Inside the Home Care Association of America with Kristen Wheeler: Advocacy, AI & Workforce Insights

Danny – Enginehire (00:00)
Kristen, thanks so much for joining us on the podcast today. How are you doing?

Kristen Wheeler (00:05)
I am good, Danny, very good. Thank you so much for having me. I’m very excited to be here. Super fun.

Danny – Enginehire (00:11)
Well, that goes both ways. I’m also really excited for you to be here. Could we just start off by you telling us a little bit about your journey to now being with the Home Care Association of America?

Kristen Wheeler (00:22)
the long and winding road that is the career path of my life. Sure, I’m happy to talk about that. So much like probably many people in this industry, at least in my experience, having met as many folks over the course of this 25ish years, I guess, that I’ve been in the home care industry, I kind of got into this purely by accident. In my old life, I was working as a

nonprofit event planner. Long story short, I ended up being recruited by and went to work for Medicare Home Health and Hospice Agency because they came to me and said, look, we want to start what was then called a private duty home care program and we think that you should do it. And I was like, I don’t even know what those words mean. Like, why are you even asking me those? 

So.

Long story short, went to work for them, started a home care sort of department or division for them, realized very quickly that home care, private duty home care specifically, doesn’t really belong necessarily under the umbrella of a Medicare certified agency. So I ultimately became, opened up my own home care agency myself. So I was an agency owner, administrator for a fair few years at the early onset of my career before segueing over into the association world where I initially went to work for the Home Care Association of Florida because that’s the state that I was in at the time. Worked with them for a number of years. They’re wonderful people.

And then moved on to the National Association for Home Care and Hospice or NAC, which most people are familiar with. They no longer exist. They’ve merged and have become the Alliance. But I was with them until just a couple of years ago or years, a couple of months ago when I trans I transitioned over to the Home Care Association of America. So kind of long. But but that’s how I ended up with the HCAOA. And I have to say that

I realized right when I was coming on board that for the first time in my association career, I am working with a group of people that are all focused on the same part of the industry, which is really, really exciting. The other associations, God love them, they’re wonderful organizations, but they focus on all areas of post-acute care, right? Home health, hospice, home care, palliative care, et cetera, et cetera.

Danny – Enginehire (02:30)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Kristen Wheeler (02:46)
HCAOA is solely focused on our private providers. those, the private pay, your VA contractual people, your long-term care insurances, basically everything that Medicare won’t pay for kind of falls into our umbrella, which is lovely. It’s great.

Danny – Enginehire (03:05)
That’s really also exciting that I don’t know if exciting is the right word, but I love that you actually came from the background of like agency owner and you can feel people’s pain for real. And so like, you know how to guide them and you know what like actually matters. You’re not figuring it out from the outside.

Kristen Wheeler (03:23)
Right, right. Yeah, it’s a great perspective to have. never realized, you know, I didn’t initially realize what a value that would be for me and for our members, you know, but I see it on their faces when I talk to members and tell them that, I know exactly where you’re coming from, I sat in that seat. And they’re like, they almost look relieved. Like, you know, they realize they’re not in this alone. And I’m like, I totally got your back, I promise. You know, I get it. So yeah, it’s been really great.

Danny – Enginehire (03:52)
Well, I suppose with the Home Care Association of America, like what do you guys like work on? Like how is it a benefit to like join? I mean, I feel like innately there’s a benefit. I always feel like that, but like, what, like, yeah, I don’t know. What is it?

Kristen Wheeler (04:08)
Sure, sure. Yeah, mean, there’s,

yeah, no, totally thanks. There’s, a lot of people don’t understand what a trade association is, right? Like, you know, I often have to try and figure out what my elevator speech is when people ask me what I do and they’re like, it doesn’t make any sense to me. So, you know, but trade associations really represent the interests of our members, right? And so from HCAOA’s perspective in particular,

our members, our provider members, should say, our agency organization members are all.

like licensed agencies that have W-2 employees. That’s part of our requirements. So we’re on the sort of frontline looking out for your interests from an advocacy perspective, both at the federal and the state levels. So that’s a big, that’s like the cornerstone of what HCAOA does is ⁓ the advocacy piece. But in addition to that, there’s a lot more benefit of membership. There’s all the educational

aspects from resources and educational materials that are available for members through our website to educational webinars that we put on throughout the year from that range from anywhere from legal updates to workforce challenges to marketing and sales tips and updates, you name it, we, you know, we can find an educational webinar for it. To of course,

our conferences. And we have two sort of levels, have our state chapter conferences, where the states that have very active chapters that want to have in person and virtual conferences, they do two or three of those a year depending on the state. And then of course, our flagship

if you will, event, which is our annual national conference coming up in just a couple of weeks here. So there’s still time to join us in Dallas.

