Senior Helpers: What Sets it Apart from Other Home Care Companies with Peter Ross

Welcome to the Living to 100 Club Podcast.

Well, hello to everyone joining us today on our podcast. You're listening to one of our public episodes this month on the Living to 100 Club program, and I'm your host, Joseph Casciani. Each week, our conversations educate and inspire, helping you get the best out of all the years we're given, regardless of what obstacles come our way. These public episodes air twice a month. With a premium membership, Subscribers can listen to an episode every week, 2 public and 2 premium. So subscribers have access to 2 additional episodes per month. All episodes share educational and inspiring stories with practical tips and strategies for aging well. Premium episodes are for subscribers only, so be sure to sign up today at livingto100club.supercast.com. On today's podcast, we talk with Peter Ross, CEO and co-founder of Senior Helpers. Senior Helpers is a non-clinical skilled care company with approximately 30,000 caregivers working in 350 offices in 43 states in the US and in other countries. What are the goals of his company, Senior Helpers? How does it help to keep seniors living at home? And what are the unique features of this home care company that keep it at the forefront of home care? First, a little background. Peter co-founded SH Franchising with Tony Bonacusa in 2004 and is the current CEO for Senior Helpers. He has led the organization to become a national leader in non-medical in-home care for seniors. He also serves as a president of the Home Care Association of America's Board of Directors. He has devoted his career to helping in-home care excel and to improving service at all levels. Peter, welcome to our program.

Thank you, Joe, for the introduction. And just a little caveat, I'm the former president of the Home Care Association of America, so I don't want to get the new president in trouble. Okay, with me there, but I still serve on that board. But okay, thank you so much for the introduction. Glad to be here.

Thanks for that clarification, former president. Okay, I always like to open by asking our guests to tell us a little bit about the, maybe the highlights that brought you to where you are today. I know you've covered a lot of territory over the years, but Maybe share with us the highlights that brought you to where you are today.

Well, I was brought up in a big family in Portland, Maine. So I was the 11th child from my father, but the only child from my mother. So that's a very interesting dynamic in itself. And I worked the corporate ladder for about 20 years and then, excuse me, got into what I would call my entrepreneurial track. And all of it's been around healthcare. Trying to get into, you know, I learned a long time ago in trying to care for my mother that, that senior care, there had to be a better way. So a little bit over 20 years ago, my partner Tony and I formed Senior Helpers, a way to create a community franchise and corporate store locations to really provide ability for people to age in place. And having seen it firsthand because of what my mother's situation was, that was really my motivation, Joe, is to really find a way to, you know, I call our Senior Helpers business a mission-driven for-profit. We do, yes, we do want to make money, but we want to make people's lives better, healthier, and able to live out their life in the dignity of their own home. And I was always perturbed early on in my life that I would go to restaurants, and if you got there really early for dinner, they had the senior early bird dinner special. And it just set me the wrong way. I said, why do we make seniors eat before everybody else? Yeah, I don't get it. I said, why are we segregating people out by age, um, when they— we are here because of them. They fought our wars. They they raised us, and we are who we are because of this. And in most civilizations, the elders of the civilization or the community or the tribe, they were revered. They were looked upon for wisdom and understanding of how you can learn from them to live a better life. And I always felt that we don't give our seniors in this country the due respect they deserve. And that really motivated me early on to do things around healthcare, around senior care, to just give them the reference that I think they really deserve. And that one of our core values at Senior Helpers is celebrate life. People tell me all the time, well, you're dealing with people at their end of their life. I said, we could have clients for 20 years and 20 days. You know, only God knows when end of life is. You know, so, you know, I look at that everyone should be able to celebrate their life every single day. So we want to do that with our clients and their families.

Yeah, thanks for that. I, you know, I always like to highlight the fact that our senior years are a time to celebrate, and it's not one of decline and increased dependency and helplessness, but you're helping to maximize the individual's functioning while he or she is still living in their own home. And I really like the, you know, as you talk about the mission-driven focus and for-profit, and of course, these are not mutually exclusive. That's so important to remember, right? You can have a very strong, powerful drive to do good and at the same time generate income. For the company, for employees, and yeah, provide a useful service. Sure.

