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
Beyond Basic Care: How BrightCare Is Revolutionizing South Louisiana's Home Care Industry
Watch the full video here: https://homecaremarketingnews.com/the-heart-of-home-care-an-inside-look-at-brightcare-homecare-in-louisiana-with-jamie-arton/
What does it take to grow a home care agency from a simple desire to help people into a thriving multi-region operation? Jamie Arten, owner of BrightCare Home Care, reveals the heartfelt journey and strategic decisions behind her company's remarkable expansion across South Louisiana.
With agencies in Lafayette, Baton Rouge, New Orleans, and the North Shore, BrightCare has become a trusted name by developing a care model that prioritizes both clients and caregivers equally. "We can't have a well-run organization with caring caregivers if they're not being cared for also," explains Arten, who holds a master's degree in public health from Tulane. This philosophy translates into extensive training programs, competitive compensation, and genuine relationships with caregivers who subsequently deliver exceptional client care.
BrightCare distinguishes itself through comprehensive individualized service plans that consider the whole picture of a client's life. Their approach to hospital-to-home transitions exemplifies this thoroughness – conducting pre-discharge assessments, ensuring homes are equipped with necessary safety features, and coordinating seamless care continuity to prevent dangerous gaps. With their substantial caregiver base, they can typically establish care within 24 hours, addressing urgent needs quickly and professionally.
The agency has developed particular expertise in serving veterans, with approximately 40% of their client base utilizing veteran benefits. As a credentialed provider for both Aid and Attendance and the Community Care Network, they navigate complex systems to maximize available care for veterans. Technology integration further enhances their service quality, with family portals providing transparent access to care notes and billing information for scattered family members.
Connect with BrightCare Home Care to experience their difference – where personalized care, thorough training, and genuine compassion combine to create exceptional home care experiences across South Louisiana. Their growth reflects not just business success but the impact of truly caring for both clients and caregivers in an industry where the human element matters most.
View More at HomeCareMarketingNews.com
My name is Jamie Arten. I am the owner of BrightCare Home Care in Louisiana. We have four agencies and cover four different regions of South Louisiana. So we're in Lafayette, louisiana, baton Rouge, new Orleans and the North Shore. So we're pretty spread out and we kind of service the majority of South Louisiana, anything along I-10 or I-12. We have a huge base of caregivers and have the unique ability to be able to work in between all those areas.
Speaker 2:That's great. You guys have really grown over the last year or two. I know we've been able to watch that growth and it's been so exciting to see.
Speaker 1:It's been exciting. It's been a journey. We've enjoyed it. It's more than I ever expected it would be and really I think what drives our growth is each agency has such an amazing director in place and they really truly care about what they do and they love their clients. They've all worked in home care before, so they know what needs to be done, both in the home, out of the home, in the office. Everything they do They've just have the knowledge. They're all very experienced and genuinely care. So I feel like that's been a huge drive for us as far as our growth is concerned. They've drawn people to us that I think maybe didn't know much about home care and they've provided the customer service and level of care that keeps bringing them back and, obviously, referrals from them. So that's always nice to get a referral from a current client.
Speaker 2:That's great. Yeah, really having people in place in each office that really care about this is obviously a business that's full of heart, and you wouldn't be in it if you weren't caring about people, so I know it's a tough business as well. Tell us a little bit about, like, how you got started. What compelled you, as a human, to be in the business of home care? How did you get started?
Speaker 1:That's a good question. I have my background. I have a master's degree in public health from Tulane and I guess from that I was in healthcare for about 20 years as a dietician and at some point I said what do I want to do with myself? Actually, someone asked me that. They said what do you want to do with yourself? And I said I think I want to take care of people. My children are almost grown and what's my next step going to be? I take care of people, that's what I do. And I said okay, and somehow this took a life of its own and it took off more than I ever expected. So we've evolved into this huge organization that started out from just wanting to take care of people and it's. It's been really rewarding and we've met some amazing people along the way. It's been a really good adventure so far.
Speaker 2:That's great and I know that this is a great rewarding business. It's also a tough business. Talk a little bit about how do you find all these great caregivers. So you hire a lot of caregivers. Tell us a little bit about what you're looking for in an amazing caregiver out there.
Speaker 1:When I started this business and I decided I want to take care of people, it includes taking care of our caregivers. So we can't have a well-run organization with caring caregivers if they're not being cared for also. So the basis of what I do, the model that I have set, is for me to take care of not only the clients but the caregivers, and that flows over into the client care, and a lot of that starts with really good training. So we've invested a lot of time and a lot of energy to establish really good training processes and procedures to put them in place, because this is a hard business to run.
