Understanding Caregiver Minimum Hours
Is your family interested in exploring caregiver minimum hours? We are happy to accept all cases that we receive regardless of their size, but it’s important to understand the difficulties with staffing these cases.
Additionally, some families question why tasks are taking so long, which can be frustrating when families pay by the hour. People want to minimize their costs but might not understand how long tasks are taking their loved ones.
What you will learn in this article:
What Minimum Hours Are
Caregiver minimum hours are the minimum blocks of time you can request from a home care company. Many in our area have minimums between three and five hours at a time.
Generally, blocks cannot be split, meaning, if the minimum is five hours and a customer requests two three-hour blocks of time, the thought is that it is over the five-hour minimum. Sadly, this would be incorrect. The minimum is the blocks of time you can purchase.
Why Have Minimums
At Minute Women Home Care, we try and staff every case regardless of size. Our minimum is one hour of care.
The reason why many agencies have caregiver minimum hours is for two reasons: scheduling and staffing.
Staffing
It is difficult to get caregivers to accept low blocks of time. The reason is their return on investment. They need to get ready, drive to the case, work the case and then drive home. They may spend more time driving to the case than actually working on it.
What is the minimum amount of time you would want to earn to drive to work each day? Caregivers have the same priorities, hence the caregiver minimum hours.
Scheduling
Scheduling a low-hour case takes more time and effort than a higher-hour case because they are less desirable, as explained above. So from the agency owner’s perspective, their schedule is less productive on a less good case than a high our case, so why accept the client? This decision leads agency owners to decline low-hour cases because, in their eyes, it isn’t worth the time.
Additionally, if a client is unhappy with the care they are getting, this requires even more time spent on the case by the office staff, which means profit margins further decline. For many agency owners, taking low-hour cases does not make business sense.
Minute Women Home Care
We look at low-hour cases as opportunities. While everything above is true – they aren’t big revenue generators and do take time to schedule and find the right caregivers – we still appreciate them.
Home care is a word-of-mouth business, and the more happy clients we service, the more referrals we receive. We never know when a three-hour case could turn into thirty hours a week or when that low-hour case knows a neighbor who will need live-in care.
Find the right caregiver for you or your loved one with Minute Women Home Care
We are here to help!
Expectations
Even if your family is familiar with the time, it takes to provide care. The real-time projection can be different. Families might not realize that mom has declined further, and it takes longer to do tasks that once were easy.
When it comes to a senior, they want to be independent. They want to have control of their own life still, and our caregivers are there to provide that to them. So we are not there to rush them down the hall or put their clothes on for them.
Imagine if everything you do each day took five or ten minutes longer. How much extra time would that add to your morning schedule when you get ready for work?
At Minute Women Home Care, we balance independence with convenience. We assist seniors when appropriate and patiently wait while they complete other tasks themselves. Our caregivers respect the seniors they serve. How would you feel if you had to rush through your daily routine?
Most families are not asking us to rush their loved one but may not understand how much their parent has slowed down. When we plan our caregiver minimum hours, we always remind them to be patient and respectful of a senior’s wishes.