The Cost of Care with Special Guest, Joseph Bidwell

Joseph Bidwell, CEO of Home Instead SWFL joins the pod to discuss the cost of care and how affordable and "worth it" home care truly is!

To learn more about Home Instead Senior Care visit:
www.HomeInsteadSWFL.com
Call: 239-241-9765

Transcript

 Announcer:
Hello, and welcome to the Home Care Pod, your local resource when considering care. Now introducing the Home Care ladies, Laura Gillian and Audra Bidwell, at your service.

Laura Gillian:
Hi there everyone and welcome back to the Home Care Pod. We are your home care ladies. I am Laura.

Audra Bidwell:
And this is Audra here.

Laura Gillian:
Today, we have a very special guest joining us. Now he's not a home care lady, but join us in welcoming our friend and Audra's husband, Joe Bidwell.

Audra Bidwell:
It's weird interviewing your husband on a Home Care Pod, Laura.

Laura Gillian:
Yes, that's funny. Joe Bidwell's the CEO of Home Instead here in Southwest Florida. Joe, do you mind taking some time to introduce yourself, tell us how you got into home care and just a little bit more about you?

Joe Bidwell:
Sure. My main claim to fame is being married to one of the home care ladies. We're a family owned and operated business and so I've been running our business here for the last five years. I got into it because it was a great fit for our family. I became very passionate about home care when I saw how our team took care of my Nana. We saw the real benefit for her personally, and then also for our family. That was the genesis of why I got into home care and why I really am passionate about setting up that kind of a situation for a lot of other families. I maintain that passion because I see how much my team really cares about these seniors. From the caregivers, to the office staff. That's why I'm really passionate about it.

Audra Bidwell:
That's great. Thanks so much for sharing that, Joe. Today, we're going to be discussing the cost of home care and the benefits of being at home.

Laura Gillian:
When weighing options, I think there can be a little bit of sticker shock when people first start investigating. Joe, if you don't mind sharing a little bit about the cost of care compared to maybe being in an assisted living facility or something like that.

Joe Bidwell:
Sure. When I first got into this business, I thought that having one-on-one care in your home, that's tailored to you, that seemed like the most expensive option. But as I started looking into it, what I found is that people really should be focusing on what they're paying for. If they're at home, then they get to pay for just the care that they need. That's what we really focus on is identifying what the needs are and any gaps there might be their care, and then we can provide help to plug those gaps.

Joe Bidwell:
The other route you mentioned is assisted living and there's some beautiful facilities with lots of amenities. But the reality is most of what you pay for those facilities pays for the actual facility, the room and board, for those amenities and not necessarily for care. We often see families that make the decision to move to assisted living because mom or dad has a care need and it isn't necessarily solved by changing the location of mom and dad. Most assisted livings follow a group care model and that can mean anywhere from 10 to 20 residents for every one aide. So if you put yourself in the shoes of that aide, you have to run around all day long, trying to help 10 to 15 to 20 people through whatever tasks they're trying to get through that day. So your ability to spend quality time or a lot of time with any one of them is pretty limited. That's the major difference.

Joe Bidwell:
The costs for an assisted living are pretty well known. There can be a couple $1000 dollars a month up to $10,000 a month or more. But for the average assisted living cost here in our area, you can have 50 hours of one-on-one care in your home every week. Now in the facility, you're getting 15 minutes, twice a day, someone coming by to check on you. The most you're getting a couple hours a day versus having a lot of care every day.

Joe Bidwell:
Again, I don't know that that is really solving the need that is identified for mom or dad. If mom or dad only needs someone coming by twice a day to check on them, then that's a perfect solution, but most families that we talk to need a little bit more help than that.

Laura Gillian:
Yeah and I know we've talked in previous episodes, but if you could explain how we customize care for each potential client and how we move forward as far as with a care plan and how that determines the cost? Goes hand in hand with what you're saying.

Joe Bidwell:
Yeah, sure. We, as a care team, we want to get to know you. We want to get to know mom and dad and the family so that we can identify exactly what those gaps in care look like for mom or dad. Because often in these situations you have family helping or neighbors helping, or they're able to do some themselves. So we go and meet in person with every family and really get to know them and do a full care needs assessment, is what we call it. That can address everything that that person would need to be successful at home. Then we can prescribe a level of care that will achieve success for them. That's how we tailor our care plans for each individual.

Joe Bidwell:
But we also want to get to know the individual because we're going to guarantee that we find someone that they really love to be with. Because if we get that relationship right, that's almost more important that we get that right. Those are the reasons that we don't have just the blanket levels of care because things change. Everyone's different and their situation is going to change over time. So we establish a care plan in the beginning, and then we're going to be back to visit and see how it's going. Did we get the right match for the caregiver? Then are mom or dad's care needs changing over time and how do we address that? Because if we don't address those changes, then we're leading ourselves to a failure and that's what we're trying to avoid.

Audra Bidwell:
The first step in our process is really the inquiry call and we get lots of inquiries from families who are considering care or trying to understand what care looks like. Many times the question of expense comes up and many times those folks think, "Well, home care is expensive." How do you address that question when it comes up in an inquiry, Joe?

Joe Bidwell:
My first response is, "Yeah, care for a loved one can be expensive." But often people what they do, they're thinking of the expense to be okay, what is your hourly rate, times 24 hours a day, times 365 days a year? That's a lot of money. The reality is that is a lot of money, but that is also a heck of a lot of care. The vast majority of the families that we talk to don't require anywhere near that level of care to be successful at home. My average client is 20 to 25 hours a week. Often people only need a minimal amount of care and they can get away with having somebody come by twice a week to check on them and help them do some tasks that they struggle with. Grocery shopping, laundry, making it to their doctor's appointments, things like that.

Joe Bidwell:
There are some few families that do and individuals that do require a lot of care and we do provide that in those rare cases. However, I think it's important to think about what are we paying for and what are we trying to address? What are our goals as a family for mom or dad? I think addressing just what's needed is really important. You can save a whole lot of money over the course of time if you can just address what's needed instead of jumping to necessarily an assisted living level of cost every month. To start, you can get away with doing a lot less right there in their home because you're addressing just what mom needs.

Laura Gillian:
Yeah, I totally agree. It's a one-on-one relationship. That, to me is priceless as far as what you're paying for. Joe, thanks so much for joining us today and I'm sure you'll be back for future episodes again, and we're looking forward to that.

Audra Bidwell:
Same. Thanks to everyone here who's been tuning in to your local resource for all things home care, the Home Care Pod. We hope that you tune in again really soon.

Laura Gillian:
Talk to you soon. Bye-bye.

Joe Bidwell:
Thank you.

Announcer:
Thanks again for listening to the Home Care Pod with Laura and Audra, your home care ladies. To learn more about home care or a career as a caregiver, please visit our website at www.homeinsteadswfl.com or call us at 239-226-0007.