Speaker 1:You're not selling computers or selling furniture.
Speaker 1:You're dealing with people, and it's people on both ends.
Speaker 1:You're not you have clients on one end who need the care, but you also have caregivers who they have lives.
Speaker 1:They have things that come up and happen and it's hard because you have clients who really want only one caregiver or they want specific things done and they only trust one person coming into their homes. And so having really good training and developing really good relationships with the caregivers and the clients and introducing them and helping them develop good relationships is a key aspect of what we do and I believe really contributes to, I guess, the client satisfaction that we have, because we really do have high satisfaction rates, which we do track with our surveys and I really believe that it has to do with finding the right people, developing the right people, training them correctly and having that open communication with everybody. It is a hard industry to run because you're dealing with so many different personalities, but when you really spend time developing and investing in people, you start to see the results and they just it flows over to the client care and it's really cool to see once that starts happening.
Speaker 2:That's great. I know that I'm talking to home care agencies all day. Without the caregivers, there is no home care agency. So they are the gold that we need to really nurture and keep them happy and, like you said, help them with all those human things. Life brings us your tire's flat, your kid is sick. Being compassionate and caring about them is also what is needed to run a home care agency, and it's so nice to hear you say that, because I think sometimes people who run as agencies get bigger. It's hard to keep all those things in mind, but also having great staff in each of your locations makes that much easier, I'm sure.
Speaker 1:Oh, absolutely, and we have great agency directors at each location and that plays a huge role in it too. They have the freedom and flexibility to really service our clients in a way that they feel is appropriate, and every situation is completely different, so we really approach it from a holistic standpoint of view that is tailored toward that individual. There's not going to be a blanket protocol for every single situation. We really do try to adjust and meet the needs of each individual by looking at the whole picture that they are in, not just a standard set of care. So each client has an individual service plan and it's all based on their own needs. So having that individual service plan and having the people to develop that with them, even including their budget and everything else that comes along with care, makes a big difference and when somebody like I'm 54 years old, my mom is 75, and if I weren't in this business and had never had this experience before?
Speaker 2:adding home care to our lives is a completely new, foreign experience to us. We're not used to that. So when somebody calls one of your offices, what can they expect? What's the chain of events that happens when they call and say, oh, I think it might be time?
Speaker 1:Like I said, each situation is different. So listening and just hearing what the client has to say and trying to get a really good picture of what their individual situation is, what their background is, what the family dynamics are, what the budget is, what their background is, what the family dynamics are, what the budget is, where they're located, what the needs of the client are Because some people have totally different needs. You have some people who want to have companion care and drive them to the local health club and go have coffee with their friends so they can still have that freedom stop off at mass on the way home. So you have that aspect of care. And then you also have the total opposite end of the spectrum where you have a hospice client there in the last couple months of their life and you're dealing with such high emotions from all the different members of their family Not all of them. They see everything the same way, so you really have to adjust each situation based on what their needs are at that particular time. So the first thing we do when you call is try to get an idea of what you need and what road to take from there, and then the next step would be to set up in-home consultation.
Speaker 1:We do a free intake and assessment. We go into the home, We'll talk to you guys, get to know all the different family members and that's really when we see the personalities come out and so we develop an idea of what is the best fit for their caregiver and how to proceed with that care. And we'll take a look, get a lay of the land, see if there's any dangerous situations. Are there trip hazards? Are there issues in the bathroom that maybe need to be fixed? Do we need to put up handrails? Do we need to put up ramps? What type of medical equipment we need in there?
Speaker 1:I try to do that ahead of time because I want them to have coir lifts and ramps and the rugs rolled up and everything to make it a safe environment, especially if they're transitioning out of the hospital to their home. We want to make sure that everything is in place. Two-week span of returning home from the hospital or the rehab the highest risk for something to happen. So I really stress, I want to do that intake. I like to do the intake in the hospital before they're even discharged. That way the caregivers can meet the clients. We can get the directors in the homes, to make sure the homes are safe before they get there and the ideal situation is to have it already set up and then get that care in place so there's no gap in care between leaving the facility and getting home and then to make sure all the proper equipment is in place, like a Hoyer lift or walkers, bedside commodes, anything they may need. Like I said, every situation is so different we truly tailor every service plan to their individual needs is so different.
