Hear how updated credentialing is helping senior living communities mitigate risk for team members and residents from Charles Mann, Founder and CSO at Accushield. Listen as Josh and Lucas discuss with Charles how creating an alliance to make vendor partnerships better for senior living operators can improve the industry as a whole. 

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This episode was recorded at the NIC Fall Conference.

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Produced by Solinity Marketing.

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‍Become a sponsor of Bridge the Gap.

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Listen to more episodes here.

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Intro

Welcome to season eight of Bridge the Gap, a podcast dedicated to informing, educating, and influencing the future of housing and services for seniors. The BTG network is powered by sponsors Accushield, Align, NIC MAP Vision, Procare HR, Sage, Hamilton Capital, ServiceMaster, The Bridge Group Construction, and Solinty and produced by Solinity Marketing.

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00:42 - 00:53

Lucas McCurdy

Welcome to Bridge the Gap podcast, the senior Living podcast with Josh and Lucas here with a great partner here in Washington, DC at the NIC Fall Conference. Welcome back to the program, Charles Mann. Welcome.

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00:53 - 00:54

Charles Mann

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

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00:54 - 01:33

Lucas McCurdy

Our listeners know you very well. Now, you can go without an introduction. But, Accushield has been in the senior housing marketplace as a game changer for many years now. We've talked about safety. We've talked about just this tracking and getting rid of it. It's a paper, sign-in book that half the people don't even fill out when they walk into the buildings.

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And so many of the communities that have been utilizing your technology today, though, we're going to go into credentialing. Right. And so walk us through why that's important. And also, I mean, this is not a new thing. No, but it's a very important thing.

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01:34 - 03:39

Charles Mann

So credentialing is a part of the fabric of our company dating back to the early days in 2011 when Accushield was designed specifically to check in home health, hospice, home care, and really specific self-employed private caregivers, and not only checking them in but also understanding who does that self-employed private caregiver does that home health agency and home care agency and hospice provider do they meet the standard level of requirements that communities enforce and require?

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And those might be clear from the background. Proper immunizations, waiver signs, whatever credential it is a drug test. And so that's the way we started. We've always had that as part of our system. But really over the last six months to a year, has this started to gain momentum as risk management becomes more and more part of the conversation as to who's in the community, who's hands-on with my residents, and who are them.

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And so that's something that's sort of changed. We were excited about it because we believe that communities need to know that a self-employed private caregiver has a clear from the family and self-employed private caregivers. Why? While they add a lot of value, they also add a significant amount of risk. What we do is we try to bring those individuals together. We make sure that they meet the requirements. Right. There are very low-cost insurance programs so they play on the same playing field as this one. Here. So at the end of the day, we focus on that segment of care. It's not a staff member, right? It's coming in from the outside. I mean most medical care coming into senior living today is from someone other than the staff in that community. And so what we want to do is create transparency and help operators know who's caring for their loved ones.

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03:39 - 05:32

Josh Crisp

You guys have been into this for a long time. Probably. I would assume, the complexity of our industry has greatly grown, as well as the industry has grown since you guys originally put this out there. And it was a thought-leading piece, I think a great read and vision for you guys knowing where the industry was going.

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But also we've always needed a solution. But it's become glaringly more important as risk has risen as our industry has risen. But I will say, I've talked to tons of operators. I'm guilty at times when the tyranny of the urgent and the administrative burden and all the things that are going on. Oftentimes we can find ourselves as operators thinking, I'm so focused on just who my team is, mitigating those risks, giving them the support tools.

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So if I have to think of, oh my gosh, I got a credential. All these other people, oh my gosh, that's too big of a burden for me to think about. But you guys have the solution for that. But help me understand. Like how do you make that easy? Because credentialing sounds like a sterile word.

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We understand the word, but the process can be cumbersome. Yeah. So you guys make that easy. So for an operator that's looking like, well, how do I do that? What does that look like? What is also going to limit who I can have in my building? Well, that's part of the equation.

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But you guys have had some data around things that you've prevented from being in the. Can you put some data points out because you started spouting off some things to me before we hit record that I thought, whoa, that's a really big number. And you guys are, stopping that from happening so that I can't even imagine how many things actually, we may never know a product like that has prevented from actually bad things happening, but what are some of those stats you were out went?

