Jeff Mason on Building Partnerships & Breaking Barriers in Home Care

Accessing quality home care has never been more important or more complex. As the demand for aging-in-place services grows, so does the need for care models that are flexible, coordinated, and rooted in the community. For seniors and vulnerable populations, staying healthy and independent often depends on whether the right support is available at the right time.

But the path to transforming home care is filled with challenges. Fragmented funding, workforce shortages, and disconnected systems can undermine even the best intentions. Despite growing recognition of the value of home-based care, many providers still struggle to establish lasting partnerships or scale effective solutions.

To shed more light on how to turn those challenges into opportunities, we spoke with Jeff Mason, Director of Growth & Strategic Partnerships at Serengeti Care.

Let’s dive into what he has to say about driving partnerships, overcoming barriers, and making a meaningful impact in home care.

Question 1: With your expertise in forging strategic partnerships, how do you approach aligning the objectives of healthcare providers with those of local governments to expand access to quality home care?

Strategic alignment starts with listening. I try to focus first on identifying the shared pain points: reducing hospital readmissions, supporting vulnerable populations, and maximizing resource efficiency. From there, I position home care not as a competing service but as a complementary solution that can fill gaps in the system.

With local governments, this might involve aligning with Medicaid waiver programs, VA-specific initiatives, or workforce development goals. With healthcare providers, it’s often about building trust through consistent quality, real-time reporting, and reducing burdens on their clinical teams. When all parties involved see how the collaboration improves outcomes and is symbiotic, alignment becomes a shared mission.

Question 2: Given your experience driving innovation in healthcare, what do you see as the most significant barriers to transformative change in the home care sector, and how have you worked to overcome them?

One of the significant barriers currently faced by the industry is the fragmentation of payor systems, data platforms, and regulatory expectations. This creates silos that slow down innovation and make it harder to scale what works.

I’ve worked to overcome this by assisting with standardizing internal processes across branches in the past, advocating for more inclusive payor access (such as VA and Medicaid partnerships), and our company has invested in training that equips teams to serve a broad range of client needs.

Innovation in home care isn’t just about technology, as we are often tempted to think. I see one of our great opportunities as creating systems that empower care teams to act with clarity, flexibility, and purpose fulfillment. Teamwork makes the dream work, as the saying goes!

Conclusion

Improving how we deliver care at home isn’t just a systems challenge; it’s a human one. This home care success story highlights how home care leadership, when grounded in purpose and collaboration, can drive real change where it matters most.

Jeff Mason demonstrates that establishing robust home care partnerships and strategic alliances can help break down barriers that hold back progress. From using Medicaid partnerships to championing innovation in care, his work is a powerful example of purpose-driven care in action.

As more agencies seek to scale their impact and strengthen communities, stories like Jeff’s serve as both inspiration and proof that transforming home care begins with people who lead with heart, strategy, and a shared mission to do better.