Danny – Enginehire (06:04)
How exciting. But

it’s great to like have all of those resources and kind of like what you were saying before of being with like like-minded individuals so it comes together of like what the focus is and I love like the aspect of like like where the tips are and things like that because that’s ever-changing. It’s crazy.

Kristen Wheeler (06:23)
For sure,

it is, it is. And you know, the thing about home care is, and I don’t think anybody realizes it when they really get into the industry, but the thing about it is you’re really, it’s really kind of a lonesome, or it can be kind of a lonesome industry to be in, because you’ve got, you know, as an administrator, you’re in an office, of course, with whoever’s in the office with you, but then all your clients and all of your staff, most of your staff are out in the field working individually one-on-one.

Right? And so you run into all these crazy challenges and challenges with families or challenges with clients or with workforce or with any of the above, right? There’s always challenges. And you feel like there’s there it’s very easy to feel like you’re alone in all of this. Like this can’t possibly be happening to other owners or to other in other parts of the country or in other states, whatever. And a trade association sort of brings you together with other

people that are having exactly the same challenges. And it’s so nice to have those sort of sounding boards or that networking opportunity or the opportunity to ask questions of peers and peer to peer networking and assistance and things like that. think it’s kind of invaluable to, because suddenly you just have these moments of you’re like, thank goodness. I’m not, it’s just not, it’s not just me, right? It’s like, this is happening all over, you know, there are solutions to some of these challenges.

Danny – Enginehire (07:44)
Yeah, it kind of really breaks down that like, and I know a lot of these are like terrestrial. So like everybody kind of has their own areas and a lot of them, but we’re like breaks down like the competition part and people are just trying to help each other succeed. And they’re like sharing like, Oh, this is what I’m doing. Or like, I totally have been there and this is what I did for that. Or someone’s going like, this is happening to me. Anybody have any ideas? Like what I should do? And you’ll like, you’ll hear from everybody.

Kristen Wheeler (08:11)
Exactly. And it’s lovely. It’s great. It’s great to see that sort of sharing. And I think in this industry more than many other industries, there is that level of camaraderie and collaboration.

far more than competitors. We see, especially within our membership, we have tons of members that are different franchisees from all the big franchise companies. They sit on committees together and they bounce ideas off one another. Nobody’s acting like these are my clients or this is all my information and I’m not saying a word. Everybody’s willing to share.

⁓ because we’re all in it for the greater good, not to sound super hokey, we’re all in this to care for people, to make sure that our loved ones, our elders are taken care of and can age at home where they want to, which is where they want to be. So it’s really great to watch and to be part of.

Danny – Enginehire (09:11)
When you said like they’re on committees together as people from like different franchises and stuff like that, like what makes a good member? Like they’re coming to events or they’re just utilizing resources. I think, you know, I think sometimes kind of like what I mentioned at the beginning is like, feel like it should be a part of this, but maybe you’re not utilizing it all the way. Like, what do think people should be doing with their memberships?

Kristen Wheeler (09:37)
I think that there’s a couple things that members don’t often realize. So it’s the company that’s the member, it’s not the individual. So I think that’s important to recognize that. if I still had my agency, my agency would be the member, not me. And as a result of that, everyone that works for that agency.

also has access to membership benefits, right? So you can have as many people affiliated to your company as you want, and they can all get in and have their own login credentials and see all the members-only benefits and be part of all of those sorts of things.

Oftentimes, most folks only end up having the CEO or administrator, probably the billing person and maybe a clinical director or something like that that has credentials, but it can be everybody. I think that’s important to note. think that engagement is critical when it comes to a trade association. If you’re a member of an association, get involved with the association, however that looks like to you and wherever that

feels right for you. Because, you know, we don’t know every single thing that’s going on out there all the time. And the only way that we can make sure that we’re doing the things that need to be done to advocate on behalf of the industry, to provide the benefits of membership that everybody wants, needs, thinks are important, we have to hear from people. So that has to be through engagement.