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05:33 - 08:08

Charles Mann

Senior living operators don't have time to make sure that a self-employed private caregiver has a clear criminal background. We understand that. So what we do is it's very simple to use technology, right? If someone signs into the kiosk and registers as a self-employed private caregiver, there's a very easy process to identify that person. If they're with a home health company, it's a very easy process to identify the person and what company they're with or if they're self-employed. And then what Accushield does on our end is we reach out to them, right? We reach out to them on behalf of the community and share with them the process of going through the credentialing process. Once they do that, we upload their documents, verify they're in place, and provide a dashboard for communities to see that.

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And if someone has a felony conviction and we want the community to know that, it's up to them, then to first of all understand what that was and make the decision if they want that individual in their community hands-on with their residents, we stay out of it. So what we do is provide transparency as to the individuals that are coming in from the outside and let the communities make that decision.

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Right now, based on our credentialing communities, those who subscribe to this process, we're uncovering about two individuals per month with felony convictions going into communities. And when we do that, we let these communities know that, hey, this individual that is either scheduled to come in or they already have come in who they are, and again, let the community make the decision.

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And also, we work in such a way that if other communities were utilizing that individual right, that doesn't meet that standard level of requirement, then what we do is we pass that information then on to those other communities, allowing them the advantage of knowing who that person is. And so we think that's a big part of our safety and security message.

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And the data continues to be staggering. I mean, we have home care companies giving us credentials of the individuals going into communities, and they have a sort of an elderly individual on their criminal background. That's unacceptable. Not all national agencies, but some agencies and a lot more than you would expect here. And so we want to stop that. We want to mitigate that risk. And, again, part of our mission is say for senior living.

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08:08 - 09:40

Josh Crisp

Well, gosh, I can't imagine, like, not only the bad things that could potentially happen to some of the most vulnerable people that we care for in society. As our communities rise. But gosh, what a black eye. These are very few, thankfully. But it only takes one really bad situation to put a black eye not only on a community, on that entire organization but on our industry as a whole.

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And we've seen that through the years, through some bad press and unfortunate stories. This is just one thing I would imagine that there's a whole list of players out there that would love to be able to talk with the families and just look for an opportunity where the community has slipped up in one situation and that costs so much money, not to mention what happens to that resident family.\

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So credentialing is a huge thing in the industry. You guys have been at the forefront of that for a long time. You are collecting so many data points, Charles. I mean like what your team is doing. I can't imagine just the information storage that you have. What other things can you give us a teaser on the opportunities that you see ahead? I mean, we're here at NIC. There's actually a I don't know if you feel it. Everybody we've talked to, feels a positive buzz again in our industry, which has probably been lacking for a couple of years now. What are some of the biggest opportunities you see for our industry from all the data points that

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09:40 - 11:19

Charles Mann

Cascading, this is off of Accushield and credentialing and I think and we're working on this with a few other providers, serving would be one to create a vendor alliance. And that vendor alliance is all about the information. Integration is on the minds of everyone. Some individuals throw it around and some people take it very seriously. And I think as a vendor, we can only do so much. And I think vendors should come together and figure out how we work together and innovate.

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So it can be more of a plug and play solution because, if you want to do an integration with three vendors here in three communities, it just takes a lot of time. And I think we need a better solution to help the vendor population as we need closer to, resident-centered care, value-based care we need vendors are going to need to integrate not only with each other but also with communities and to have a platform to do that and sort of an alliance to do that too.

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If you're a part of this alliance, then your operators know that you're willing and you're able and you maybe already have these integrations, so the operators aren't looking at 50 different dashboards I went through, and I counted the number of dashboards at one point and 55. So operators don't have the time to do that. And so vendors and partners, which is an earned name, have to figure out how we work together, more seamlessly so that we can create better outcomes for our residents.

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11:19 - 12:43

Josh Crisp

Well, that's an exciting conversation. And even from the operators' perspective, because I can tell you, one of the most brain-draining, time-draining things is I think we all can recognize them as operators when they're big or small, like it's pretty easy to see the glaring challenges, right? It's like, yeah, those aren't hiding from you. They're right there in front of you.

