Tag: Home Care Podcast

Talking Home Care: Serving Clients & Protecting Staff During the Pandemic

Cheryl Rumley—founder and president of Apex Homecare—offers a powerful, first-person account of her experience running an agency during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

For the 16th episode of Talking Home Care, Pat talks with Cheryl Rumley, founder and president of Apex Homecare in Springfield, Massachusetts. Cheryl offers a powerful, first-person account of her experience running an agency during the pandemic. Like many owners, Cheryl had to figure out how to care for her clients while also looking out for her employees’ safety and need to care for their own families.

They also discuss Cheryl’s connection to the 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic and Governor Charlie Baker’s leadership during the last 18 months.

You may listen to the podcast by clicking any of the platform images above, clicking “play,” or downloading it directly (Length: 21 minutes; Size: 15 MB).

Cheryl Rumley and Pat Kelleher
Cheryl Rumley and Pat Kelleher

If you enjoy the podcast, please subscribe and give us a five-star review so others can find it.

Return to www.thinkhomecare.org.

Talking Home Care: Employment Law During a Pandemic with Angelo Spinola

Veteran litigator Angelo Spinola answers questions about how agencies are rising to meet the biggest employment law challenges they face, including those posed by the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Angelo Spinola and Pat Kelleher

Even in the best of times, human resource issues pose an enormous challenge to home care agencies. But when responding to a global pandemic, many agencies found themselves scrambling to address new questions. How do you help employees with childcare challenges? How do you handle on-boarding (and firing) when everyone is working off-site? Who pays for COVID tests, and how should time spent getting the test be compensated? Can employers require vaccinations?

For the 15th episode of Talking Home Care, Pat speaks with Angelo Spinola of Littler Mendelson, a leading employment law litigator about these and other issues. They also discuss the subscription-based, on-line Home Care Toolkit Littler developed and constantly updates. The Toolkit gives agencies access to a world-class HR resource, policy manual, and document library that’s like adding an expert to your staff.

The Home Care Alliance of Massachusetts has negotiated a special agreement with Littler to give our members access to the Toolkit at a great price, with a portion of all sales supporting the Alliance! To learn more or to order your subscription, contact Melissa Mann at MMann@littler.com or (404)760-3928.

You may listen to the podcast by clicking any of the platform images above, clicking “play,” or downloading it directly (Length: 40 minutes; Size: 29 MB).

If you enjoy the podcast, please subscribe and give us a five-star review so others can find it.

Return to www.thinkhomecare.org.

Talking Home Care: Home Care Heroes During a Pandemic

Front-line heroes share their stories about overcoming the challenges posed by the COVID-19 Pandemic.

The COVID-19 Pandemic has created huge challenges to healthcare systems across the globe, including here in Massachusetts. As part of National Home Care and Hospice Month, we collected first-hand stories from our members about the front-line challenges they faced, and how they overcame them.

For the 14th episode of Talking Home Care, we’ve collected these stories into a single podcast. They are introduced by Alliance Executive Director Pat Kelleher and are read by drama students at Winthrop Middle School.

You may listen to the podcast by clicking any of the platform images above, clicking “play,” or downloading it directly (Length: 41 minutes; Size: 29 MB).

If you enjoy the podcast, please subscribe and give us a five-star review so others can find it.

Return to www.thinkhomecare.org.

Talking Home Care: Marijuana and the Workplace

Pat Kelleher speaks with Layla G. Taylor about what employers need to know about marijuana.

Taylor and Kelleher

With many states (including Massachusetts) decriminalizing marijuana in recent years, home care agencies and other employers find themselves having to answer questions they never thought to ask. How do I protect my clients? What are my employees’ rights? Am I still allowed to issue drug tests and, if so, under what circumstances?

For the 13th episode of the Talking Home Care podcast, Pat Kelleher explores these and other questions with Layla Taylor, a partner at Sullivan, Hayes & Quinn and an expert in employment and labor law.

(If you’re a return listener from iTunes, please subscribe to the podcast; we moved the feed to a new location last year).

You may listen to the podcast by clicking any of the platform images above, clicking “play,” or downloading it directly (Length: 25 minutes; Size: 19 MB). If you enjoy the podcast, please give us a five-star review so others can find it.

Host: Patricia Kelleher is the Executive Director of the Home Care Alliance of Massachusetts.

Guests: Layla G. Taylor is an attorney with Sullivan Hayes & Quinn who focuses on labor and employment law.

Return to www.thinkhomecare.org.

Talking Home Care: PDGM’s First 30 Days

Pat Kelleher moderates a discussion among three leading experts about the first month of PDGM. Slides available at https://www.thinkhomecare.org/pdgm-slides

Attaya, Ashworth, Seabrook, and Kelleher

Medicare’s Patient-Driven Groupings Model (PDGM) system went into effect on January 1, 2020. How has the industry fared in the month since the “most significant regulatory and reimbursement reform” in recent memory?

For the 12th episode of the Talking Home Care podcast, we put that question to a live panel of three of the nation’s leading experts at the Northeast Home Health Leadership Summit: Chris Attaya of Strategic Healthcare Programs, Stacy Ashworth of Select Data, and Nick Seabrook of BlackTree Consulting. Slides from the discussion are available for download.

(If you’re a return listener from iTunes, please subscribe to the podcast; we’ve moved the feed to a new location).

You may listen to the podcast by clicking any of the platform images above, clicking “play,” or downloading it directly (Length: 70 minutes; Size: 31 MB). If you enjoy the podcast, please give us a five-star review so others can find it.

