Georgia’s home-based care horizon: Top challenges, opportunities, and solutions [webinar recap]

When it comes to managing your Georgia home-based care business, what do you find the most challenging? Is it employee recruitment and retention or the required criminal history background and fingerprint checks for caregivers? What about compliance surrounding allocating hours for services, or the payroll complexities when calculating routine overtime?  

For some Georgia-based providers, the answer is all the above.  

In a recent AlayaCare webinar hosted by our AlayaCare team of experts, we teamed up with David Russell, the Director of Business Development at Georgia-based Family Care Inc. to not only discuss current challenges in Georgia, but also share time-tested solutions.  

Let’s dive in! 

A whirlwind of changes for home-based care in Georgia 

It’s no secret to any medical provider in Georgia that the state of home-based care in Georgia is trending upwards. Nearly 36,000 Georgia consumers received home care and community-based services in 2022, and the post-acute space is gearing up for a rapidly aging Georgian population.  

So, it’s unsurprising that compliance standards have undergone significant changes in response. 

“Compliance in Georgia, and I can’t speak for other states, but it’s gotten pretty wild. From both onboarding and new hires and all you have to do with those folks, to the actual providing of the care and documentation surrounding that,”

David Russell, Director of Business Development at Georgia-based Family Care Inc.  

“I think a lot of the compliance measures that are put into place are meant to do good,” David adds. “But as a provider, they’re extremely hard to manage, both from an operational standpoint and from a financial standpoint. Fortunately, technologies help immensely to face those challenges.” 

Leveraging automation to mitigate compliance concerns 

Speaking of technologies, automation has emerged as a key contender to enable Georgia’s home-based care leaders to navigate compliance concerns. In the Peach State, Georgians have reported compliance issues around certificates of needs, skills qualifications, and training requirements. Automation and built-in compliance guardrails have helped considerably. 

“We came from a really basic software system and had a lot of paper processes, manual processes, and so were able to get a really keen understanding of where we had some problem areas with compliance, then really hone- in on those while we chose a new software system. That’s something that we were able to really attack with AlayaCare.” 

David Russell, Director of Business Development at Georgia-based Family Care Inc.

“One example is the custom form builder. I’ve been able to get all of our nursing documentation electronically. You can set it up so that certain fields are mandatory, so I know things are not getting skipped each time they get submitted. I can run reports on different time intervals to really dig in and review everything quickly, instead of having to go and grab a folder and go dig through it.” 

“And then other things with our onboarding,” David continues. “Our HR team is getting constant updates showing who we need to get into the next CPR class to make sure that we remain compliant. There’s really, across the board, different ways that we’ve used this software to try to shore up some of those blind spots that I felt like we had prior to having some of these options.” 

Custom configuration and form building

• Rich media functionality with pictures, signatures and drawings
• Configure care plans to your current workflows
• Track user changes and clinical notes with version controls
• Meet high client acuity needs for wound care, infusion and medical reconciliation

Learn more

Turning to technology for recruitment and payroll  

The overwhelming majority of home care providers who attended the webinar reported their greatest challenge surrounds caregiver recruitment and retention—the exact response we received during the Better Outcomes User Conference in September 2023. When discussing the shifting landscape of recruitment, David shared how Family Care Inc. has deployed relevant technology.  

“I’m not going to lie, Indeed is a major expense on our P&L every month. We spend a lot of money on Indeed, but it works better than anything else that we’ve found. On top of that, we do have a caregiver referral program that works.”

David Russell, Director of Business Development at Georgia-based Family Care Inc.

“I will say when someone does refer someone, it tends to usually be a better candidate for a good employee, so we’re always happy when that does happen; but, in my experience, it’s not ‘start an employee referral program and then open the doors and people just moonwalk in there,’” he adds. 

It’s important to note that David is among the ranks of Georgia-based home health agencies that serve several rural communities. While two of the markets that Family Care Inc. serves have decent recruiting grounds, David refers to several of his Georgia markets as “wastelands” for caregiver recruitment. Technology for transparent payments—including overtime—has helped with that.  

“Our payroll software integrates with AlayaCare,” David explains of how he ensures fair caregiver compensation. “We send them our payroll export from AlayaCare and they will put together a blended pay rate so that person is paid their overtime hours. It’s broken down into a nice, very detailed pay stub so that everyone understands what’s going on. There’s no questions.”  

Home-based care marketing: How you can get started with a client referral program

Read blog

Selecting a software vendor as an operations partner  

“We’ve been able to automate a lot of tasks that we’ve talked about today, with compliance being a major part. Billing has become a much, much faster thing for us, same with payroll. Stuff that I used to spend a lot of time on, or other people in our office used to have to lend hands in, we don’t have to do that so much as long as we’re able to keep everyone happy and working here,” David shared. 

Hear more about how Family Care, Inc. improved efficiencies by going paperless

At the heart of what provides caregivers and operations leaders the opportunity to either do their own specific job better—or do things like find new caregivers, land new client referrals, and ultimately scale the agency—is reliable technology. At AlayaCare, we’re proud to offer outcomes-focused software that enables our team to become true operations partners in Georgia. 

“We know you can’t have better outcomes without wonderful employees, and so we believe in the workforce and the employees that you hire. We want to equip them. And we believe that with the right kinds of tools, the better chances they have in wanting to stay with your organization. We want to support the entire care continuum.”

Zack Butterfield, AlayaCare Regional Director

To discover how the right technology partner can help simplify state-specific challenges for home-based care businesses in Georgia, tune in to the webinar below for a live-action demo!