Yeah, we're helping others. I've always believed, Joe, that if you help enough people get what they want, you'll get what you want. I think we're all put on this planet to make a difference, and I think our franchisees, our staff, make a difference every single day of their life out there. And I think that's why it is a mission-driven business. And, you know, I really wanted to find a business that I would You know, I love what I do. The old adage, if you find something you love, what you do, you never do it, you never work another day in your life. And, you know, we're strong because we have a tremendous, tremendous team and franchisees out there that really care and care deeply about their clients, their families, and their team.

I know when you and I spoke earlier, you had mentioned that Senior Helpers is really the 5th largest home care company in the country, and So what sets you apart from other home care companies?

Well, first of all, I think it's just, it's amazing that the competitors we have are actually friends of mine. So I, first of all, I've learned since being the last child in my family that you can't talk bad about the ones before you compete with. Yeah, and I certainly played sports my whole life. And, but I, you know, I try to look at Senior Helpers and I talk about Senior Helpers. I don't talk about my competitors. They do great work. I'm happy they're in the industry. There is so much of a need. 60% of all seniors, Joe, will need some type of home care in their lifetime. So there's plenty of work out there for everybody. In fact, there's almost too much demand right now, which is— you can't have anyone ever say too much demand, but there is a tremendous demand for what we do. So what Senior Helpers has done is— I don't use the term non-medical, I use the term non-clinical. I don't use, you know, many— when I got in the industry, when I first started, Everybody told me, oh, you're private duty home care. You do non-medical, non-skilled. And I was a math major at one time, and two negatives don't make a positive. So I never liked this non-this, non-that. And so I said, no, we're non-clinical, highly skilled. You know, we were the first organization to adopt a disease management chronic care strategy. So we knew that 30 to 60%, depending on what age you're at, we're going to have at least one, you know, type of chronic illness or more, you know, as you age. That's one of the challenges we all have to deal with. So why can't our caregivers be really experts, you know, at taking care of people with Alzheimer's, dementia, Parkinson's, COPD? So why can't we measure that and actually train around that? So we created a program called our Center of Excellence. And what this is, is that it's basically many apartments that we put in around the country in our franchise office and our corporate stores where we train caregivers to be caregivers. And whether you're a licensed certified nurse's aide or home health aide or have never done caregiving before— last year, Senior Helpers was, was awarded Great Place to Work for the 4th year in a row. We're also a great place to work for millennials. So we're teaching younger people how to be great caregivers and making caregiving a profession, a career opportunity for them. So the Center of Excellence teaches them how to use DME equipment. Hoyer lifts, pivot poles, transfers, how to do it safely. So we're training our caregivers to be the best they can be, both in the disease they're taking care of with someone, but also how they can actually provide the care. Because what home care does is takes care of what we call activities of daily living, something that you and I and many of the listeners take for granted every single day. Well, as you age, you sometimes have challenges with some of those activities of daily living. And that's where caregiving can come in and help to augment those things for you to still allow you to live independently at home. That is very critical. So those activities of daily living, we teach caregivers how to take care of someone that has an ambulatory issue or needs help with bathing or toileting, sleep patterns, eating, you know, all the things that we, we try to do every day pretty well. But, you know, as you age, it becomes more challenging in some of those areas. So we train them on that. The other thing we do with the Center of Excellence, which I really I really want the listeners to hear is that in home care, we take care of someone, you know, anywhere from 20 to 40 hours a week. Very seldom do we— are we in the home 24/7. It just isn't cost-effective sometimes for people, but it just isn't where we are now. We leverage technology in the home to help during that time, but last time I checked, there's 168 hours in a week. So we're teaching our family caregivers in the Center of Excellence how to take care of their loved one when we're not there. So it doesn't do us a great deal of good, Joe, to us fantastically make sure they don't have any falls and take their medication and be able to transfer from the bed to the couch to this to that. You know, that's awesome. But when we leave and the family caregiver has no clue how to use a Hoyer lift, how are we going to really help that client? The client's going to end up back in a hospital. It's not going to be fine. So You're investing in the family. To us, the family is the client. You know, the family, you know, families want— when we take care of their loved ones, they want peace of mind. They want to have a sense that mom and dad, uncle or aunt, grandmother, grandfather are being well taken care of. But the quality of care— and that's one of the things we focus tremendously at Senior Helpers— we want to be the highest quality home care provider in the country. So that's a big part of what we do in the Center of Excellence. The other thing that's very unique to Senior Helpers is that we talk about non-clinical, but we have an assessment tool called Life Profile. This assessment tool digs into 144 conditions of medical condition management, but it also looks at the quality of life, the surroundings, the socialization of that, of that person, and their ability to live independently at home. And it scores them, Joe. It's like a fuel gauge from 0 to 51.. And based on how they score in that assessment, it determines the likelihood with 18 years worth of data, the likelihood of that person being readmitted or back to a hospital.

