Maximizing Home Care Business Success with KPIs

Maximizing Home Care Business Success with KPIs

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Dennis Gill: Okay. So Hi, there, Laura, how are you?

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Laura: I’m well. How are you?

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Dennis Gill: I’m good. I’m good. I’m good. So as for our conversation, you’re aware about myself. My name is Dennis, so I’ll just start with the introduction to my callers.

So welcome, guys to CareSmartz360 On Air., that’s a home care podcast. I’m Dennis Gill, senior sales consultant at Caresmartz. Right? So today, we have a very special guest who’s going to share their expertise on a topic that is crucial

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Dennis Gill: for any business looking to drive sustainable growth.

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Dennis Gill: the power of key performance indicators. KPIs, right?

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Dennis Gill: I guess Laura Pierce is a seasoned home care, business strategist and an analytics expert.

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Dennis Gill: So in a conversation today, Laura will delve into how home care businesses can leverage technology to track and analyze their KPIs.

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Dennis Gill: using them to enhance operational efficiencies and improve service quality.

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Dennis Gill: So we’ll also explore the role of KPIs in effective budget management helping businesses make informed financial decisions that align with their goals.

But that’s not all. Laura will also discuss the importance of using KPIs to measure employee performance, foster a culture of accountability and building a high performing team.

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Dennis Gill: So the key.

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Laura: Yeah.

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Dennis Gill: Performing team. Yeah. So the key takeaway here is that the KPI is not just for matrix, but strategic tools that can drive sustainable business growth.

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Dennis Gill: So get ready to learn how to harness the power of KPIs and take your businesses to new heights. Let’s dive in

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Dennis Gill: So welcome to the podcast Laura.

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Dennis Gill: formal, formal welcome from my side. So I’ll straightaways jump in with my 1st question over here. So what do you say? How can KPI analysis help home care businesses, make more informed financial decisions and optimize their budgets—your thoughts on that.

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Laura: Okay? Well, what I like to do with KPIs is, I like to divide them into 2 groups, operational and financial.

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Laura: So an example of like a financial KPI could be like a revenue cost analysis, you know, figuring out, you know, what is your

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Laura: revenue per client, your cost per visit which gives you your gross profit. Margins and overlooked KPI is the cash flow management, KPI. This allows you to know how quickly.

You’re able to collect your money and be able to make your, you know, be able to pay all your expenses. I’d say resource, allocation like

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Laura: staffing efficiency. KPI is kind of like your caregiver utilization rate. That’s a really important

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Laura: KPI to look at. So you’re not having any.

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Laura: I don’t know. It helps you to reduce any unnecessary labor costs and also to get back to profitability. And I’m

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Laura: I believe this firmly, because this is how it was in our business. More sales does not equal

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Laura: more profit in all instances. It’s operational efficiencies that are the true key to profitability. Because when you’re analyzing your KPIs and you have efficiency of service, delivery, profitability by revenue class

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Laura: reducing turnover all these KPIs reveal ways that you can streamline your operations, reduce waste and enhance that profitability. So you’ve got to keep your finger on all those pulses at one time.

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Dennis Gill: Okay, okay.

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Dennis Gill: So just continuing with this part. So what are the key KPIs that home care businesses should focus on? Because that’s our prime.

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Dennis Gill: clients, I would say, and focus on to drive success. And how do you recommend prioritizing them?

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Laura: Well, prioritizing, it depends on the stage of business you’re in. So if you’re brand new, the 1st thing I would look at is your initial calls coming in and making sure that you’re having a very good close rate getting to that home visit.

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Laura: You know. Then you can start to see. You know what your average revenue is per client. So you’re developing. You know what your break, even point is at that point, and understanding how many clients do you actually need rather than guessing?

Because I work with a lot of people that just end up guessing those numbers. And they find that they’re

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Laura: You know, tracking your costs per visit, and you know, being able to, you know, look at what those direct costs are.
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Laura: let’s see, like

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Laura: get you to you know, understanding your profitability. But then, as your business starts to get a little bit older, you’re starting to be able to see historical data. So I’d say, like, at that one year, mark, you have that data.

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Laura: And you can start looking at what your real client acquisition cost is, and you may want to, you know, readjust your marketing efforts. Look at your true roi at that point. Also your client retention rate.

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Laura: You know the types of clients that you’re going after. I worked with a new franchisee whose franchisor told him. You need to focus on Hospice.

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Laura: And I was like, No, do not focus on Hospice. You’re too new. You have no base. Yeah. And he called me up a week later and said, this is so easy. I’m already at a hundred hours, and I’m doing great.

And basically the little bubble in his head was Laura. You don’t know what you’re talking about. I just stood back, tick, tick, boom.

