Lean Care Management

Kelley [00:00:00]:
Hello and welcome to caring without a care. This is going to be such an exciting conversation that we have here today and we’re talking all about the long term care industry. I’m here with Anand Chaturvedi. Anan, welcome. I know you have so much expertise and experience in this field and I know you’re ready to share just such a wealth of knowledge with our listeners today.

Anand [00:00:24]:
Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Kelley [00:00:26]:
Yes. Now, Anand, I know you’re an accomplished health technology strategist and you’re really passionate about empowering Medicaid entrepreneurs with hands on strategic transformation so that they can grow their business and overall just make a bigger impact. Right? You’re the CEO of Carrify AI and if I’m not mistaken, in Carify, you really focus on providing solutions that leverage AI to really help people expand access to long term care, to grow their businesses, to provide better support. And I know that you follow and you are right, in the long term care industry. I’d love to start off by asking you, what have you been seeing within the industry? You’ve been in the industry for quite some time. What have you been seeing in terms of signs and evidence that this is a growing and expanding industry?

Anand [00:01:22]:
Well, Kelly, thanks for the good introduction and I appreciate that. Just as a background, before I started carify, I spent nearly a decade working at a company called Bobcat where we take pride in introducing the concept of entrepreneurship around the world. So I have been working with entrepreneurs of all stripes around the world for nearly two decades now. The first ten years were in a different industry, construction industry. And the last ten years I’ve been working with healthcare entrepreneurs primarily in the long term industry. In the long term care. In the past five years, especially after COVID era, we are finding a lot of people availing long term care through Medicaid. Now as the economy is growing, unfortunately the benefits are not well spread out.

Anand [00:02:13]:
So you also have some people who are needing more financial assistance and as people are aging, the need for long term care for vulnerability population is also increasing day by day.

Kelley [00:02:27]:
And so what do you think the challenges are? I know you speak to just there’s a lot of different types of people that are coming into long term care, people using their nursing backgrounds, coming into this kind of new type of business. We’ve got a lot of family owned businesses that have been in the long term care industry for quite some time and maybe they’re ready to grow and scale. And what would you say across the board are some of the challenges that people in the industry that are trying to grow a business face today.

Anand [00:03:02]:
That’s a great question. As you said in the beginning of your question, there are a lot of people who are coming from the nursing background because they have valid intentions. They also want to become entrepreneur, have the financial independence to pursue their dreams. But there are several structural problems. The first one is, although long term care is a frontier of health care, they often don’t get recognition as a care provider in this particular vertical. The second challenge is related to the compliance and the regulatory things, because this is an industry which is heavily regulated, being reimbursed by Medicaid and CFMs, and not many providers are aware of those. Then you have some structural issues which are related to not only the long term care industry for Medicaid, but around everybody, every pair, which are lack of know. We have most of the providers who are staff.

Anand [00:03:57]:
Their growth is actually restricted by not being able to find the right CNAs for PCAs. And of course, there are always financial challenges because the reimbursement rates for long term care are not what you would expect for the amount of services that these providers are providing.

Kelley [00:04:17]:
Now, you mentioned a word there that kind of caught my attention. Right. And that word was being an entrepreneur. And so it sounds like within this industry, right. There’s a lot of industry related challenges that people are facing. You mentioned not being recognized as a healthcare provider. You mentioned issues with compliance and regulations that I would imagine are probably challenging to stay on top of. Right.

Kelley [00:04:44]:
With all of the changes and things like that. You mentioned lack of staffing. And I know, and you know, as an entrepreneur, those are some of those industry related challenges. But just being an entrepreneur comes with its own challenges. Right. How do you run a business? How do you get clients? Right. All of those things that we know go into entrepreneurship can also be very challenging. So it sounds like there’s a lot of things that people are faced with when it comes to growing their business, just simple business growth strategies and issues and then industry specific regulations and policies that they need to be aware of.