Speaker 2:We truly tailor every service plan to their individual needs. That's great to hear. I know that coming home from the hospital it's just a. If you've ever been in the hospital for any length of time, it's always a moment of getting home and everything's different and you don't have a nurse with you 24-7. You can just call on the call light. And if you've been in the hospital for a while for maybe physical rehab after a hip or hip replacement or a stroke, it's getting used to that and even though it's your home and it feels great, it's still a new environment altogether. So it's great to hear you guys are really good at this, because the organization and getting everything in place before that's really the key to keep someone safe. It's really rough.
Speaker 1:The bed's a different height and the water jug's not right next to you anymore and things need to be managed a little bit, and you really need to be proactive in making sure that everything's set up correctly and there's no fall hazards, because that's really one of your number one reasons for a readmission, and that's just something that just causes so much more pain, so much more heartache, so much more financial burden. It's all around. If you can minimize any readmission to a facility after being discharged, it's a win-win for everyone across the board. So being proactive is key in achieving that?
Speaker 2:That's great to hear you say that that's one of the most challenging times. Is that coming home from the? Yeah, that's great to hear you say that that's one of the most challenging times. Is that coming home from the hospital? So that's awesome, and I know that you service folks for any need, like you said, companionship, personal care issues, whatever it may be. So how fast can you guys get care set up? Let's say, somebody calls today and they're already at home.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Because of our size, we can actually get care set up within 24 hours. We have nine times out of 10, 9.9 times out of 10, we can get it set up within 24 hours. Every now and then there's that outlying situation where someone lives really far out and you have a little bit more of a challenge. But we can almost always get someone set up immediately. And I think that's because we cover so much territory and we have such a large caregiver base to pull from and we're constantly hiring and training and investing in that time with the caregivers to develop them. They're pretty dedicated to working with us.
Speaker 1:So if we call them and we say, hey, we have someone being discharged from the hospital this afternoon, is there any way you can get out there and just get them started while we get everything set up and permanent in place. And we have such good relationships with the caregivers in that sense that they're always they're really pretty willing to jump and help us out whenever we need. And then, having a staff in each office, because of our size we're able to have a pretty large staff for home care at least large staff and they're also invested in the care. We always have someone on call, we always have someone who can go out on a moment's notice, so that helps a lot too. That's probably one of our main reasons we can start people so quick is because of that staff base that we have and how willing they are to jump and help out.
Speaker 2:That's great and that backup plan is something I don't want to miss when you hire. I think folks don't understand that when you hire an agency it comes with a good backup plan.
Speaker 1:It does. It comes with a good backup plan. But you also have well-vetted caregivers. We invest in not only statewide background checks but we do nationwide background checks and we make sure that there's no felonies or anything outstanding. That not if you're getting a private caregiver. You're not. Most people aren't going to do that Now, granted, I do work with private caregivers.
Speaker 1:I think they there's some wonderful ones out there they can only do so much and so having an agency to work with that caregiver or to have a really good backup plan in the event something happens is so important because most people can't go without that care, especially if you have families living in different states and they're all alone.
Speaker 1:That's a safety issue. So you want to make sure everyone's safe. So having that backup caregiver plan put in place then you also have the staff backup if the backup falls through. So you have backup to your backup and then everyone's well-trained, everyone's vetted, that they've had their background checks, they've done all the mandatory hands-on training and the state required training. Because we're a licensed agency, we have to follow certain rules, but we've invested in technology and programs to put in place to actually go beyond the base regulations. So we do feel our caregivers are trained definitely to a higher level in the competition and that's something that we take a lot of pride in and from the start of this business we really invested a lot of time and energy into developing those programs.
Speaker 2:I think the training aspect of this is amazing. You guys do such a good job. A lot of agencies you hope that folks have been trained on things, but for you to have that hands-on training and to provide that for caregivers is great, Because I think everyone appreciates that all the way around, Especially things that get complicated, like using a Hoyer lift. We've never used one. It looks like a crazy mechanical device but it actually is really great for folks that need it. So that hands-on training is really nice.
Speaker 1:And we'll go in and we see that if there's a safety issue and we say, okay, you don't have that Hoyer lift, or they're not trained in that, we make sure that we speak to the family and communicate that, hey, if we don't get this in place, this is a safety issue, someone could get hurt. Even the caregiver could get hurt. So we want to make sure it's safe for everybody involved. So training everybody on these different pieces of equipment is a huge part of our training process. We want everybody to know what they're doing. That way we want to minimize any possibility of anything happening.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, absolutely those things. It's really easy. I can tell you from being a nurse it's really easy to mess up your back. Whether you're a caregiver trained or not family caregivers it's easy to not exactly do things the right way. So I'm glad you guys take that into consideration too.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. We want the caregivers to be taken well care of so they can take good care of their clients. It all falls together.
