Join us on our podcast as Kristin Wheeler, Executive Director of private duty for the National Association for Home Care and Hospice, shares valuable insights for new agencies navigating the daunting world of homecare. Discover the essential resources and support available through NAHC (National Association for Home Care & Hospice) to ensure compliance, best practices, and networking opportunities in this highly regulated industry.
If you liked this episode and want to learn more about all things home-based care, you can explore all our episodes at alayacare.com/homehealth360.
Join us on our podcast as Kristin Wheeler, Executive Director of private duty for the National Association for Home Care and Hospice, shares valuable insights for new agencies navigating the daunting world of homecare. Discover the essential resources and support available through NAHC (National Association for Home Care & Hospice) to ensure compliance, best practices, and networking opportunities in this highly regulated industry.
If you liked this episode and want to learn more about all things home-based care, you can explore all our episodes at alayacare.com/homehealth360.
00;00;01;10 - 00;00;14;07
Jeff Howell
Welcome to Home Health 360, a podcast presented by L.A. Care. I'm your host, Jeff Howell. And this is the show about learning from the best in home health care from around the globe.
00;00;16;07 - 00;00;41;15
Jeff Howell
Welcome to another edition of Home Health 360, where we speak with the most electrifying people in home care and home health from across the globe. Today's guest is Kristin Wheeler, the executive director of private duty for the National Association for Home Care and Hospice. NAC. Kristin, I've been bugging you for a while to be on, and today it finally has come.
00;00;41;28 - 00;00;45;01
Kristin Wheeler
Hey there, Jeff. Thanks so much for having me. I'm delighted to be here.
00;00;46;00 - 00;00;57;12
Jeff Howell
So because I'm a fastpitch softball coach as well, I have to ask you. Your LinkedIn says that you're in Savannah, Georgia. Can I assume that you've been to a Savannah Bananas game?
00;00;58;22 - 00;01;14;12
Kristin Wheeler
Yes. Yes, absolutely. You can assume that everybody in Savannah has been to at least one bananas game. I feel like we have been fortunate enough to have attended a number of them and yeah, it's every bit as fun as you think it might be.
00;01;15;06 - 00;01;28;08
Jeff Howell
Well, and to the listeners who don't know who they are, it's basically the Harlem Globetrotters years of baseball and they are definitely on my bucket list. I think they have something like 4 million followers on Instagram.
00;01;28;16 - 00;01;34;03
Kristin Wheeler
Oh, I believe it. I believe it. And they've gotten quite the buzz. Need to get down here. We can get you some tickets.
00;01;34;04 - 00;01;42;28
Jeff Howell
Okay, Sounds good. So for newer agencies that don't know much about NAC, can you bring us through what resources that you have for agencies that are just starting out?
00;01;44;09 - 00;02;09;16
Kristin Wheeler
Yeah. Yeah. So I can say with personal experience that starting out in this industry can be very, very daunting, to say the least. For those that don't know me, prior to coming to work in the association world, I was a co-owner of a homecare agency in the state of Florida. So I know what it's like getting into the industry.
00;02;09;16 - 00;02;39;07
Kristin Wheeler
Some of us just sort of find ourselves there, right? So but I think that there's quite a misconception out there, particularly lately, for some reason that I don't know if this is because homecare has gotten to be such a buzz word and such big business or. Or why? I can't point to why. But there's there seems to be this idea that you can just sort of hang your shingle and start sending people into people's homes to provide care.
00;02;40;16 - 00;03;12;11
Kristin Wheeler
I think you find out very, very rapidly that that's really far from the reality of what this business is, particularly in some of the states that are just enormously regulated, like Florida, Texas, New York, California, you know, that that have to follow big time rules. So if you're not familiar with those regulations, you can really find yourself in kind of a pretty, pretty big heap of compliance trouble, if you will, even if you have the very best of intentions.
00;03;12;11 - 00;03;44;23
Kristin Wheeler
Right. So you're going into it with the, you know, thinking you're doing the right thing and just being completely unaware that that you're not following the rules. So being a part of an association like NAC kind of gives you a silent partner, if you will. Like you have someone that you can reach out to with questions. We have our member communities too, that are designed to allow people to sort of bounce ideas off one another, share best practices, network, things like that.