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Dennis Gill: Oh!

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Laura: Went to 0.

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Dennis Gill: Oh!

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Laura: All those caregivers. He lost all this marketing money that you know of his time going to the Hospice companies, and I mean it ended up putting him, you know, further into the red.

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Laura: So it’s, you know, understanding. You know what types of clients you need to go after that give you the longest sustainable base, and to be able to grow it. So you start looking at your client retention rate.

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Laura: Again your utilization rate. That’s where you start to see, you know. When do you really need to hire that next caregiver? You know you want that number to be around 20

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Laura: hours per caregiver.

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Laura: Just, you know, it’s all about deploying that workforce optimally. And then, as you start getting even more mature, and I’m talking, you know, the 2 to 3 year period. Your KPIs are gonna build a little bit more.

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Laura: And so you start looking at you know your turnover rates? You know, how long are these clients actually staying? You get more historical data? You start looking at your current ratio. Are you able to

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Laura: pay your bills a good current ratio is like a 1.1. So it’s just taking your assets and dividing it into your liabilities, and simply put in a word sentences for every, for every you know, if you have a 1.1 for every $1 of liabilities, I have a dollar 10 to pay that.

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Dennis Gill: Don’t mean to be that.

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Laura: Higher the number the better. So a lot of people don’t look at that. And that was one that shocked me when we had our business about our 5th year. We were like at 1.0 3, and I was like, we gotta make this number better.

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Dennis Gill: New.

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Laura: So non billable expenses start to creep up. You know, you start getting, you know, travel time

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Laura: having to pay for that

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Laura: mistakes in the schedule kind of creep in.

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Laura: So any of those

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Laura: non-billable expenses can start impacting everything. So you want to keep that to under 5%. That’s a good KPI.

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Laura: Your net promoter score. That’s another one. You know. Are your clients going to recommend you and refer you

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Laura: and not having any ratings or negative ratings can also hurt you. And another important one is that employee turnover rate that tells you you know your culture, or you know, how is your scheduler treating your employees?

We found our scheduler was being mean and belligerent when we weren’t around for employees. We had this high turnover. So it’s like, you know, all these things give you these little clues in your business, so you may need to replace somebody, fix somebody.

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Laura: You know it’s just really important just to kind of keep your finger on each and every one of those pulses depending on what your stage of your business is.

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Dennis Gill: Got it. Obviously, the new business owners are there, or even if them established ones. So they’re taking everything step by step, so that I think that should be the 1st thing. Yeah.

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Laura: Yeah, just, you know, start off with the initial calls, I can tell you nobody measures that properly, and you want to make sure everybody measures it exactly the same if the phone rings

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Laura: and you answer it, and they got your number from somewhere. You need even a wrong number. You need to find out. You know. Where did you see our number? How did you hear about us? Because that may tell you your marketing message is not right?

Or you might need to put some negative keywords in your pay per click searching. There’s a lot of data in there, and a lot of people don’t count those face. Oh, Nope, don’t! I don’t count that, because, you know it was a wrong number. You can’t do that, you know. It’s a very important number.

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Dennis Gill: I get that point, I get the point. And anyhow, if you could just give some examples on how businesses can leverage technology to track and analyze their KPIs more effectively. You answered some. But if someone.

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Laura: Hit.

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Dennis Gill: For example, yeah.

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Laura: Yeah. Well, when we started out in home care back in 2,001, there was really it was a spreadsheet.

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Dennis Gill: Yeah.

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Laura: You just had to basically figure it all out for yourself. And as companies like y’all’s, which has a very robust dashboard behind it, in addition to all the you know, the scheduling

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Laura: needs for a home care company. You can start to see and visualize your metrics and your data and your KPIs in real time. So it’s really nice to have that visual representation. I have my own industry focused and user-friendly. KPI dashboard that I use for my clients.

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Laura: It’s highly flexible, and it also allows for customization and being able to benchmark against peers. So the technology part makes it a lot easier to, you know, not have to

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Laura: data input all this information and then make your own charts through. I used to have to do it through. Excel and put all my pie charts in, and it just saves you a lot of time.

And I just finished writing a book. How do you leverage AI in your home care business? So there’s so many things you can do with it. It’s just amazing compared to what when I started back in 2001.

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Dennis Gill: Oh, our company has also started that part. The AI part we have a specific AI dashboard dedicated to that thing where the agencies can track how the caregivers are performing sales.

Forecasting can be done. So yeah, it really does help the agencies in that part, and they are really liking it. I I can guarantee that they’re really liking that part.

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Laura: Oh, it’s amazing. I mean, it’s non biased. It gives you the numbers and.

