Introduction

Home care is care delivered to people, often seniors, with supportive needs so they can remain independent in their residence. With the aging population, the home care industry has experienced a significant surge in demand for these services. To meet that demand, the number of professional caregivers has reached nearly three million and continues to rapidly grow (1). However, there still remains a workforce gap which is expected to only increase, with an expected gap of nearly half a million by 2025 (2).

Caregiver attrition is the leading problem impacting home care agencies and driving the growing workforce gap. The 2019 Home Care Pulse Benchmarking Study revealed that the median annual caregiver turnover rate hit 82% in 2018, which represented a 15% increase over the previous year (3). Poor communication with staff, limited training, professional isolation, lack of recognition, and lack of openness to caregiver feedback are among the top reasons caregivers leave a home care agency (4). Given the expense of onboarding new caregivers, increasing wage competition for alternative jobs, and increasing demand for services, retaining caregivers has escalated as the top priority for home care agencies.

The Wellzesta Thrive Mobile Application (“Thrive”) was designed to improve caregiver retention by targeting the leading causes of caregiver attrition. Thrive increases meaningful communication with colleagues and staff, creates a daily positive focus, and streamlines operational inefficiencies. For a technology solution to achieve its desired impact, it must first achieve adoption.

In this analysis, we report baseline adoption of Thrive by a home care franchise, and present the franchise owner’s insights into the operational challenges exposed by the data. Last, we present a plan to address the perceived operational challenges.

To access the rest of this content, please enter your information below.