Kelley [00:00:00]:
Hello, everybody, and welcome back to caring without a care. I’m here today with Anand and we are continuing our conversation about lean care. Anand, welcome.
Anand [00:00:11]:
Thank you, Katie. Thanks for having me.
Kelley [00:00:13]:
I’m really excited for this conversation today because I know we’ve been talking about the four principles of lean care, which are people, process, technology and training. And we’ve had some time to talk about the first three components, people, process and technology. But we’re here today to talk specifically about the training component. And I’d love for you to share with us why is training important when it comes to lean care?
Anand [00:00:40]:
So, Kelly, when people think of training in long term care, most of them naturally gravitate towards the mandatory training, which is for the caregivers now in the industry par lens. Some people call it on the job training, some people call that mandatory trainings and so on, so forth. But the limitation of that approach is that that puts training in a very short focus only for those people who are in the front line providing care to the people that we are serving. But training in long term care should be more comprehensive. It should cover not only the providers but also the office admin staff, the managerial staff, as well as the owner themselves. And there are three or four reasons for that. One is the industry is changing, and this is not the same industry that it was ten years ago. Secondly, we need to make sure that we are developing a lean thinking because remember, training is a part of lean care framework.
Anand [00:01:41]:
I would also encourage that these providers think beyond the classroom because this is not, again, a classroom thinking. We are not talking about people who have certain degrees or diplomas. So how can we have culture of learning within the organization? And that’s also where training comes into play. So I know this is kind of a long answer, but I deeply feel about it and I’m very passionate about training, especially in the long term care.
Kelley [00:02:10]:
Now, you mentioned a couple of different components, which I’d love for you to expand on. You talked about the concept of mandatory training, and I know in care management there’s probably a lot of different types of mandatory trainings that people need to go through in the industry. But you said not to focus just on those mandatory trainings. Right. To think about other types of trainings that people might need and most importantly, to think about your entire staff. So can you give us some examples of what trainings might look like outside of the typical mandatory training?
Anand [00:02:43]:
Of course. I would be happy to. So the state I am in right now in Georgia, we have 8 hours of mandatory training for the caregivers that basically means that if the employers choose that their caregivers have completed 8 hours of any topic of the employers choosing of training, that is sufficient from a compliance perspective, which is, of course one approach. But then think about this. Every individual is unique. You know, some people have unique long term health situations, dementia, Alzheimer’s. Some people also have, combined with those, some lifestyle ailments, diabetes, type one, type two, high blood pressure, chronic heart failures, and so on, so forth, then you have people who have mobility restrictions. Now think about that.
Anand [00:03:30]:
That if one caregiver has to serve more than one individual with different needs, perhaps a copycatar approach to training would not help. That’s just in the frontline. Workers now think about the individuals who are working in the office, staff like your schedulers, even the referral coordinators, billers. There is no industry standard curriculum to train these individuals who are taking these very vital functions for long term care. How do you train them? How do you make sure that their processes are customer or patient focused? And now you can start thinking about the scope of this opportunity.
Kelley [00:04:16]:
I can see why that would be important, because I think part of what you’re talking about here, and you mentioned billing, for example. Not only is it important to have the skill of billing, but I know that there’s a lot of soft skills that when I read so much around the workforce today, and there seems to be a very common conversation around a lack of people having those soft skills. So like the ability to communicate, the ability to provide customer service, I can see how in the care management industry, some of these soft skills might be important as well. Is that true?
Anand [00:04:52]:
Absolutely. And again, I’m very proud of our young generations, having seen two teenagers in our own household. But as you also see, most of the younger generation employees are more focused towards using digital devices like the mobile phone. So when it comes to showing empathy on telephonic conversation, voice conversation, sometimes you miss that element because they have not been trained or being exposed to those situations where they were around other people in real time. And of course, the situations of COVID with the lockdowns have, have not helped. So how do you teach individuals to put themselves in someone’s shoes? So when you hear a mother or a daughter or a daughter in law who is going through some tough time and having some issues in addressing whether the billing or making a payment, how do you handle those? What sort of words do you use, what sort of demeanor? Doing all those are very important and they need to be trained.
Kelley [00:05:58]:
I can see how looking at those different dynamics is not only going to make your staff, right, your entire company and business be more confident, but it’s also going to ensure that they have those well rounded skills that I think are needed in the industry.
Anand [00:06:12]:
Indeed.
Kelley [00:06:12]:
Yeah. Well, thank you so much for sharing that fourth and most important, I think, component around training. You know that I’m an educator at heart, and I really think education is a big piece of not only up leveling, right. Your, your staff and the people that you work with, but also empowering them with confidence because they have the skills that they need to be successful in the industry. And so thank you, everyone. Thank you, Anand, for talking to us about the importance of training and what training has to do when it comes to lean care. Make sure you’re subscribing to the caring without a care podcast so that you can get the latest updates and our new episodes.