And engagement can look like a lot of things. Like you can get engaged on an advocacy level. You can get engaged on, you know, working on one of our myriad committees that we have. You can get engaged by running for the board of directors. Like there’s all kinds of ways to get engaged. We’re also in the process of rolling out our new online communities, which should foster a lot more of this engagement. So more to come on that very soon. But I think that’s a really important.

piece of, know, people join associations and then forget that they’re even part of them. And then a year later, they get the bill, the invoice for the next year. And they’re like, what? I don’t even know what I didn’t do anything, you know? So, so use the tools that are there. I think the last statistic that I saw was that 65 % of agencies or 65 % more of agencies that that belong to trade associations stay open.

as opposed to the other 35 % that end up closing their doors, something like that. I’m not quoting that very well, but there’s a great statistic out there about that.

Danny – Enginehire (11:57)
wow.

That’s really amazing. And I love that, you know, you’re pointing out that it really comes from like the ground up. It’s not a top down organization. only as a whole, you’re doing the things that people are requesting of you that they’re looping you in on, you know, I’m sure great ideas come from the top, but it’s really like that cultivation from the bottom. So you really should be active.

Kristen Wheeler (12:29)
Exactly. think you can look at it almost like a grassroots sort of effort, right? Where, yeah, I mean, like I can say what used to be important to me when I was an agency owner, but I don’t know if that’s important in, number one, in other parts of the country. I was in a very specific part of the country. So what I needed there might not have been, you know, what I needed in Key West, because I was in Key West, may not be what somebody in, you know, Des Moines.

it finds important, you know, things like that. So I think it’s really important that members know that they should reach out to us anytime that they need us.

Danny – Enginehire (13:04)
with all of the resources you have and everything and like the insight of, you know, as many involved members as there are, what are you seeing as like the innovations that are coming through or like the next steps for home care? What are on people’s minds?

Kristen Wheeler (13:21)
Well, so I mean, of course, there’s always the big ones, right? There’s always workforce challenges. Workforce challenge is the top of mind thing, I think. And people are trying to get more more innovative with that. I think we’re hearing lots more about AI and how AI can help in home care. There’s been some talk, I think.

about AI replacing a lot of things in home care. And I have to respectfully disagree. don’t see, like for example, people talk about that ⁓ AI will take the place of a scheduler when, know, cause schedulers are critical. They’re, you know, they’re Tetris masters basically in trying to figure out schedules and plugging in caregivers with the right clients. But an AI can certainly assist with a

an enormous amount of that. But I think that what’s important to remember in this industry is there always is going to be a needed human aspect of it. AI can’t completely, at least not yet, who knows in the future how personal the AI systems will get. But I think there’s a huge human aspect to it. you talk to these families that are looking for care for a loved one, they’re

more often than not, they’re terrified. They don’t know what to ask for. They don’t know what they don’t know, right? They just know that they’re overwhelmed at this point because somebody needs help. you know, and a robot can’t necessarily answer all those questions. So while I love the innovation of, and I love AI, I love that that can be an asset and a tool and very helpful to a home care provider. I think that

there’s always going to be room for the human aspect of it.

Danny – Enginehire (15:12)
Yeah. And as all of these things develop, it just leaves more place to like shed light on. A lot of people think like you got to be like a prompt expert with AI, which is very helpful, but it really is about like the data that AI has available to it. And like you’re saying, like there’s just a lot of things that you don’t know those little holes of openings of how a family is going to react or what they need in the moment. There’s a lot of things that it could help you with, but there’s a lot that, you know,

needs those humans.

Kristen Wheeler (15:43)
Yeah, that

dynamic is different with every family too. it’s so different than home care is so totally different than healthcare in a facility. And people just react differently when they’re in their own home. Like they have different expectations if someone’s coming to their home to provide care than if they were laying in a hospital having that same care provided. I think there’s just a different mindset when you’re in a facility or in a hospital.

Danny – Enginehire (15:52)
Yeah.

Kristen Wheeler (16:09)
you sort, you almost feel like you take what you can get, you know, like whoever’s coming in there, you don’t really have any say about it. When you’re at your house, you have all the say. So, so it just, shifts the dynamic significantly. So.

Danny – Enginehire (16:16)
Yeah.