00;03;44;23 - 00;03;55;09
Kristin Wheeler
So so that's what what I would say as far as resources for just starting out would be high on the list with that.
00;03;55;22 - 00;04;20;16
Jeff Howell
You know, and it's funny you bring up a gaffe because I just saw an email today, I'm still on that list, Serve group email. And so I'm kind of privy to these questions that, you know, as a non homecare agency owner, I would I always just default to assume that the agencies know what they're doing. And there's questions like, hey, you know, can we do a supervisory visit without a nurse?
00;04;20;17 - 00;04;40;06
Jeff Howell
Right. And then there's this like crowdsourced answer from these people that I get sort of view into. And so I would imagine that for NAC, you've got the same sort of list serve group emails and forums where people can ask their questions and it's like a, it's almost like a the subreddit for home care.
00;04;41;01 - 00;04;53;07
Kristin Wheeler
Yes. Yeah, as a matter of fact. So the communities I just mentioned is what has just recently been launched with an act that's actually taking the place of our what was our listserv.
00;04;53;08 - 00;04;53;29
Jeff Howell
Okay, got it.
00;04;54;08 - 00;05;17;10
Kristin Wheeler
But now it's just a little bit more sophisticated than just your old fashioned listserv. It's there. We have a number of different communities, so you can belong to whichever ones are meaningful to you, whether that's just the private duty community or all NAC members or, you know, hospice, home health, whatever, whatever kind of business lines that you're part of.
00;05;17;23 - 00;05;24;20
Jeff Howell
Got it. And did you guys build that technology yourself or is it is on something like Slack? Like what? What would the experience be like?
00;05;24;29 - 00;05;40;28
Kristin Wheeler
I can't remember what it's what it's actually on. I know we didn't build it ourselves. I'm sure it was outsourced, but I don't remember the name of the company that hosts it or houses it or whatever. But if you're the software guy, come on.
00;05;42;05 - 00;05;56;21
Jeff Howell
So in terms of service lines, this is what I wrote down. Tell me if I've missed anything here. You guys cover private duty, personal care, cover home health, hospice, palliative care infusion and pediatrics.
00;05;57;19 - 00;05;58;00
Kristin Wheeler
Yes.
00;05;58;08 - 00;06;15;10
Jeff Howell
And then you also cover the payors, Medicare, Medicaid, Medicare Advantage, Medicare, managed care via private pay, commercial and long term care insurance. And then you have communities and newsletters as well that align with all of those different buckets.
00;06;15;18 - 00;06;48;11
Kristin Wheeler
Mm hmm. Definitely. I would add, I know you said, you know, Medicaid managed care. I would I would throw into that just because just so as to avoid any confusion. The Medicaid home and community based services, which is the same thing, but different states call things different things. So and I would also point out that when we refer to or when I should speak for myself, not for the entire association, frankly, but when I refer to private duty personal care, I lump all things private duty into that.
00;06;48;11 - 00;07;09;16
Kristin Wheeler
That's another thing that I've learned, having gone from a state solely to a national level. Not all states refer to things the same way. Right. So when you say private duty in one state, people think private duty nursing, which is generally just pediatric nursing. If I say private duty home care in another state, they think of it the same way I do, which is like everything.
00;07;09;16 - 00;07;34;25
Kristin Wheeler
So whether that's just caregivers, home health aides, personal care, all the way up to private duty nursing, that could be, you know, not just for pediatrics, but for some an older person that needs an actual nurse as opposed to something that could be delivered by a home health aide. So it's it's very vast and it's all encompassing. What next what service line to provide?
00;07;34;26 - 00;07;36;10
Kristin Wheeler
So just wanted to point that out.
00;07;36;16 - 00;07;50;04
Jeff Howell
I'm going to give you my definition of private duty, and I consider you to be the foremost expert on this. So you tell me how you would define it. I actually simply define it as the absence of Medicare.
00;07;50;25 - 00;07;56;13
Kristin Wheeler
Right. No, that's absolutely right. I always define it as everything that Medicare won't pay for.
00;07;56;21 - 00;07;57;05
Jeff Howell
Got it.
00;07;57;28 - 00;07;59;04
Kristin Wheeler
Well, same thing.
00;07;59;17 - 00;08;19;26
Jeff Howell
Okay, good. Good to know that I have gone to the source and I finally have the right definition. So I did look up as well. The annual fees. It looks like you have a smart pricing plan where it starts at $750 and it's really tied to the bucket of revenue that the agency is doing.