Mm-hmm.

So, and then it gives us options for what, what, what levers can we pull? What buttons can we push to improve that score? Introducing home care, introducing family care, introducing types of durable medical equipment, you know, It's interesting, you know, your, your actual walker is 23 inches wide. The average door jamb in a house is 22. So there's things we can do to help modify your home to help you live safely there as well. So this Life Profile Assessment uses this really clinical tool to really assess the person's ability to live safely at home. And by using this tool, you know, it gives us tremendous data around hospitalization, ER visits, and we were able to lower those significantly. I had a friend of mine who's a geriatrician who told me that a senior's trip to the ER is a 30-day sentence away from home because ERs have never been sued for admitting a patient. They've been sued for not admitting a patient. So they're— that senior walks in with a cold sore, they're going into bed on the 4th floor. So by the time they work themselves through the system at a high cost to both them, the family, and the government, they come home. So we want to keep them out of the hospitals. Hospitals are not seniors' friends unless they need to be there. So we really want to make sure that they don't go there unexpectedly. You know, and that's one of the things we try to do with a life profile assessment. So I think those are some of the ways that we, we, we work with— we do a great deal of work with payers from the Veterans Administration to Medicaid Waiver to Medicare Advantage. Because people want to be able to afford home care. So it's a case of getting the government to help pay for that.

Yeah, some great differentiators there, Peter. I can see that from the training to this Life Profile assessment. It sounds like the assessment actually helps to kind of individualize or customize the approaches that you need to take with a given client or patient, and that's going to zero in on Well, as you say, what needs to be done to avoid another rehospitalization? And let's target those weakest areas, maybe build on the strengths, but also target the weakest areas, right? Yeah.

I mean, I will tell you, my same friend who's a geriatrician told me that when you, you know, his line was, when you see one senior patient, you've seen one senior patient.

Yeah.

And, you know, the Life Profile does an amazing job of creating a customized care plan for that family and that individual. Much more so than when I first started Senior Helpers.

We—

it was best guess. How should we really draw up a care plan? Now, you got better over experience, Joe, but it was never exact. We're now using data. We're now using outcome data to really look at, okay, no, we're going to take the guesswork out of this. We don't want it to be subjective. We want it to be objective. Okay, these are the things we can do to improve your score. And the more your score, the higher score you get. The likelihood you're never going to go back into that hospital. That's what we're trying to do. And I think it's worked really well for us. In fact, when we sold— I sold Senior Helpers for the third time a year, almost 2 years ago now, April 1st, '21, to Advocate Aurora Enterprises, which is part of Advocate Aurora Health, which is now part of Advocate Health, which when they merged with Atrium Health, and that's a big hospital system. And, you know, we now have the whole healthcare continuum from from personal care services all the way to home health, hospice, all the way up through hospitalization. So we have that ability now, and I don't think we would've been able to do that if we weren't able to show Advocate that we really do look at outcomes. That one of their key things is how many healthy days do people have. We're really focused at healthy days for the family, and we want to do that through data. I'm a Six Sigma graduate, so I'm all about looking at data, KPIs, understanding really what's working for that family and giving them that feedback. You know, we know how that family is doing. We're going to be closer to that family than the providers. We want to provide that provider with information on how that family is doing, how that senior is doing. You know, seniors have bad days, but when is it a really bad day?