Kelley [00:05:25]:
So in your expertise and with your knowledge, would you say that there’s one key piece that people should either pay attention to or learn or understand when it comes to building their businesses that maybe would encompass a lot of these challenges that you’re speaking about?

Anand [00:05:44]:
I have good news, Kelly. Yes, there is. There is a new concept of lean care management that would be very useful for providers in this situation. Now, just to put this in context, many years ago this was first introduced in manufacturing sector because people had the same issues some decades ago. They were not able to find the right employees, and manufacturing productivity was dipping and so on and so forth. And Lean was introduced in that context. Now, several years later, this is the time for us to reinvent the principles of lean and apply them in this industry. And I have seen this work.

Anand [00:06:25]:
I have some good cases, studies, and you and I can talk about that in our conversations.

Kelley [00:06:32]:
So when it comes to lean care management, right, and I imagine, correct me if I’m wrong, I imagine there’s a lot of people that are out there in the industry that maybe haven’t even heard about this concept of lean care management. Would you say that’s accurate?

Anand [00:06:48]:
I think that would be very accurate.

Kelley [00:06:50]:
Okay, so let’s just start off by saying, why do people want to listen to this conversation? Right? We’ve already addressed some just business related challenges, industry related challenges that a lot of people in long term care are probably experiencing. So how can this concept of lean care management solve some of those problems?

Anand [00:07:12]:
Well, it’s very simple, Kelly, because as a provider, and this speaks, the question you need to ask yourself is you cannot solve world’s problem. You cannot solve the structured problems which are beyond your control. But what every provider can do in her business is to change her process, her approach, her training of her employees, managing her business from financial and marketing standpoint. And that is all about lean. Lean is not about trying to change the things that you have no control over, but try to understand and improve on things that you have control over. And that’s a one sentence definition of lean care management.

Kelley [00:07:55]:
And it sounds like, I feel like that would be a really refreshing concept, because in a world where there is probably, like you said, a lot of things that are evolving and ever changing that you don’t have control of. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I feel like one of the biggest pain points for people in this business is trying to decide where do I focus? Right? Is that true?

Anand [00:08:20]:
I think it’s very true. And Kelly, you are an entrepreneur, and you have worked with so many entrepreneurs. You know, every time the single piece of advice, the first piece of advice is find your biggest pain point and understand why the pain point exists, what is causing this pain? And if you start to understand the pain, then, of course, you can find ways to address that. Lean care management has four components, people, process, technology and training. Very simply, you have to identify whether you have the right people in the jobs that you want them to be. Do you give them processes that they can adhere to? Do they have the tools and technology which can help them in doing their job and not bother them, not confuse them. And last piece is, do we have continuous training not only for our employees, but also for us as entrepreneurs? Because world is changing around us. Every single day you hear about so many different technology things.

Anand [00:09:22]:
The new technology comes in your phones and so on. It’s very hard to stay focused. It’s very easy to get distracted. And lean care management is all about looking at your business from these four perspectives. People, process, technology and trading, and you will find that your business is going to have a positive impact very, very quickly.

Kelley [00:09:50]:
Well, thank you so much. Thank you for introducing that concept of lean care management to us. Again. I know we said that there’s probably a lot of people listening in where this is the first time that they’re hearing about it. And I would imagine that they’re feeling very happy, as you said, or relieved, right. To know that there is a concept out there that’s going to allow them to focus on some of those pain points in their business so that they can see growth and they can ultimately just generate a greater impact on their clients.

Anand [00:10:21]:
Yes, and I would be very excited to share whatever I know. And of course, we’ll also invite our listeners, our viewers, to share their stories, send their questions, and Callie, let’s continue this conversation.

Kelley [00:10:34]:
Yes. Thank you so much. And there we have it, everybody. Right? Our introduction to lean care management, a concept that potentially is going to solve a lot of the pain points that you may currently be feeling in your business. We’re here with Anand Chaturvedi, and we really want you to be able to follow our podcast, subscribe. If you know other people in this industry, make sure that you share, because as Anand said, this is the first of many conversations. Thanks for joining in.