00;08;20;25 - 00;08;53;29
Kristin Wheeler
Mm hmm. Yeah. So kind of sorta. Yes. But there's one thing I do need to point out. So. So, yeah, for regular provider members, annual dues do start at 750 per year and then are adjusted to annual gross revenue as years go by. However, for solely private duty companies, the smaller guys that are providing, whether we want to call it non-medical non-clinical care, private duty only companies, they can join NAC for a flat rate of just 550 a year, and that doesn't scale.
00;08;54;17 - 00;08;54;27
Jeff Howell
Okay.
00;08;55;29 - 00;08;57;28
Kristin Wheeler
So good to know.
00;08;59;11 - 00;09;35;16
Jeff Howell
Now, in terms of like the education and drill down, do you have any numbers on like just how many webinars you guys are doing per year of your annual event? But I'm assuming you might have smaller regional type of get togethers like bring me through if, if I'm really interested in joining, because I've come to realize that I got into this business and then as you said, you know, come to discover that my state is one of the enormous, enormously regulated states and I might be in a little bit in over my head.
00;09;36;16 - 00;09;51;29
Jeff Howell
I'm coming to the act to make sure that you guys are the group that's going to educate me as I go on going throughout this business. Give me a sense of, you know, just like how frequent and how in-depth like these trainings are.
00;09;52;11 - 00;10;18;03
Kristin Wheeler
Sure. So, you know, the number the number of webinars really varies. We used to hold to sort of a once a month private duty webinar, but it it felt sort of like we were hosting webinars just to host them and, and when I came on board, I, I think everybody's been sort of webinar to death with the pandemic.
00;10;18;03 - 00;10;38;09
Kristin Wheeler
I think everyone's so sick of just staring at their computer screen that the, the amount of people sort of dialing into them was dwindling. Lots of people register for them, but the people that actually showed up for the live event was much lower than anticipated. And I think that's because people know that they can get the recording and then just watch it.
00;10;38;15 - 00;10;38;22
Jeff Howell
Sure.
00;10;40;03 - 00;11;03;10
Kristin Wheeler
So when it comes to, you know, Medicare and all things to do with Medicare, there's always so much going on. There's always more information that needs to be shared. There's a new rule. There's a rate cut. God knows what's happening there. We do a a fair few webinars that have to do with those sorts of things, Oasis training, etc., etc..
00;11;04;14 - 00;11;38;04
Kristin Wheeler
But with private duty being so state specific, we don't host a ton of webinars related to like starting up or anything like that. We try and host things that we can collaborate with, with others such as the, the webinars that we do with personally. Group. You may have seen those. That is a collaborative effort between NAC, the Home Care Association of America and AngelList and all of Pulcinella, where it's kind of like the industry update there.
00;11;38;06 - 00;12;07;14
Kristin Wheeler
They're done quarterly and the legal updates, things that that apply nationally, workforce stuff, you know, things that that are applicable to every state. So it makes more sense as opposed to just hosting something that would be only for a while or only for one of the states. So, so I can't really say I can't really put a number on the number of webinars because it just kind of peaks and valleys, depending on what's going on out there.
00;12;07;15 - 00;12;19;04
Jeff Howell
Sure. Got it. And you guys are the lobby group for both home care and hospice. Like, what are you seeing as like the top pressing issue or pressing issues that you guys have been lobbying for for the next round?
00;12;19;04 - 00;12;46;07
Kristin Wheeler
Workforce, workforce, workforce, workforce. So we obviously can't say that enough. But I mean, you've everybody's hearing it every time you turn around this workforce crisis. Right. They're at a critical point so that from a home care perspective is our big focus this year for our our our legislative and policy priorities. NAC has done for a number of years.
00;12;47;05 - 00;13;14;20
Kristin Wheeler
Our legislative and regulatory blueprints, they're humongous stock documents. They're about 300 pages each. They're available on our website. And it lists every year what next legislative and regulatory priorities will be for that year. Those are approved by our board of directors before they ever get into that document. So and it's from that document that we pull our quote unquote, asks for Congress for that year.