Yeah.

So, you know, we want to be able to take care of those situations and mitigate that opportunity to go to a hospital or to an urgent care or ER.

All about prevention, right? It's all about prevention and zeroing in and providing the necessary care. So, I'm curious about the payment. Who qualifies for home care and how is it paid for?

Yeah, well, most of it for a long time, you know, Joe was paid privately by the family. So when I first started Senior Helpers, almost 100% of our costs for home care was paid by the family. In fact, I wanted it that way. When I, when Tony and I started, we said we don't want to have to deal with Uncle Sam. That's why we didn't get into home health. They have to deal with Uncle Sam. You don't have to do that.

Medicare, Medicaid. Yeah.

Yeah. So, but over time, you know, 55% of all healthcare spend in this country is paid by the government. So I've learned a lesson over the 20 years that if you can't beat them, you need to join them, but you need to be selective in how you're joining them. But for the listener, there's really many avenues for you to find a way to get reimbursement. A lot of people have signed up for long-term care insurance programs. You know, long-term care insurance has been around for quite a long time, and those plans will cover home care. In fact, they'd rather have you cover home care than you move into a facility. It costs them more money. So if you have long-term care insurance, that could also pay for home care. If you are Medicaid eligible, there's a program called Medicaid Waiver in states. It does vary by state, but if you're part of the Medicaid program, Medicaid Waiver will reimburse home care as well. Now, the new thing on the block is your Medicare Advantage program. So 4 years ago, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid, right, not too far from my office in Baltimore, basically came out and said that Medicare Advantage can offer supplemental benefits for home care. So a Medicare Advantage participant, and by the way, that number is growing significantly. It's rumored to have almost 50% of all Medicare recipients will have some type of Medicare Advantage Part C program. So some of those now, Joe, are paying for home care. Now the subscriber has to raise their hand to say, I want it to go to home care. So we're working on some communication with Senior Helpers to sign 4 very significant contracts nationally with Medicare Advantage programs to help more people afford home care. And then the last one I will talk to your listeners about, which I think is really very interesting, is the Veterans Administration. The VA has tremendous home care benefits for their veterans, the veterans' family, and many of the veterans can qualify for veterans assistance for home care.. And we've done a lot of work with that, and many of our offices are, are, you know, very, you know, experienced at working with families to apply for the veterans benefits, and they can help to pay for home care for them to live out their life at home. So that's another option for people. So, you know, obviously they can pay for it out of their pocket. So you have really these different avenues, and, you know, 100% of our revenue at Senior Helpers back even 10 years ago, Joe, was probably 95% private pay. Well, so now we're probably in the middle, 60%. So we have a pretty large revenue number. So we've done a lot more in trying to branch out into the government payments, especially Medicare Advantage, especially Veterans Administration, just to try to help as many people. I mean, I have the same— my dad was in the Army. I You know, we have— we even offer a discount for veterans who purchase a franchise at Senior Helpers on the franchise fee because we— I have the same respect for them as I have for seniors. They've protected our country. They've fought. Some have died. If there's anything we can do to help support veterans in this country, we are going to do anything we can at Senior Helpers. We've actually been licensed by the Department of Defense to hire military spouses, you know, as part of our recruiting efforts. Because as you know, Joe, the military gets moved around quite a bit. Well, the spouse, you know, doesn't always have an easy way to find a job.

Sure.

