and then pair them with the Wellness Hub?
Janice Rehkopf (40:36)
The families will get those tools from Amazon or just like you're pairing it to your phone. It's actually to the wellness hub where your whole team can see the results.
Miriam Allred (40:48)
Got it. Got it. Okay. Those devices are separate, but they're Bluetooth to the wellness hub. Okay. That was the connection that I wasn't quite drawing on. wanted to make sure that distinction of those other tools, Bluetoothing to the wellness hub, and then all of the data is live in real time and can be monitored by the family and by the team and by the client themselves.
Janice Rehkopf (41:04)
and then nurse or social worker or whoever else is on it. And the physician, physicians can connect to it too. So that's another thing.
Miriam Allred (41:07)
Okay.
The whole, yeah, the whole care team, the whole continuum right there in one device. Any other use cases? I want you to kind of keep going through these use cases because I think these are really powerful as to how you can use this.
Janice Rehkopf (41:23)
Um, the interactive caregiving, uh, the social isolation. That's another big one. Uh, families sharing videos or content. if they're on a trip, they can just send videos. We also are working on, you know, doing legacy. So being able to have like the, the client story on the client's perspective, being able to capture that through.
being able to tell stories about a fixture that's out there. you know, and those are, we have a roadmap that we're going on, some big ideas that are coming through, but it's encompassing so many different areas of not just the senior slice, but the family and the caregiver too. So, and I think that the family is the one thing that a lot of people forget about.
is that oldest daughter that's caring for a loved one or caring for or trying to navigate. And they're worried and they just want to be able to check on them and see if they're okay because they can't go over there all the time. They live far away and you have multiple family members that are trying to do this and this bridges that gap. It's amazing for our families.
Miriam Allred (42:38)
And kudos to you for being so innovative. Again, I wanted to have this conversation because I think more people need to get ideas as to how to approach blended care model. There's a lot of technology. There's a lot of tools. Again, I think this is so simple, but so impactful. And you all have really kind of created a model for yourself that's customized to the clients and is a differentiator in your community. And again, yeah, people may shop around, but they come to you all and they see like, wow, this, this is a model that really speaks to us. And it's so.
custom tailored to our family and that just speaks volumes. Janice, this has been so good. Thank you so much for sharing all of this. A lot of great stories, a lot of great use cases. ⁓ Again, this is still kind of new to me, but I want to introduce it more to this home care world as an alternative. And I think people may have more questions for you and I hope they can follow up with you. Are you active on LinkedIn or email? What would be the best way for people to get in contact with you?
Janice Rehkopf (43:11)
soon.
Call me, email me. ⁓
Miriam Allred (43:36)
That would be great. We'll have your contact information along with this episode so people can reach out to you. So thank you so much for joining me live here at HCAOA. What a fun experience for both of us. Thank you so much.
Janice Rehkopf (43:45)
Thank you for everything, Miriam. You are absolutely great. I've listened to a lot of your podcasts and thank you for sharing the message. It's needed.
Miriam Allred (43:53)
Absolutely my pleasure.
Janice Rehkopf (44:10)
you ⁓