00;13;14;29 - 00;13;41;19
Kristin Wheeler
So this year, workforce is in there a number of places. It actually has its own heading at this point. But as a result of this, one of the biggest things that NAC is doing this year there's actually been two reports that have been released very recently that we did in partnership with a couple of other groups.
00;13;41;19 - 00;13;54;08
Kristin Wheeler
The first one was in partnership with the fine folks over at Mission Care Collective, which many of you probably know of as mission job scam, but that's Mission Hear Collective is their parent company.
00;13;54;15 - 00;13;54;26
Jeff Howell
Okay.
00;13;55;20 - 00;14;23;22
Kristin Wheeler
They drew they drew upon data from like 67,000 plus caregivers and ultimately identified seven distinctly different personas of caregivers. And then the report takes this deep dive into each of the personas, talking about how very different they are, what their likes are, what their hobbies are, what they what they donate to. I mean, like way into the weeds with what each of these people is like, okay, they are.
00;14;25;15 - 00;14;41;22
Kristin Wheeler
And then it goes into the different ways in which to recruit and retain each of the personas. So it really sort of points out that there's not a one size fits all recruitment and retention strategy any longer. So it was very, very cool to see that when it came out. It came out a few months ago.
00;14;41;25 - 00;14;42;07
Jeff Howell
Okay.
00;14;43;03 - 00;15;15;12
Kristin Wheeler
The other one that was literally just released this week and taken to Capitol Hill during next March on Washington, which was Tuesday, brought together. This was a collaborative effort between NAC and the Home Care Association of America. For the first time ever, bringing the two associations together and leaders from across the home health industry spectrum, from, you know, traditional private duty all the way up to every service line, huge providers.
00;15;16;23 - 00;15;39;05
Kristin Wheeler
So the end product of that report, it not only addresses the needs of both the nursing and home care workforces, but also offers policy recommendations, best practices on how we can address the crisis. It's more of a call to action with actual actionable steps that we as an industry can take to fight this crisis right now, once and for all.
00;15;39;06 - 00;15;40;21
Kristin Wheeler
So it's super cool.
00;15;41;00 - 00;15;43;20
Jeff Howell
I think I saw that posted on LinkedIn.
00;15;44;22 - 00;15;45;19
Kristin Wheeler
Probably, yeah.
00;15;45;21 - 00;15;50;03
Jeff Howell
Right. Do you remember what the title I remember Crisis was in the title, I think. Yeah.
00;15;50;04 - 00;15;58;01
Kristin Wheeler
And Call to Action is in the title too. It's called I've Got It Right Here on Me. Just peek at it. The Home Care Workforce Crisis and Industry Report and Call to Action.
00;15;58;06 - 00;16;08;14
Jeff Howell
Got it. Yeah, I remember ceiling seeing Sheila Davis that always best care had posted it on her LinkedIn. So shout out Sheila. You're the first person that made me aware of it.
00;16;09;00 - 00;16;11;14
Kristin Wheeler
She's fabulous. That woman is wonderful.
00;16;13;03 - 00;16;31;17
Jeff Howell
You know, and speaking of LinkedIn, so I saw a recent video on your profile where you were talking that with the shortage, the most recent numbers that I saw is that the home care or home health referral rates, there's about one in three get rejected. But you were saying that you're seeing up to 50% now on referrals.
00;16;31;18 - 00;16;55;27
Kristin Wheeler
Yeah. Yeah. Some reports are showing it was like we just did a recent when we were getting ready to pull this some data together to go to March on Washington. We tried, we pulled we just, we surveyed a bunch of members and the reports we were getting was it was somewhere around 50 to 51% of home care cases are being turned down because they just don't have the staff.
00;16;56;01 - 00;17;07;15
Jeff Howell
Yeah, well, I was speaking with Medicaid agents, a big Medicaid agency in Ohio yesterday, and she said she could do five x the business if she could solve her staffing problem.
00;17;07;28 - 00;17;30;05
Kristin Wheeler
You know? Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's really remarkable. And so what's the flip of that? Right? So the other side of that are all of these people that aren't getting served, that aren't getting the care that they need, and who's making up for that? Probably family members, friends, you know, or they're just going without. It's a huge problem.
00;17;30;07 - 00;17;41;21
Kristin Wheeler
Yeah, sure. Everybody needs and we're all going to be there. You know, unfortunately, at some point, all of us are going to need some sort of assistance. We've got to fix this.