So we are one of two companies in the country that are licensed to be able to hire military spouses and have been agreed to by the Department of Defense for that. Again, another, you know, we did a whole veterans video program with Montel Williams to advertise kind of what we do for veterans and how we want to support them. We have many veteran franchise owners in our system. So again, we're trying to, you know, because the market in senior care is kind of in 3, 3 kind of columns, buckets if you want to call it. You got the haves, the have-nots, and everyone else. I didn't— it wasn't out of the Harvard MBA program, but I wanted to simplify it so everybody can understand it. So the haves are what we played in that sandbox we played in from the beginning. Those are people that can afford whatever they want. If they want home care, they want to go to a sunrise mansion, they want to do whatever they want for senior care, they can afford it. Then you have the have-nots or the people that are Medicaid eligible. And in this country, 50% of all Medicare expenditures are paid on 5% of Medicare recipients. Think about that number. Half of the Medicare spend in this country is on 5% of the medicine. So we have ways of trying to help them to cut some of that expense but still provide tremendous care for these people. But that's the have-nots. They don't have the money to afford whatever home care they want. They're relying on the government to help us to do that. And the bucket of everyone else, that's a lot of people. That's 40 to 50 million people in this country.. And we've created programs for them where we can use technology, fractional care, to provide them home care at only 40% the cost of home care. So it's a brand new program that we've rolled out because no one's been addressing that everyone else market. Those are the people that are not rich enough to pay whatever they want. They're not poor enough to get the government to pay. You know, that's our typical middle class, right?

So, wow.

How do we find a way to take care of them? They deserve it too. So We've come up with some creative service programs. We try to change the way— I'm a disruptor, so we try to change the way what traditional service is all about. We're not afraid. I think, you know, one of my favorite quotes is, many a false step's been done by standing still. You've got to keep moving. And, you know, we try to keep reinventing and understanding service delivery so that we can provide care for everybody. I want to be able to provide— it's mission-driven, means something. I want to provide care for the Bill Gates of the world and anyone else in the country. I don't want you to be are you not available to get care because you can't afford it? We're going to try to find a way for you to do that. Now, we're not a bank, so we can't fund all the care for everybody, but we're going to try everything we can to find Medicare Advantage or VA or Medicaid or offer a different kind of care program. You know, that's maybe neighborhood care where we do— we go into a home for 15 minutes. We don't go in there for 4 hours, but we go in and check on them. We give them peace of mind. We give them a bath visit. We do something. Really to kind of change the way we deliver care to make it more affordable to that everyone else.

So it's really the full range of services, a full complement of services. But also, I think maybe more important is the system innovations that you come up with and how to work with all the different needs of the community and how to work with the different payers. And I think you said 40% of your services are paid for by the government or different insurance plans.

Yeah, almost. Well, about 35%.

Yeah.

Long-term care, VA, long-term care insurance, VA, Medicare Advantage, Medicare, Medicaid.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So being flexible, it reminds me of this, um, book written by Twyla Tharp, and not really the same, uh, topic, but she, you know, she's this, uh, choreographer and she's done a lot of choreography in, in New York and Broadway. And her latest book is called Keep It Moving, and she talks about the importance of, you know, staying active in our senior years and, you know, keep putting ourselves out there. And as you said, we need to keep moving as well. You can't, you can't grow by standing still. So it's the same, it's the same concept, isn't it? Just we need to keep innovating, we need to keep testing and maybe falling, but getting back up and continuing to keep moving forward.

Yeah, you look at our core values, our, one of our first core values was integrity without compromise. We want to be transparent with families in our franchise system. We talked about celebrate life earlier. Another one is continuous improvement. So, you know, we're not going to stand still. Another one is embrace the facts. You know, a lot of times businesses, you know, and people, you know, they want, you know, I never knew we learned that we lived in an alternative fact world until recently. But I've always lived my life where there's facts, there's truth, there's data, and the data will set you free if you let it talk to you. And I think we try to, you know, look at and say, hey, look, we know there's a hole in the market that's not being served. And, you know, we want to be that Amazon of home care. We want to find a way to do something that someone tells you you can't do it that way. It's never been done. I love when someone says that. I've done this thing for 20 years. It's always the same. No, it isn't. My father once said, you know, I was going for a job and they wanted much more experience than I had. And he made a comment and he said, hey, is it, you know, they might have 5 years or 10 years or 15 years of experience, but is it 10 years experience or is it 1 year repeated 10 times?