That’s awesome. And like with everything that’s been changing and AI is probably one of them leading me here. Like what has changed in the last few years that people have thought about or worried about or, and just gotten from the better.

Kristen Wheeler (16:41)
I think some of the things that AI has really helped with is response time, right? And that’s true for response time to potential caregivers, potential staff, and to potential clients. So I think that’s where it’s enormously valuable, where you can say, you you get a call that comes in, for example, you get a call that comes into your agency asking for more information about job openings.

and your AI system can turn around and spit that out to that person within 60 seconds of the call. Because data shows that if you don’t act on potential applicants immediately, they’ve got six other agencies that they’re going to be talking to. And that holds true with clients as well. You get a request for more information about the services you provide and

They give you a little bit of information about what their situation is and what they’re looking for. And your AI system can turn around, transcribe that, send them information, like that kind of stuff. And the speed at which that can be done is amazing, first of all. But ⁓ I think that that’s changed things in a very positive way. So yeah, it’s pretty great.

Danny – Enginehire (17:54)
Yeah, I love, I use it all the time for like meetings and stuff. Like now I feel like maybe like a month ago, I felt like I could go without those to me at the time, annoying summaries and bullet points of meetings. And now I’m like, where’s that summary? Where are those bullet points? Like I want them. And I want to be able to, take that information and share with someone. And I I’m lucky enough with our software company to like be working on and seeing some AI things.

One thing that think is cool that people could just immediately do if they wanted to was with applications or profiles of their caregivers or their clients is they can get a summary of that person and then know how to pitch that person or what should be highlighted to the schedulers. What are those things that just at a glance, you don’t necessarily know, but if everybody got to talk with that client or candidate, you’d all go.

⁓ well clearly these are these places where this person stands out and I like those types of things.

Kristen Wheeler (18:56)
Yeah, no, I think that’s great. And that’s a really good point that, you know, I think it’ll speak volumes to retention over the course of time when it comes to candidates themselves and staff. If AI can help providers retain some of their great field staff, I mean, that’ll pay, it’ll be worth every penny that’s been invested into AI to get that to work because workforce challenges are…

you know, real and huge and affecting virtually everyone. There’s probably 2 % of the provider population that don’t have workforce challenges and the other 98 % struggles with workforce. It’s just the nature of the beast.

Danny – Enginehire (19:39)
It’s gotta be 100 % right? Like is there really even 2 % that’s not struggling with it?

Kristen Wheeler (19:45)
I do know, I know one provider that says, I don’t ever have workforce challenges. And I’m like, okay, well, I don’t know what you’re doing other than paying them a fortune. you know, I don’t know. I suppose it depends on where you are. but, but yeah, there’s so much involved in going into what causes workforce challenges, but we could have a whole nother podcast about workforce challenges.

Danny – Enginehire (20:09)
Yeah,

well, I’m actually really, I take it back. There’s probably been 2 % and I think that that’s really great because then it’s, you know, there’s hope there. I feel like Workforce Channels is just like you said, it could be a whole other podcast. It’s scary. There’s a lot of things to think about it. Everything is kind of like a variable. It’s just, it’s just a smattering of issues that you’re like navigating all of the time. So I think that’s really hopeful that someone was like, I feel pretty good about this right now.

Kristen Wheeler (20:37)
Yeah,

yeah, yeah, it does. It’s, it is nice to hear that at least somebody’s figured it out, you know? Yeah, but, but by and large, I mean, you know, you can only do so much with the resources that you have as an owner and, and with all the other industries coming at these same people, buying for them to work for them. And it’s not just in healthcare, it’s retail, it’s hospitality, it’s everything, you know, when you’re, when you’re talking about

Danny – Enginehire (20:43)
Yeah.

Kristen Wheeler (21:05)
caregivers and home health aides and CNAs and and You know companion level people they’re they’re getting recruited six ways from Sunday from everybody so

Danny – Enginehire (21:17)
If you know any, is there like any tips on that that you, you know, see as like even like a general one that you’ve just found to be like, that’s, a, that’s like a one one you should know about like retention.