00;17;42;01 - 00;18;04;09
Jeff Howell
Yeah. Yeah. And like in in that video I saw on your on your profile, you go on to talk about like, the like any nurse can walk into a facility and make more money. And same with home health aides. And so there's this like the same person with the same credentials can just go get not even have to leave the industry and go, you know, get a job in another industry.
00;18;04;21 - 00;18;14;14
Jeff Howell
But that can just be working out of the convenience of a building and not have to travel during the day and actually make more money at the same time.
00;18;15;02 - 00;18;44;20
Kristin Wheeler
Right. Sure. And so one of the one of the big items in this latest report, one of the action items, is, you know, to increase the awareness of the industry and to improve the image of the industry. It's one thing with nurses. I mean, if you ask anybody on the street what a nurse is, they'll have a fairly general idea of what a nurse does.
00;18;45;01 - 00;19;05;20
Kristin Wheeler
If you ask somebody on the street who's never been involved in home care what a home health aide does or a home care aide or a home care caregiver or something, or know any of those titles. A lot of them don't now. You know, there's a fantastic quote, and I mentioned this the other day to I was talking to home health care news.
00;19;06;21 - 00;19;31;10
Kristin Wheeler
There's a great quote in there by our industry leader named Patti Rogers. She talks about how when, you know, people have cleaning people, you have a cleaning person come to your house, you wouldn't even think twice about paying that person 100 bucks to come to your house and clean. But you would immediately balk at spending that kind of money on paying for private home care services.
00;19;31;20 - 00;19;53;17
Kristin Wheeler
You know, so many people just don't even equate the two things as being equally important. But the latter obviously will allow people to stay at home. The first one equally important, I mean, I like a clean house, too, but that's not necessarily going to keep you out of out of an assisted living facility. Do you know what I mean?
00;19;53;22 - 00;19;54;22
Jeff Howell
Yeah. Yeah.
00;19;54;29 - 00;20;17;05
Kristin Wheeler
So it's pretty. It's pretty. It's pretty wild. So the image of the industry. And the other thing, too, with there's a lot of talk about people leaving the industry completely. And I know that that's true for both nurses and what's referred to in the report is direct care workers to sort of kind of all encompass all of those different types of providers.
00;20;17;17 - 00;20;40;24
Kristin Wheeler
But oftentimes when a nurse leaves a job, he or she goes on to be a nurse at another place, still a nurse. Right. Right. And we're seeing these caregivers of home health aides leave the industry. They're leaving because they can make far more money in retail. Right. And, you know, Uber and wherever and service industry, you know, etc., etc..
00;20;40;24 - 00;20;55;16
Kristin Wheeler
So that's the issue. That's a huge part of the issue that we need people to understand how critical this industry is and that it's a great industry to work in because it is.
00;20;55;27 - 00;21;15;26
Jeff Howell
Yeah, sure. And, you know, like one thing that doesn't even get the attention that it really should is that as the baby boomers are aging, there's a similar number of nurses that are also in that cohort as well. So there's just so many nurses that are flat out retiring as well that that's part of the crisis, too.
00;21;16;09 - 00;21;45;15
Kristin Wheeler
Sure. Sure. Absolutely. There's just not enough people coming into the industry. That's you know, the bottom line is that that that it's not an industry that's getting enough attention. Fortunately, I think that's turning just because we're hearing home care so much more now than we have ever in the past. But, you know, every one of our nurses and home health aides that are working in the industry right now are aging day by day, just like the rest of us nurses.
00;21;46;12 - 00;21;54;25
Kristin Wheeler
So, yeah, that's absolutely it's absolutely true that we need to incentivize people somehow or other to get into this industry.
00;21;55;06 - 00;22;16;13
Jeff Howell
Yeah. And then and then you layer over top of that three years of burnout, you know, where they're on the front lines, especially the early going where there was political, it was scary, you know, And like, there was just so much bad, terrifying news that, you know, they were courageously leading the front end of it.
00;22;16;24 - 00;22;41;12
Kristin Wheeler
Well, and unfortunately, we're seeing these stories of, you know, of violence against health care workers. I mean, it's horrifying to hear about somebody being, you know, something happening to someone in when they're working in the home or even in a facility, whatever. But, yeah, it's a scary business to it. It sounds sometimes like a scary business to get into.