Sure.

So it's, you know, how do you embrace it? And you do that by having a great team, a strong team, and listen, God gave you 2 ears, 1 mouth, use them proportionally.

Yeah, beware of the person that says, no, no, that can't be done. We've tried that.

I work that way. Usually not part of the team anymore.

Sure. Yeah. So, um, Senior Helpers has about 350 offices in most states and other countries. And how many of them are owned by the company and how many are franchised?

So we have— we do everything by territory. So we have, um, 300 and 40 are franchise-owned, and there's 12 that are corporate store-owned in the US. That's— and we're in 44 states. We have about 20 locations in Australia and about 7 in Canada, but they're controlled under what we call a master franchise situation. So, but we have 5 corporate locations. We do that because I wanted to be able to, you know, when Tony and I started the business, we both had our own home care business, Senior Helpers. So we both lived the business and then we got into franchising. So you kind of get away from being in the business, you're on the business. And I wanted to get back in the business. So we have 5 corporate stores: Chicago, Milwaukee, Charlotte, Erie, Pennsylvania, which is a Medicaid business. We never really did Medicaid. So we bought this franchise business that we had to learn more about Medicaid and, and Baltimore. And I think I mentioned Charlotte. So what's nice with the new Advocate Health merger is that we have corporate stores in Milwaukee, Chicago, and Charlotte, which is their 3 big offices. So that's where the footprints are. So some good overlap there. But we have tremendous owners in these communities. Some owners own more than one location. So they're multi-unit owners as well. But it's, it's been an amazing journey. The strength of our brand is our people.

Yeah.

Our owners are just, just amazing.

Yeah. Yeah. A lot to feel good about there, Peter. I saw— Sorry?

A lot of help I've had.

Oh, of course. Of course. Now, I saw several partners on your website, like the Parkinson's Disease Foundation, Aging Life Care, the Virtual Dementia Tour. What's the synergy in these partners?

Well, all of them around, you know, Parkinson's. We mentioned our disease management Senior Helpers was the first home care company to really embrace, and I mean, not just put a name on a website, but really embrace training around disease management. Our first one was Alzheimer's and dementia. We call it Senior Gems. So, we work with that situation to help people and families. A lot of times when people get a, you know, there's been a lot of press with the recent Bruce Willis diagnosis and you hear about that. But we've been working with folks with dementia. It's not a lot of families basically give up and just put them into a facility because they just feel they can't take care of them. But we, with Senior Gems, we use, we have a great partner in Tipasno and Positive Approach, and they've really helped train us on how to really take care of people with Alzheimer's and dementia. The Virtual Dementia Tour is a partner because it gives, I failed miserably, Joe, and I'm happy to have you go through this too so you can fail with me. But we actually set up how it feels to have dementia. We have a whole dementia tour where you go into almost like a little RV. It's a trailer we set up with kind of what's it like. You wear multiple sets of gloves, you have little pins in your feet, you have noise on your phone, you have glasses that are kind of myopic that you only see certain things. And you have to go in and do these 7 or 8 tasks, which I failed miserably at. But it gives the family, it gives people, what is it like to have dementia? We want to take the word can't into can. So what can these folks do? And we look at them from GEMS, from, you know, from, you know, starting out in emerald, normal aging, all the way to pearl. You think about the GEMS themselves. The pearl has really beautiful pearl inside this big crust, and that's really kind of how the disease moves. Parkinson's is real. It's another disease management program. And the Parkinson's Foundation has been so great to have worked with us and really provide tremendous knowledge to our team and our caregivers on how to deal with people with Parkinson's. In fact, one of our other partners, Rock Steady Boxing, you know, boxing's been shown to really help the coordination with the hands. So, you don't have the shakes as much because you're moving your hands and it actually delays some of the onsets of some of the shakes and some of those things. The Aging Life Care Association, this was formerly known as the Geriatric Care Management Association. We do partner with them because they're the advocate for the family. So when a family needs help in any part of aspect of caring for an elderly loved one, we certainly cover our part of it. But the geriatric care manager looks at both clinical and nonclinical but also the legal components of it. Do you set up a power of attorney? Do you set up a conservatorship? How do you do that? I mean, health directives and all those things. And in fact, another group we work a lot with is the National Association of Elder Law Attorneys. Well, so that we— because people need trusted advisors. And when, you know, I don't care what you're doing in your life, you have a trusted circle around you. That you go to, whether it's accounting or legal or banking or finance or investment, or you want people to give you help. You know, God's fair. We don't know everything. So we need someone to give us some help. You need someone that you can trust. The geriatric care manager does a really good job of being that trusted advocate, you know, for that senior and their family to look out what's the best interest for the family. A lot of times You know, the patient, in our case the client, you know, they don't have their own advocate. And sometimes they're not able to do— if you have someone that's dealing with disease, they might not be able to represent themselves as well as they could. So someone has to be looking out for the best interests of the client. We always do that, but sometimes in family dynamics, sometimes that doesn't always get translated. You want to make sure that you have someone that's kind of on your side as that advocate, and they do a really nice job of that.