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But to then say, okay, well, how am I going to solve this? I can't do this. Create software in-house and manage all this. So then you go down the vetting and there's all these little silos and trying to figure out where the nuances and the overlaps between these are. What are the value propositions? Are these people equipped and capable to deliver on what they sell? Through the whole vetting process, I can tell you when your primary role at the community level is in a region that's supporting the operations or should be supporting the operations for everybody to be more effective, you have to be highly effective in your role at your assignment. And so to expect at a community or regional level to become technology or solution or vendor partner vetting, solutions for your community, I mean, it's taking away from, I believe, the things that we should be focused on at the community level, which is best in class care. And so I think that's very insightful because you're a thought leader and a pioneer in the industry, I now fully expect to have a follow-up conversation with you about,

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12:43 - 13:26

Charles Mann

Yeah, we'll be accountable to that because it's, it's a lot of it's a great idea on paper. And then it's about execution. But here my hope is that operators seemingly are willing now to start conversations working amongst themselves and, serving as an example, how they're bringing sort of the operational side of the business together.

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And individuals are not looking at each other just as competition with how can we be better? Yeah, vendors need to be the same thing. Sure. And so I'm raising my hand and a number of other vendors to try and change that. Yeah. So that's creating the Alliance and that's the hope for that. I want to help our industry in that way.

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13:26 - 14:06

Josh Crisp

Well, I know Lucas nine Bridge the Gap would be your biggest fans in that, we've been saying and part of the reasons why we were formed is to figure out, gosh, how do we change perception? Because if you're in the industry, how great these people in the industry don't always know. We also know we don't capture that much of the age-income-qualified group that's out there. And so that means we have a lot of work to do to be as good as we all are, as good as we all think we are, there's a lot of room for improvement. So, Bridge the Gap will be cheering you guys along. And we hope to continue to invite you back on your progress and how you guys developed Lucas. It's always a fun conversation.

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14:06 - 15:10

Lucas McCurdy

It is. And I'm going to do a final round-out question on the culture at Accushield. I love seeing Accushield post in your post in particular, where it's a picture of your team meetings and, one of the things that bridge the gaps the audience is emerging is people that are completely outside the industry.

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They're dipping in and listening, and they're trying to get a feel of what the senior housing industry is like. Is this a place where I can come to work? And yes, operators are always looking for great talent. But you talk about the vendor alliance. There are great career opportunities to come and sell a service, sell a product to a market that can actually provide something that helps the older adults thrive and keep them safe and keep them loved and all the things that they need. And Accushield based out of Atlanta, I think, y'all have created a great culture for a tech company. How have you been able to create that culture? And what? I don't know, what's the feedback from inside?

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15:10 - 16:42

Charles Mann

The individuals that we have in our company value one another. I'll brag on my business partner, Allen, Allen is an incredible leader, and he loves people well. And that trickles down to the rest of our company. and so he's a big part of our culture, and the other leaders in different positions and senior living is fun.

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It is a vendor on the vendor partner side. It's like the people here, generally speaking, if you're on the operational side, which makes them really nice a lot of the times, honestly, from a sales perspective, sometimes being nice is not always the best because like you just get ghosted, whereas in other industries sometimes they're just not and they just tell you that to go away.

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And I think the amount of opportunity moving forward is incredible. And I think there should be more and more people that need to look at senior living if that. If you're looking for a career. But as far as, again, to get back to sort of the culture of accuracy, takes work and it's like anything else, like a good marriage takes work. And so, sometimes some of the things that we do, you're like, wow, I'm tired of this, but this is great. And you get there and it's like, wow, I'm so glad we did that because I had an opportunity to talk to this person. So anyways, it's harder. But again, Allen Barnes is a big part of that.

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16:42 - 16:57

Lucas McCurdy

We know that you have been here too. Really great company, Accushield, and great partners. And our listeners know we cannot bring all of this educational content without the help of our partners. And Accushield has been a long-term partner of ours. So we'll connect, as we always do in every show.

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You can scroll down in your notes on your podcast player, and click that link to Accushield. We will also connect with Charles. Charles is very active on LinkedIn. Great person to follow if you want good content, surrounding the industry, just like Bridge the Gap. And so, you can get a btgvoice.com and you can type in Accushield and you can go back and listen to all the different topics related to safety, the love meter projects for volunteers and credentialing and so many more. Right there on btgvoice.com. And then connect with us on LinkedIn. We want to hear your comments on this. Thanks for listening to another great episode of Bridge the Gap.

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Outro

Thanks for listening to Bridge the Gap podcast with Josh and Lucas. Connect with the BTG network team and use your voice to influence the industry by connecting with us at  btgvoice.com.

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