00;22;41;12 - 00;22;42;27
Kristin Wheeler
And we need to we need to fix that.
00;22;43;02 - 00;23;14;02
Jeff Howell
Yeah. Yeah. And then like, you know, there's almost no attention that goes to you brought up the concept of family caregivers, and I had done some research on this many months ago. And when you look at, you know, if you sort of take the health care crisis as the economic crisis and you say, well, these there's family caregivers that have to put their career on pause or permanently on hold to take care of family members, and they're removed from the participation rate in the workforce.
00;23;14;02 - 00;23;26;24
Jeff Howell
You know, it's like it has this invisible, you know, second order effect when people have to, you know, that not be part of the economy to take care of loved ones.
00;23;27;07 - 00;23;52;13
Kristin Wheeler
For sure. For sure. And there are states that are really working hard to change that. Colorado has a program that paid it's a family. I think it's called like a family Sienna program. Don't hold me to it. But basically the way it works is that a parent this is for pediatrics specifically, but a parent can be trained to provide a number of services.
00;23;52;14 - 00;24;15;26
Kristin Wheeler
They can be trained as a sienna. They're not trained as a nurse, but they're trained as a Sienna certified nursing assistant to assist with some of the services that would be being provided to their child. They're then hired by a home health agency and are paid to provide the services, and this is reimbursed through that state's Medicaid plan.
00;24;16;15 - 00;24;27;06
Kristin Wheeler
To the agency, the agency pays the parents so that way the parent can come out of the workforce, take care of their own child, which they're doing anyway, and still be able to make a living.
00;24;27;16 - 00;24;41;01
Jeff Howell
Yeah, well, that's great. Mm hmm. So I'm guilty of being mostly a headline reader. I'm not fully up to date on how this $150 billion in funding for home care is going to start to roll out. Where we at with all of that.
00;24;42;04 - 00;25;09;08
Kristin Wheeler
So President Biden included that dollar amount in his proposed fiscal year 24 budget. Obviously, we as an industry would love to see that particular line item gain approval. But we all know that this budget will be picked apart and changed greatly. I'm sure, before it's finally approved. But again, like I said earlier, we're hearing home care so much more.
00;25;09;08 - 00;25;31;27
Kristin Wheeler
This administration has indicated more than any before the critical importance of home based care as well as home health and hospice services. So we're hearing about all of them. So I'm sure we'll be hearing and seeing a lot more about that, that 150 billion. Yeah, I love that. But we'll see what it all shakes out to be. Yeah, sure, Sure.
00;25;32;16 - 00;25;49;24
Jeff Howell
Yeah. And yeah, I mean, it's needed and it's going to create jobs. And I'll reference that video I saw of you one last time on your LinkedIn. There's 8.2 million more caregiver jobs that are becoming available just to satisfy the need of the aging baby boomers. Yeah.
00;25;50;02 - 00;26;03;27
Kristin Wheeler
Oh, yeah. I mean, what is it, 10,000 people turn 65 every day. Yeah. Now, of course, not everybody. The minute you turn 65, you're not going to need home care as a signature. But. But yeah, I mean, it's a huge amount of people turning 65 every day.
00;26;04;05 - 00;26;11;12
Jeff Howell
Yeah. Well, your annual conference last year was in St Louis, third week of October. What are the plans for this year?
00;26;12;08 - 00;26;19;19
Kristin Wheeler
This one is going to be a fun one. So. And as a matter of fact, the call for speakers literally went out yesterday. I believe it was so.
00;26;19;21 - 00;26;21;15
Jeff Howell
Oh, I'll check my inbox.
00;26;21;15 - 00;26;21;25
Kristin Wheeler
I'm sorry.
00;26;22;29 - 00;26;23;20
Jeff Howell
Check my inbox.
00;26;23;20 - 00;26;39;15
Kristin Wheeler
If you haven't seen it, I'll call you because you definitely need to know that. But we're scheduled this year for a tiny bit earlier. It's October 15th to the 17th. Okay. And we'll be in National Harbor, Maryland, which is a we'll be at the gala. A lot of people know the gala.
00;26;39;17 - 00;26;40;16
Speaker 1
Okay.