Yeah. Yeah. These partnerships sound really invaluable, Peter. I can see that they're kind of complementing or filling the gaps that you may not be able to provide. The attorney, the legal work, the dementia, the Parkinson's. I can see that. I remember when I was working in nursing homes, I spent a lot of time teaching or training nurses about managing dementia and how to deal with some of those difficult behaviors. And there are a lot of things that we know to minimize the frustration, the anxiety of the dementia person. So when you can bring in those extra resources, it just brings in, it sounds like it brings in the full complement of care for your clients.

I mean, you really want to be a care manager, right? So what a family truly needs is a care manager. It's almost a concierge. Yeah. You know, who do I go to? Who do I use? What do I do? I don't know where to turn. I want to talk to one person.. And I want them to guide me through this journey. And we should understand your journey. If you're dealing with dementia or Parkinson's or COPD, we know how that journey works. So, we should be proactive in that journey. I've always wanted to find a way to get to the house before the ambulance did. How do I find a way to prevent falls? How do I find a way to notice that something's happening before it happens? And that's why we're so transparent with providers and families on how the care plan is doing. We want to let them know. Here's what the— you know, every day when someone leaves the client, they call out through our telephony system and they answer 3 questions. A caregiver does every single day, and we record it for the family so that they can see how was mom or dad doing. Is there any— did you notice a change in condition today?

Wow.

You know, so we want to provide as much transparency for people to really know that their loved one's being taken care of, or if there's something that needs to be pointed out, we can point it out to them.

Yeah. Kind of like the nurses report at shift change, right? Yeah. Yeah. That's good.

Actually, that's what it is. It's an end of shift report.

Yeah. Well, yeah. Well, great information. You've done such a great job articulating the strengths and, you know, your endeavors, your values with senior helpers. And I think it sounds like just a great resource for our older adults. Yeah, that's great.

I thank you for that. I mean, it's done, it takes a village.

Yeah. Yeah.

We have a tremendous family at Senior Helpers. I grew up in a big family, and so I consider people at Senior Helpers part of the family. And, you know, we are here to help take care of your family.

Yeah.

And we want to do the best job we possibly can.

Yeah. So what's the takeaway? What would you like our listeners to leave this conversation with?

Don't be afraid to ask questions. Don't wait. I have talked to so many people. I've been on podcasts or radio shows where, you know, people will call in and say, well, you know, I did. I, you know, when is it too late to talk to mom about needing help? I said, it's already too late because you're asking the question.

Yeah.