Host: Patricia Kelleher is the Executive Director of the Home Care Alliance of Massachusetts.

Guests: Chris Attaya is the Vice President, Product Strategy of Strategic Healthcare Programs. Stacy Ashworth is the Executive Vice President of Clinical Innovation of Select Data. Nick Seabrook is the Managing Director & a Founding Member of BlackTree Consulting.

Return to www.thinkhomecare.org.

Talking Home Care: Amanda Oberlies on “No on MA Ballot Question 1”

Amanda Oberlies of the Organization of Nurse Leaders joins us to discuss why her organization (and the Alliance) oppose Massachusetts Ballot Question #1.

The Alliance’s Pat Kelleher &
ONL’s Amanda Oberlies

Should health care facilities have their nurse-to-patient ratios defined by law? That’s the question put to Massachusetts voters this coming Tuesday. Amanda Oberlies of the Organization of Nurse Leaders joins us to discuss why her organization (and the Alliance) oppose Massachusetts Ballot Question #1. Their conversation covers:

  • Who’s behind the ballot question and why?
  • What is the intersection of staffing-ratios and quality?
  • How does California’s experience with a similar law correlate to the MA proposal?


You may listen to the podcast by clicking the play button below, downloading it directly, or subscribing through iTunes or Google Play. (Length: 30 minutes; Size: 24 MB). If you enjoy it, please give us a five-star review so others can find it.

Host: Patricia Kelleher is the Executive Director of the Home Care Alliance of Massachusetts.

Guest: Amanda Stefancyk Oberlies, PhD, MBA, RN, CENP, is the Chief Executive Officer of the Organization of Nurse Leaders (ONL).

Resources:

Talking Home Care LogoDon’t want to miss the next episode of Talking Home Care? Subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, or accessing its feed directly.

Return to www.thinkhomecare.org.

Talking Home Care: Pat Ahern on Palliative Care 101

Pat Ahern of Care Dimensions joins us to discuss several hospice-related issues affecting the home care industry.

Pat Ahern of Care Dimensions
Pat Ahern

Pat Ahern of Care Dimensions joins us for the eighth episode of the Talking Home Care Podcast. As the CEO of the largest and most experienced palliative care agency in the region, Pat’s an authority on palliative care, hospice, and related issues. In a conversation with Alliance Executive Director Pat Kelleher, Ahern discusses:

  • Palliative care’s role as a “midwife at the other end of life”;
  • Dementia care;
  • Payment reform;
  • Referral sources;
  • Nurse recruitment and training; and
  • Physician involvement.


You may listen to the podcast by clicking the play button below, downloading it directly, or subscribing through iTunes or Google Play. (Length: 26 minutes; Size: 12 MB). If you enjoy it, please give us a five-star review so others can find it as well.

Host: Patricia Kelleher is the Executive Director of the Home Care Alliance of Massachusetts.

Guest: Patricia Ahern, joined Care Dimensions in 2017 as president and CEO. With more than 30 years of leadership in healthcare and an MBA, she has the clinical and strategic business skills, and a true passion for the mission, that enables her to provide Care Dimensions’s vision and leadership.

Resources: More information about Care Dimensions.

Talking Home Care LogoDon’t want to miss the next episode of Talking Home Care? Subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, or accessing its feed directly.

Return to www.thinkhomecare.org.

Podcast – Are You Listening?

Yesterday, on this blog we announced our latest podcast, featuring a conversation with Barbra Citarella on Emergency Preparedness in our industry. See post below for the links to listen and find the referenced resources. Today, I thought it fun to stray a bit from the home care topics normally covered here to reflect a bit on the whole notion of podcasting. Hope you enjoy. — Pat Kelleher

In 1978, a little known and now little remembered musical group the Buggles put out the song “Video Killed the Radio Star,” a self-explanatory lyric that about the perceived loss of imagination inherent in the move to turn music into pictures (i.e., videos). The song — for all you trivia buffs — was the first video aired on August 1, 1981 at 12:01 on a little upstart channel known as MTV.

Well, in 2018, audio is back and in a big way. The phenomenon known as “podcasting” is exploding, with walkers, long-distance travelers, and insomniacs finding there’s a lot out there to listen to no matter your taste, politics, or hobbies. Surprisingly, healthcare seems one of the least fertile areas – hard to make regulatory updates engaging!

If you haven’t jumped on the bandwagon, be forewarned: There is a lot of junk out there from so-called subject matter experts who quickly reveal a paucity of knowledge on their chosen topic and aren’t quite as clever as they think they are. If you aren’t yet a “podhead,” to get started, it’s often good to look to some of the “OGs” – the originals that paved the way with content and high-production quality, such as This American Life and the TED Radio Hour. For techie type stuff, Reply All is good fun and, for those who like language and word play, the British import The Allusionist is on many “best of” lists. Note: these links are all websites, but all of these can be found on iTunes or the podcast app on your smart phone.

At HCA of MA, we have just gotten started podcasting, and interesting guests are welcome! If you have a home care story to tell, email me: pkelleher@thinkhomecare.org and we will have you on!

We also welcome hearing in comments what are some of your favorite health care or non-health care podcast series or episodes. Here are links to a few of mine – two are stories that, like all great stories, are of loss and love. One is on technology’s infiltration in our lives. All three are infinitely listenable. They are:

Happy Listening!

Return to www.thinkhomecare.org.