As California’s largest private and most reliable home care company, 24Hr HomeCare has experienced significant growth and now serves thousands of clients. With the goal of helping individuals regain health, wellbeing and independence, 24Hr HomeCare’s team of Caregivers is committed to providing world-class care and companionship. Clients are helped with activities of daily living (ADL) and other non-medical home care needs as well as transportation.
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At 24Hr HomeCare, there is an organization-wide commitment to providing the very best care to ensure the highest quality of life for clients at their most vulnerable time. The objective behind all that 24Hr HomeCare and its Caregivers do is to help individuals to continue to lead full, healthy and active lifestyles. Caregivers, using their extensive knowledge and training, provide a number of services to clients, including access to customized care programs that meet specific needs. Services are provided with the guarantee that a Caregiver will be present within three hours of a client’s initial request for urgent matters, while a member of management can meet with a client within two hours. Research suggests this is unmatched in the industry.
Services include assistance with personal care activities such as bathing, hygiene, dressing, grooming, light housekeeping activities around the home, mobility and transportation and sometimes simply acting as a companion or ensuring that medication is taken as prescribed. “Some of our clients have a history of recent hospitalizations and our goal is to prevent unnecessary readmissions to the hospital, which is a huge burden to our healthcare system. For these particular clients, we are seeing hospitals, health systems, and managed care groups actually starting to fund care through us due to our data supporting the fact that our Caregivers are being effective in outcomes that keep these individuals at home and not back in the hospital. Our Caregivers are in the home up to thirty days – perhaps longer – where we work daily with the medical community, acting as not just the eyes and ears of the patient, but also as a care coach and motivator,” Gavin Ward, Director of Strategy and Partnerships, explains. Ward was the very first Certified Fellow in Readmission Prevention by the National Readmission Prevention Collaborative.
24Hr HomeCare has grown rapidly, establishing a reputation for quality and bringing significant value to communities across California and Arizona, with Midwest expansion plans in the near future. The company was named to the Inc. 500 list as the twenty-seventh Fastest-Growing Private Company in the United States and is the only home care company to make Forbes’ 100 Most Promising Companies in America in 2013 and 2014.
24Hr HomeCare was co-founded by David Allerby, Tyner Brenneman-Slay and Ryan Iwamoto in 2008. The trio was advised against opening a home care business in the turmoil of the financial crisis, yet entered into what seemed an already saturated market. To this day, the company has not franchised and continues to grow organically, combining the professionalism of a major corporation with the personalization of a smaller home care provider, defying the initial predictions.
Allerby, named by Forbes as one of America’s most promising chief executive officers under thirty-five, oversees operations. Brenneman-Slay serves as the chief operating officer, overseeing operational compliance, human resources and information technology. Iwamoto leads the sales team as the chief marketing officer, developing an overall sales and marketing strategy and spearheading its community involvement program.
Building on the experience they gained while working to establish Maxim Healthcare Services Companion division – an endeavour that resulted in great success – the trio has created something special with their vision at 24Hr HomeCare.
Though seniors are its primary clients, 24Hr HomeCare also provides assistance and companionship to many people with disabilities and those with limitations to their ADLs. All of 24Hr HomeCare’s Caregivers are fall prevention certified with the Fall Prevention Program of Contra Costa County. In addition, they have the most up-to-date knowledge of diagnosis-specific care processes due to collaborations with the leading healthcare institutions in the nation, such as with local chapters of the Alzheimer’s Association, American Cancer Society, and National Multiple Sclerosis Society.
“We care and compete. We compete with ourselves to continue to drive our goals forward and continue to set the bar in the industry,” Ward shares. There are many internal competitions, at every level of 24Hr HomeCare’s organization. Goals and incentives such as the potential for advancement within the company drive the Caregivers and employees to be the very best possible versions of their professional selves for the benefit of themselves and the company.
Ward speaks highly of the employees at 24Hr HomeCare, acknowledging that the people in the organization make all the difference in their ability to service clients and the communities in which it operates. As a home care company it is a part of several community-based initiatives that are directly connected to its mission and vision to improve the wellbeing and lives of its clients.
Partnerships with Rescue Alert and LifeLock allow 24Hr HomeCare to offer emergency home monitoring. This includes the installation of the Rescue Alert system that will alert responders in case of an emergency, as well as LifeLock’s identity theft protection services.