Speaker 2:So what is something else that you might want to talk about that we haven't covered, about BrightCare, home Care, some of the differences between you all and your competitors. Anything else that you might want to mention, first of all?
Speaker 1:we are not a franchise, so we don't have a lot of the restrictions that a franchise may have and we have continuous care throughout South Louisiana, whereas if you have a franchise in one area it's likely owned by somebody else in a different area and they don't share caregivers and they don't communicate about care needs for people that may overlap into different cities. People that may overlap into different cities, because we do have a lot of clients that will go from Lafayette to New Orleans or to the North Shore and it's good to be able to have that consistent care and be able to communicate with everybody that way. The other thing is we really do specialize in veterans care. We probably a large, probably 40% of our business would be veterans and we've invested heavily in making sure that we have all the processes and procedures in place to streamline the paperwork and what's needed to get them started.
Speaker 1:So I would definitely say, if you're thinking of what sets us apart our veteran care, our knowledge base of being able to jump through all the hoops to get people set up and some agencies or even locally owned agencies they everyone can provide care for aid and attendance, but not everybody can provide care for the community care network and we're credentialed to provide care for that community care network. So if you're a veteran, you really want to be with somebody who provides for both programs because those programs can overlap. So you're going to get you're going to maximize on the amount of care you can get by going with somebody who provides care for all VA programs, and we've been credentialed to provide care in that community care network. In addition to the agent attendance, my thing would be to make sure that whoever you use is able to service both lines of care for the VA, so you're not missing out on anything.
Speaker 2:I love that you guys have that right on your website and that you're a part of the CCN or the network, and you've been doing it now long enough that, like you said, there's probably a few hoops to jump through and you guys are really good at that.
Speaker 1:The other thing would be just something I chose to do when we started this agency is to work with people's budget and the different family needs, because I hate how expensive this is. I don't like sending that bill out at the end of the week. I really like to do what I can to work with people's budgets and there's so many different creative ways we try. It's not a perfect system. Once we get your background and we meet with you and we get to know what insurance companies you have, do you have long-term care insurance? We work with all the long-term care insurance companies. We'll explore any avenue to help get you the care you need. Right now we're starting with a program, the guide program, which is fairly new, which is able to help actually Medicare clients, which is really rare because Medicare really won't pay for it, which a lot of people are surprised by that Medicaid will but Medicare won't, and in the few situations it's just such a challenge that most people won't even mess with it. But we actually recently started with the guide program and it's going to be interesting to see what happens there because they will actually take Medicare clients who have Alzheimer's or dementia. So I'm excited to see where that goes, and that's been recently put in place and we've gotten a lot of feedback because people really want that help. They need the help. So a break, if nothing else, absolutely.
Speaker 1:And the other thing that sets us apart would be probably technology. I just heavily invested in that when we established our agencies, just because I know that we have family members from all over the country and they need insight into what's going on. You don't want to be out of the loop when your mom goes into the hospital. You want to know what happened. So we have these family portals that everybody can log into. Everybody can see the care notes, everybody can see the billing, because we have a lot of grown siblings who split the bill between multiple children and then billing. A lot of people will bill long-term care insurance and then split the bill. So there's so many different billing aspects that it's nice to be able to access all that as a group in one place. So the technology we have in place, I would say, sets us apart from a lot of other people as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, obviously you guys have really tried to take this notion of home care and add as much value as you possibly can for budgets, technology, safety, and that's just really commendable, and so thank you, thank you for talking to me and for everybody out there who's going safety, and that's just really commendable, and so thank you, thank you for talking to me and for everybody out there who's going to see this and learn more about you guys, you've done a great job growing this agency we have as a group here on our team. We've loved watching you grow. It has been, even in the last year, an amazing amount of growth, and so I know you have some little cheerleaders behind you going.
Speaker 2:Oh no way she added another office or she added another. So we've definitely kept y'all busy on your toes as we keep expanding we just love seeing the success and the growth, and I know that you serve a lot of underserved areas, I'm sure of that. You're in a lot of rural areas. You've just done an amazing job for the folks that you service and we just are behind you cheering you on. So keep going.
Speaker 1:We plan on it. We'll be open for a while.
Speaker 2:Thank, you so much, Jamie, and I appreciate you talking to us Absolutely.
Speaker 1:You have a good day.