So you've got to be proactive. And, you know, if you ever ask a senior— one of my first assessments I ever did, There was a daughter and son and a mother, and it was for the mom. She was 84 years old, a beautiful lady. And I was asking some questions, and she, at the end of the meeting of the assessment— this was well before Light Profile. I was, you know, I would call it proverbial winging it. And, you know, and I basically said, and so the service will work like this, and we'll be in here from 8 to 12 every day, Monday through Sunday. And make sure you do your medications, get fed in the morning, you know, get your lunch before we go, your extra meds, make sure they're ready for the next day. And she goes, well, I don't really need senior helpers. You know, I, I'm fine. I am just perfectly fine. You know, and the daughter and the son are just rolling their eyes, you know. And I said, we're here to be your extended family. We're here to help you. And finally, the daughter says, Mom, it's either the house on the hill or senior helpers. And boy, Mom loves senior helpers after that. And so she heard that. Yeah.

Yeah.

So, so I think I really would like to encourage families to get ahead of it. We all know we're going to need some help in our lifetime. We all do. You and I, everybody that's on this listening to this podcast. You know, it's never too early to start asking. There's technology you can get into the home before you ever need home care.

Yeah.

So there's some things you can do to give yourself more peace of mind. And I would just be afraid not to ask early on and be an advocate for your loved one. Yeah, there's a lot out there. There's a lot of things that are going on out there. And talk to, you know, you know, talk to a home care company that's going to really make a difference in your family's lives and really be an extension of the family.

Yeah, yeah, that's some great advice, Peter. And being proactive and initiating those conversations early on, what are we, you know, what are we going to do if you can't get through the, you know, doorways anymore? How are we going to get you around? All those conversations. It doesn't mean it's going to happen, but we can have the conversations and be prepared, take some proactive steps.

Well, I noticed my mother, she just kept wearing the same outfit every time I went to see her. Yeah, I knew she had more clothes. So, you know, I think there's certain signs that the listeners can see and they have to be honest with themselves. The easiest thing for families to do is nothing. It's the same in life. It's like that same— my favorite quote, many a fall has been done by standing still. You have to, you have to see the signs and look yourself in the mirror, you know, and be honest with yourself. I always talked about competition growing up was in the mirror when you wake up in the morning. You know, it's— you're basically your worst enemy and your best friend.

Yeah.

So, you know, notice these types of, you know, kind of, you know, memories, and you'll get it. You'll say, geez, why are you wearing that same thing all the time? Or, you know, I notice you're not doing this like you used to, or something. And by the way, those are natural. Those aren't things that don't really are supposed to happen. It's not like, oh my God, I can't believe she did that, or he did that. No, it's normal aging. It happens, you know, and it's okay. We all hope to get there.

Yeah.

You know, so at the same time as how do we create that quality of life for them to keep it going the way they want to keep it going? I mean, everybody, I think, on the, on listening wants to live to their 100. Yeah.. But what's their quality of life from that age, 80 to 90 to 100?

Yeah. So important. So important. And the more conversation we can encourage, the better.

Yeah, absolutely.

Proactive. I like that. Well, Peter, it looks like we're out of time for today, but before I wrap up, I just wanna remind our listeners to visit my website, livingto100.club, sign up for our email list and download a free copy of my 9 tips to make living longer enjoyable. You'll also see an option to contact me with your questions and comments. I welcome your feedback. Finally, be sure to subscribe to this podcast series as a premium member so you don't miss any episodes. Maybe the episode that could seriously affect your decisions or your outlook. Sign up at livingto100club.supercast.com. Peter, thanks so much for being a guest on our show today. For those who might want to contact you or learn more about Senior Helpers, How can they do that?

At www.seniorhelpers.com, you can chat with a live person anytime.

www.seniorhelpers.com, and we can chat anytime. 24/7.

Or call, click a button to call, it will call us immediately as well. I mean, anything we can do. And Joe, thanks so much for having me on the program and showcasing, you know, a journey that many of our franchisees and I have been on for a long time. And We're here to help. So whatever, that's what we call ourselves, Senior Helpers. It's in our name.

Yeah. Well, you're very welcome. Thanks so much for being a guest, and thanks to all of our listeners for tuning in. Hope to see you next time. Thank you.