Unlike many other companies, 24Hr HomeCare does not maintain an hourly minimum for its services. Caregivers at 24Hr HomeCare are flexible, compassionate, trained professionals who also double as chefs in their own right, trained in nutrition and diet planning to ensure that the meals they prepare satisfy both a client’s dietary needs and their palates.
24Hr HomeCare has created Whole 24™: Diagnosis-Specific Nutrition, a healthy cooking show and health and nutrition guide that teaches Caregivers to cook delicious meals in accordance with dietary restrictions. The show was created by Registered Dietitian Alisa Dodds, in partnership with Sur La Table, for the culinary enjoyment of its clients and to further improve their quality of life.
24Hr HomeCare and its employees participate in a number of community-driven initiatives, including Walk MS (where they recently raised over $4,000 for individuals living with Multiple Sclerosis), Mustache November (or Movember) for men’s health awareness, Think Pink for breast cancer awareness and other causes. Its commitment to charity and community outreach has been incorporated into the way it conducts business; its Proceeds to Charity program involves each and every client in its charitable efforts.
The Proceeds to Charity program was founded on the company’s philosophy of helping people. When clients sign up for 24Hr HomeCare services, a portion of the proceeds will be donated to a local charity – or the local chapter of a charity – of the client’s choosing. At the end of each calendar year, 24Hr HomeCare notifies clients of their total donations. To date, over $115,000 have been donated to charitable organizations, such as the Alzheimer’s Association, American Cancer Society, UCLA Fund, and many more.
Beyond its charitable efforts, 24Hr HomeCare works with a number of community organizations and not-for-profit organizations dedicated to helping people gain access to home care services and funding assistance and helps them better provide services to clients. 24Hr HomeCare works with the Alzheimer’s Association-Southern California Chapter to develop a curriculum to train Caregivers for clients with Alzheimer’s disease and Dementia who require special care.
24Hr HomeCare is deeply committed to working with industry and government partners to ensure the advancement of non-medical home care. The non-medical home care sector is not regulated in California, though legislative changes have been made resulting in new standards, effective January 2016. “We will be regulated by the California Department of Social Services – by a new department there called the Home Care Services Bureau. So our goal this year is to work with Sacramento – our state capital – helping to develop processes, procedures and policies for home care in 2016,” Ward explains.
As a private pay system, 24Hr HomeCare is also working to communicate its value to the government. Its services are often covered for seniors, insured for the lower income members of society, but not readily available as an insured service to any other individuals. In many cases, community-based groups and organizations like the Department of Veteran Affairs are relied upon to cover the costs associated with home care services.
One service that differentiates 24Hr HomeCare is its trademark Hospital to Your Home™ Care Transitions Program. The step-by-step approach to promoting a full and safe recovery aims to avoid the risk of readmission to the hospital while being cared for in the comfort of one’s own home. In line with the Affordable Care Act, this service has become ever more important as it assists local hospitals with reducing their readmission rate, which helps avoid costly Medicare penalties.
The Hospital to Your Home™ program includes: a free same-day consultation before discharge, 24Hr HomeCare’s customized care plan, access to Caregivers, transportation services, medication management, a free home safety evaluation, a complimentary RN evaluation every fifteen or thirty days (by request) and other individual-specific care services.
“The main focus is not just getting a patient home, but actually caring for the patient in their home, to coach the patient and care for the patient so that they are not readmitted and that they can end up taking care of themselves once we stop seeing them,” says Ward. He describes 24Hr HomeCare’s efforts to ensure quality service and caring as rooted in a real commitment to people and community.
According to research, for Medicare patients, almost twenty percent of patients will be readmitted within thirty days of discharge from the hospital. In stark contrast, clients of 24Hr HomeCare have a 5.4 percent readmission rate. This has a significant cost saving attached as its services can prevent the need for additional institutionalized care in a costly convalescent home or care facility.
“The non-medical home care world is a low cost, high-touch in-person solution for readmission prevention,” says Ward. The company works closely with the medical community to reach common goals. The work that 24Hr HomeCare does and the contribution to society that it makes is significant. “We are allowing individuals to function – and not have a need to be placed in a facility – at a lower cost, in their homes, where they are happier.”