Kristen Wheeler (21:31)
Well, I think that it goes back to what we were talking about, about association membership and it’s about engagement. So I think it really boils down to company culture. I don’t mean to put any blame or point any fingers at owners or administrators, but I think that everybody out there needs to really take a good look at their internal culture. And because

You you talk to a lot of caregivers and there’s studies out there. There’s a great study that are a great program that Mission Care Collective did a couple of years ago where they interviewed a bunch of active, actively working field staff, CNAs, home health aides, et cetera. And one of the things that they found from these interviews, the interviews are fabulous, by the way, if you’ve not seen them, you should check them out. But one of the things they found

was when asked who they thought that their boss was, a huge percentage of them said it was the scheduler, because it’s the only person within the company that they really interact with. And I think that that kind of spoke volumes about like, if your people feel engaged and connected to you, they’ll stay, if they can. I mean, obviously, if somebody needs to, if you just can’t pay them enough for them to.

pay their bills, you know, there’s things, there’s factors in there. But by and large, all things being equal, I think that if people feel a certain loyalty to the company, a certain sense of engagement with the people that they work with internally, they’ll stick around if they can.

Danny – Enginehire (23:08)
Yeah, I think that thank you for sharing that. That did make me reflect a little bit on the conversations I already had this morning about company culture and clients and candidates. you know, the people that stay with you are the ones that kind of fit that. So good or bad, that’s like you are, no matter what, you have a company culture that is, it’s just part of the deal. It’s just part of it.

Kristen Wheeler (23:33)
Yeah, yeah, I mean, if the company culture is toxic, it’s never gonna survive, right? Like, it’s just gonna be, I mean, people will come on board and they will not stay long. And that’s true in every industry, I think. But particularly, again, going back to what we said earlier about it being sort of a lonely job, right? When you’re a caregiver, if you’re out there in the field and you’ve got one client that you’re with eight hours a day, for example,

And really the only interaction you have with the office is to submit your time sheets or pick up a box of gloves from time to time. Then who do you feel more loyal to? Probably your client, not necessarily the company. So when that client’s no longer receiving services for whatever reason, what incentivizes you to stick with that company?

Right, so I think that it’s really important for owners and for managers and directors to know, like, make sure that your people know you and make sure that they feel like you are accessible to them and they can come and talk to you if need be, if they’re having problems, if they’re concerned about anything, et cetera, so.

Danny – Enginehire (24:42)
That’s fantastic. My mind is spinning already and I’m not an agency owner. Thinking about all the ways that people could start interacting on like a very basic level of just sending out an email blast, just being like, Hey, how’s everything going? Or sending out a survey of how are you feeling? And just starting to build those connections. If you feel like you don’t even know where to start or anything like that, like I get too excited about these things. I really appreciate you opening up the door.

in the window of that insight. That’s really, I think that’s fascinating. Thank you so much.

Kristen Wheeler (25:15)
Sure, sure, my pleasure. Yeah, and like you said, it doesn’t have to take long. I mean, I know, like, again, as a former administrator, I understand the overwhelming feeling of all the things that you have to do during the day and all the text messages that come in from your field staff or people calling out sick or all the things that happen in addition to just your regular day-to-day work. But it’s just so important to build this in.

even if it’s 30 seconds, to fire off a quick email to your entire team or if your software, your EMR may even allow for some of that stuff, that functionality to just be able to reach out and say, just thinking about you guys, if you need anything, I’m here. That doesn’t take that long.

Danny – Enginehire (25:58)
Yeah, send out a text message, push notification if you use it, app, like there’s a lot of things that this, I love this. Kristen, thanks so much for sharing your time with me, your wisdom, with all of us actually. What steps should people take next to learn more about the Home Care Association of America and all of that?

Kristen Wheeler (26:18)
Absolutely, just have a look at our website. We’re hcaoa.org. You can find out all kinds of information about benefits of membership and upcoming events. ⁓ Our events, of course, are open to non-members as well. So if you want to come and test out an event before joining, by all means, feel free. Reach out to me directly. All you want, it’s Kristen, K-R-I-S-T-E-N at hcaoa.org.

And I’m gonna give everybody my personal cell phone because that’s what I do because it’s that easy to get a hold of me But my number feel free to call or text seriously three zero five eight four nine thirteen hundred So I’m happy to answer any questions I can for if anybody’s got them

Danny – Enginehire (26:57)
amazing. Kristen, thank you so much.

Kristen Wheeler (27:00)
Danny, thank you. Thanks for having me. It’s been great. And you know where to find me if you need me.