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Dennis Gill: Yeah.

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Laura: It’s just an amazing way to see how your business is performing.

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Dennis Gill: Yeah, definitely. And any best practices, Laura, for using KPIs to measure and improve caregiver performance in a way that does foster accountability, and also a high performing team. Anything from your side on that.

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Laura: Okay? Well, when it’s specific to the caregivers, you want to make sure that that KPI is relevant to that position. And so like with the caregiver, it would be client satisfaction. Scores number of visits completed.

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Laura: Their time management. Here’s a big one. Punctuality as well as callouts, I mean, I would have caregivers that would tell me. Oh, I haven’t called out in 6 months, and I’d go back and look.

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Laura: Yes, you have.

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Dennis Gill: It does.

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Laura: The record shows it.

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Dennis Gill: Yeah.

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Laura: Training, completion, skill testing, adhering to the plan of care. So all those are really good just to show the caregiver in a non biased, you know

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Laura: factual way of how they are actually performing

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Laura: But in general, for any position. I just like to tell people, you know, it needs to be. The KPIs need to be

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Laura: clear and relevant to the position they need to be realistic and achievable targets. Let’s just say you want to. You need to improve something.

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Laura: What

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Laura: You know. Split it. 3 3,

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Laura: You know. You don’t want to have it so unattainable that it just.

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Laura: You know people just give up, I mean.

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Dennis Gill: And they will.

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Dennis Gill: It’s an achievable thing should be an achievable thing. Yeah.

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Laura: Yeah, exactly. It needs to be properly communicated, and it goes back to that consistently measured guideline. Make sure that everybody’s doing it the exact same way.

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Laura: Provide regular feedback and support with it. But the best thing about KPIs is that it has a cascading effect in our business.

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Laura: You know it all goes down to, you know the person who answers the phone to the person who does the home. It’s usually not the same person, so it makes for a more collaborative work environment, and it also encourages a lot more self assessment

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Laura: and also fairness and accountability. When you are talking to your employees.

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Dennis Gill: Yeah, definitely. And I think these things are not specifically for the home care industry. These things work in all the sectors that are there. Even if you’re in sales or anything else in any of the companies. So these kp, I think I think this AI thing coming into that thing that’s a very plus point.

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Dennis Gill: And finally, one last thing I wanted to check with you that how do most successful businesses integrate KPIs into their overall business strategy and decision making processes.

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Laura: Okay? Well, I have to say it starts with the culture. You know. You want to have

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Laura: your KPIs aligning with your strategic goals, your mission and your vision.

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Laura: You want to embed them into your everyday operations and use them for both that short term and long term decision making tools.

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Laura: But 1st you need to take that heart wrenching. Look at your business

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Laura: and just analyze it from the top down to see what improvements are needed the most. And what will have the most impact in the short term? And I can tell you from experience. It was heart wrenching, you know. We thought we had. We were just operating great. But when we started

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Laura: putting in the numbers, we realized that we had a lot of deficiencies that we needed to work on.

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Laura: You know, it’s also, you know, using that KPI specific software that will allow you to do regular reviews. A lot of people only do a review once a year.

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Dennis Gill: Yeah.

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Laura: How do you know if your employees still performing?

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Laura: you know, at a high level, when you’re not going.

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Laura: You know, going back and reviewing their KPIs with them. So.

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Dennis Gill: Yeah.

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Laura: You know, let them know that, hey? We’re watching. And it’s also in their job description. And you also want to link that to any kind of rewards or incentives. That’s what we did.

We would, you know, if we met our numbers and certain KPIs, we take everybody out for dinner and they choose where they got to go. If we came close sometimes we would just bring lunch in.

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Laura: but it really

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Laura: It really brought our office closer together.

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Laura: Because, you know, we all had self accountability. I mean the every KPI was my

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Laura: report card, and everybody had their little section. So I had to make sure everybody along with my husband. I had to give my husband some credit because we ran the business together.

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Dennis Gill: I have.

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Laura: I can hear them. I was there, too, but we wanted to make sure that everybody knew what they needed to do and what was expected of. You know, we when we hire somebody, we would let them know.

Okay, here’s what we expect of you, you know, in the beginning you’re not going to hit these numbers. That’s your learning curve.

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Dennis Gill: But at this point.

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Laura: Point we need you to be able to do. You know the following things in order to get our business to go forward.

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Dennis Gill: Definitely definitely. It was

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Dennis Gill: great thoughts from your side, and thanks a lot, Laura for sharing your expertise and to a lovely audience. Thank you for tuning in, and until next time I’m Dennis Gill, signing off. Thank you.

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Laura: Thank you.