00;26;40;26 - 00;27;02;01
Kristin Wheeler
But I'm very excited to announce that this year we are also re-introducing next private duty summit, which we haven't formally held since, I believe it was 2016 was the last one. I think it might have been a year later, but that is going to be held in the same time. It's going to run concurrently as the main conference.
00;27;02;01 - 00;27;09;13
Kristin Wheeler
As the big conference. Okay. But will be its own individual conference. So sort of like a conference within a conference, if you will.
00;27;09;14 - 00;27;09;25
Jeff Howell
Got it.
00;27;10;17 - 00;27;34;13
Kristin Wheeler
So attendees will have a very comprehensive, very specific private duty presentations sessions to go to. I don't call it a track because then it's just like another track. But they'll also have access to the keynote speakers, the Expo Center, all of the things that we wouldn't be able to do necessarily if it was just a stand alone event.
00;27;34;21 - 00;27;39;20
Jeff Howell
Got it. So what else is NAC up to this year that the world should know about?
00;27;40;04 - 00;28;05;09
Kristin Wheeler
Oh, let's see. So the next affiliate that I'm sure you've probably heard of, the Home Health Financial Manager Association or HHS, for me, they do an annual conference, the Financial managers conference, usually in July, and it'll be in July again this year, this time for the first time ever in the history of that conference, we're going to have a full private duty track as well.
00;28;05;12 - 00;28;31;01
Kristin Wheeler
Okay. And we're having it in New Orleans this year. So it should be a really fun one that runs July 16th to the 18th. So. Yeah. And then as far as I'm concerned, I'll be speaking at a number of of other events this year. I'll be at the at CASA, the California Association. I'll be at their conference. I'll be a decision helps.
00;28;31;07 - 00;28;52;09
Kristin Wheeler
Okay. So we're just trying to get out there and make sure people know. I think there's been a misconception for a number of years that next, next priority or next focus has always been on Medicare agencies. That's simply not true. It's just that Medicare just has a louder voice and always has and always will for that matter. So CMS is big.
00;28;52;17 - 00;29;01;08
Kristin Wheeler
It's a big, big business. But NAC is just as focused on and cares just as much about our private duty folks, too.
00;29;01;21 - 00;29;13;27
Jeff Howell
Got it. Okay. Well, Kristen, we're almost up against our time here. I'll get you out of here on this. Give us a reason to be optimistic about care delivered in the place that clients call home.
00;29;14;04 - 00;29;35;13
Kristin Wheeler
Nice. Well, I mean, the only thing I can say is if there's one silver lining to be had from this pandemic, it's that it has absolutely thrust the need for home care into the spotlight more than anyone could ever have imagined five years ago. I mean, we never would have been talking about home care this much five years ago, four years ago, whatever.
00;29;35;13 - 00;30;06;15
Kristin Wheeler
You know, everyone knows about home care now. That was not the case before. We've you know, we've never in our history heard Home Care talked about in the halls of Capitol Hill as much as we have now. Sure. I mentioned home care specifically during his State of the Union address. That awareness in and of itself can only lead to a higher level of respect for those frontline workers, which in turn will hopefully lead to a higher respect for those jobs and an increased desire to be part of that workforce.
00;30;06;16 - 00;30;13;26
Kristin Wheeler
So I think we're in really good shape and I think being part of home care in the future is very exciting.
00;30;14;29 - 00;30;35;21
Jeff Howell
Yeah, there was that $150 billion. Even if that gets stripped down to some other version, that is also a big number to start with. And hopefully we start to see that money kind of come in and help solve some problems that we see. Sure. Well, keep up the great and noble work at NAC, and I'm so happy we finally got to do this.
00;30;35;21 - 00;30;36;02
Jeff Howell
Kristen.
00;30;36;16 - 00;30;41;06
Kristin Wheeler
Thank you so much for having me. Justin, it's lovely to see you as always.
00;30;41;08 - 00;31;10;16
Jeff Howell
Home Health 360 is presented by L.A. Care. First off, we want to thank our amazing guests and listeners. To get more episodes, you can go to AlayCare.com/homehealth360 or Search Home Health 360 on any of your favorite podcasting platforms. The easiest way to stay up to date on our new shows is to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00;31;11;03 - 00;31;34;00
Jeff Howell
We also have a newsletter you can sign up for on alayacare.com/homehealth360 to get alerts for new shows and more valuable content from AlayaCare right into your inbox. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time.