Care Across America
"Care Across America, an Approved Senior Network® Podcast"—your go-to source for engaging conversations and practical insights from home care and senior care experts across the United States. Each episode will spotlight industry professionals, and their referral networks, sharing impactful stories, proven strategies, and innovative solutions in senior care. This podcast is perfect for professionals, adult children of aging parents, and family members struggling with senior care choices and care.
Care Across America
Building a Compassionate Companion Care Empire Across Upstate New York
The search for quality home care often begins during a crisis, when families need compassionate, reliable help—fast. Mark McDermott understands this reality perfectly, having built Touching Hearts at Home into a companion care powerhouse serving Rochester, Syracuse, Buffalo, and Albany over the past 18 years.
What makes Touching Hearts different? Their exclusive focus on companion care allows them to hire caregivers based on compassion and life experience rather than formal credentials. This approach has created a diverse team of approximately 250 caregivers across four offices—from 83-year-old retirees to healthcare students—enabling personalized matching that goes beyond simply filling shifts. When someone calls Touching Hearts, they immediately speak with a real person who listens deeply to understand their situation, arranging a comprehensive family assessment within a business day.
The company's commitment to reliability sets them apart in an industry often plagued by staffing challenges. They meticulously track shift coverage, maintaining an impressive 97-98% fulfillment rate. This means that when emergencies arise—and they always do—families can trust that someone qualified will arrive to provide care. Touching Hearts offers flexible service options with reasonable minimums (16 hours weekly with 4-hour shifts), ranging from brief daily visits to 24-hour care and live-in arrangements.
Ready to experience the difference that comes from working with a seasoned, compassionate companion care provider? Contact Touching Hearts at Home to discover how their unique approach to non-medical care can bring peace of mind to your family during challenging transitions.
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Hi, my name is Mark McDermott and I am owner, with my brother, tom, of Touching Hearts in Rochester, syracuse and Buffalo, new York. With some other owners, I also am part owner with the Touching Hearts franchise in Albany, new York. We began this business in 2007. So it's not each office in 2007, but we actually began in Rochester and eventually went to Syracuse and Albany and Buffalo Wow.
Speaker 2:So 18 years almost.
Speaker 1:A long time. I'm by fast and it's been a great 18 years. But yeah, I guess we're one of the older companion care companies now in our area.
Speaker 2:And so you've got pretty much the northern part of New York covered.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we got the thruway. The New York thruway is very well covered.
Speaker 2:That's great and Touching Hearts at Home is you've been around for 18 years. You cover a huge territory in upstate New York and that is wonderful and I get to see all from a distance. All the posts and all the staff and the videos that you guys create are amazing, and you just have a wonderful set of office staff and caregivers that you all highlight all the time. So tell us a little bit about the makeup of the office staff or what you're looking for in caregivers. Even how do you guys go about hiring a caregiver? What are you really looking for in that hire?
Speaker 1:We are a little bit unusual in home care in that we are a companion care only company. There used to be a lot of those and a lot of companion care companies got a license in New York that requires a Department of Health license. We've not done that. We've grown very well and been successful without having to go regulated and by being a companion care-only company. It also allows us to hire caregivers who have no license. They're well-experienced and many of them do have licenses but they don't need to work for us. So it really allows us to get out of that rat race of recruiting and hire people who have great personal experience caregiving for older adults and other sorts of life experiences that don't necessarily entail a license but entail really valuable for a companion care, the most important of which, of course, is compassion.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and that is a great differentiator. I think that people don't realize and I know that when we talk to other home care agencies they really are. They do struggle a lot more because they have to hire CHHAs and you can hire folks. You have less of a competitive issue with hiring because you don't require that and that is a very great differentiator. And you're right, there are seniors who have retired. That could be a great. They're looking for extra work and they could be a great companion to someone. College-age students who are going into the healthcare field, who don't have a license yet, who can be a great companion. So all across the spectrum you've got amazing people who just have a heart for this and really want to help.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're right, valerie, and we've had all of the above. I remember one of our caregivers, joe, was 83 when he decided to hang up his caregiving hat, and obviously a person like Joe can't care for all the different sorts of clients that we have, but he certainly was a great match for quite a number of them and his matching ends up being the key. Between the four offices, we have about 250, 260 caregivers, and so in each office there's a lot of choices when it comes to matching for the right clients. We do look for diversity in our caregiving staff and we do value different experiences and ages and walks of life to be able to match up with our clients, who are, of course, also very diverse.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely when an adult child. I'm 54, so I am the prime example of that. I have a 75-year-old mother and if she were to need care and I've never been in this business, I've never had this experience before I'm going to be a little overwhelmed by this whole thing. Emotionally, I know. Financially it's a lot of questions. So when someone calls your office and says I think we need home care, but I'm not sure what can they expect?
Speaker 1:Well, the first thing they can expect is to speak right away with a human being. We don't believe in phone trees in our business and we staff our offices so that somebody will reach a live human being, just not to be taken for granted these days. It won't be a bot and it won't be an answering service. It'll be one of our staff members. The second thing I hope they can expect each time would be someone who understands, someone who does have the compassion and is going to be listening, not just with a business ear but with an ear toward how can we help whoever is calling, whether it's the daughter, the son, the client, social worker who's referring. We want to add value in that phone call, no matter what happens.
Speaker 1:We get many phone calls, as you can imagine, and they're not looking for the care we provide. But we're going to do our best to try to find, you know, add value to that person in some way to get them connected with what maybe they may need. But what will most often happen is either the person answering the phone or someone else in our office will have an initial discussion to fact find and try to understand the situation and, provided there is a potential match to arrange a quick family visit. When I say quick, I don't mean 15 minutes. It'll happen right away. Time is often of the essence. These are often crisis situations, so we're usually able to meet with a family within a business day, sometimes the same day, and that will be a more involved fact-finding and make sure that we understand. And if it is a good match, then we make our schedules and we sign paperwork and we're ready to go, and it's usually within a couple three days that we're able to start cases.
Speaker 2:That's great. Yeah, I think time is of the essence. For sure, most time we wish it wasn't this way, but for most of us there's a straw that breaks the camel's back, so to speak, and there's been a hospitalization, someone's going to be discharged tomorrow, because nobody stays in the hospital for very long anymore. Hospitalizations or quick discharges or someone's you know taking a fall, and we can't have them continue to fall, so we need some help in the home. Yeah, usually it's a last. We thought this was coming, but here it is. So that's great, and I know that your staff are great listeners and taking into consideration all the family dynamics, so that's a great way to start. If do you have minimums? So how many hours can someone? What would be the expectation for a minimum number of hours per week?
Speaker 1:Yeah, we have a minimum of 16 hours a week and a minimum of a four-hour shift. We do make exceptions. Of course, in this sort of business with people, you always have to have exceptions in mind. So we do occasionally make exceptions. We'd also take a short-term respite sort of case that would be for a week, along those lines. Minimum hours, minimum of about a week. But yeah, those are our typical minimums anyway.
Speaker 2:And you can provide up to 24-hour day care too, right.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. We can also provide live-in care. So those are a couple different options to address those cases where the needs are very significant.
Speaker 2:Honestly, four hours goes by just like that. So if someone does just need four hours of care four days a week, that could just be a grocery trip and some meal preparation and getting everything settled and everybody where they need to be, and four hours has gone by pretty quick.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I think yeah.
Speaker 2:And evening and evening tuck in, just making sure everybody's ready for bed and where they need to be, and medication reminders, and four hours just flies by. Yeah, I think, personally, a four-hour minimum is a great expectation. And you know, some agencies require much more than that and much more per week. So a low set of minimums is wonderful. So a low set of minimums is wonderful because, honestly, how can you get a bath, get dressed and have lunch and by that time it's four hours. That's great. And what about training? I know that you guys do some training for staff. What can you tell us about that?
Speaker 1:We do. We have an initial orientation with our staff where we cover, of course, not only the rules and regulations, if you will, boundary policy, but we also talk about dementia and other important elements that are really basic dementia and other important elements that are really basic, which is about what you can accomplish in one day of an orientation. We do offer periodic mandatory in-services, actually, that do additional training. We recently had some teepa snow training for our offices. We also offer voluntary training monthly so that people we have different topics that we rotate and folks can avail themselves. Those are voluntary, so there's a wide range. I think. What's important for us, though, is we have to make sure that not only the training we provide, but the person's background lends them the capabilities to deal with those challenging situations and for less challenging situations we may not need training. We do is limited and that we've got to make sure we're matching people who have other qualifications and experiences that will make them successful.
Speaker 2:I think your expertise in matching the right client and the right caregiver is really what it comes down to. Having been around for 18 years serving all of upstate New York, basically you guys have not only, I would imagine you can have a huge pool of caregivers 250, you said so finding the right match is often a big challenge for smaller agencies. So when you have a large pool of caregivers to choose from and you know who has experience and you've talked to them and they've worked cases for you in the past and they've become like family to some of these clients, then you guys can make a match much easier than a lot of other agencies.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I reflect on when we were starting. It was much more difficult when you had the 10, 20, 30 caregivers, and now we have what I consider a critical mass, so that, in terms of meeting schedules and filling in call-offs and making good matches, we've just got a lot of human resources to do that.
Speaker 2:And that is what everyone should be looking for in an agency the safety of the backup plan already being in place. If someone's sick, someone has a flat tire, a sick child, you guys cover it, and that's also the benefit of hiring an agency is having the safety of that is. It's not replaceable and an agency that's been around for as long as you guys have. You wouldn't be in this business this long if you weren't great at what you do, so we thank you for all of that. Is there anything else you'd like to tell us about Touching Hearts at Home, anything that we didn't cover that you want everybody to know about?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'd like to brag a little bit. Okay, it's along the lines of reliability and what we just talked about. We track very closely how many shifts we miss in the course of a month and we do this on a monthly basis and we've got about a 97 or 98% shift coverage rate. And the reason I bring that up is because there's such a perception in the home care world that it's unreliable and when somebody calls off, good luck, you're not going to find a replacement. We're really good at filling those situations where a caregiver is sick or their car breaks down or something happens, and we track it very closely and that's something I pay a lot of attention to and as part of our culture, to keep that number of mischiefs in the course of a month very low.
Speaker 2:That is awesome and, you know, there is no greater peace of mind than knowing that if your regular caregiver can't be there, then someone else will be, whether they live a mile away or they live 500 miles away. That adult child is always glad, or that family member, whoever that is, is always glad to know that someone's going to see mom today or dad.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:So having those numbers and knowing that and also that takes a real that means that you have a really great scheduling and staffing team in the office. They are the heroes that we don't often see, but they're the ones with the relationships with those caregivers and they can pull them in when needed. So kudos to them as well.
Speaker 1:Absolutely Such unfun heroes in our business.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Thank you for telling us all about Touching Hearts at Home. We're so glad that you cover all of upstate New York and are providing the care for families who oftentimes would try to go without or didn't even know this was possible. So thank you very much.
Speaker 1:You're welcome, valerie, and thank you for this time, but also the training that you provide to our sales staff, which has been really instrumental in moving the ball forward for us. We're growing very well and I appreciate all that you do.
Speaker 2:Oh, thank you very much.
