When you go to sleep at night, you’re probably thinking about your supply. Caregivers to match with clients, that is.
Caregiver registry owners and team members interface with caregivers a lot day-to-day. Bearing that in mind, it’s easy to feel information overload as it relates to maintaining compliance with caregivers as contractors.
We’re here to demystify and enlighten you on how your work can get done with ease, and in a compliant way.
Caregiver Rate Negotiation
As a business owner, the desire to be in control fires on all cylinders. In this case, though, don’t do it. Rate negotiation is between your caregivers and their respective clients.
Why is this the case? According to Field Assistance Bulletin No. 2018-4 shares specific dos and don’ts in the home care industry for independent contractors.
The Wage and Hour Division has specified that control over a caregiver’s work, like setting the rate of pay, can put you at risk for misclassification. Your caregivers would be employees in the DOL’s eyes. If you’re a history buff, you can see the original 1975 Opinion Letter that set the tone on independent contractors in the home care space.
“As a caregiver registry, you’re in the business of matchmaking, rather than the business of caregiving. This distinction can be helpful as you position your business model in the market,” Julio Barea, Head of Sales at Ally.
Your role as the home care registry, is referring caregivers to clients and that is the extent of your relationship. And that extends to specific tasks like rate negotiation.
Caregiver Autonomy
Where a home care registry differs from a home care agency, is that home care agencies assign caregivers with a schedule of clients that they hand-pick. Conversely, with home care registries, caregivers set their own rates while also picking and choosing who they work with and when.
This is an appealing arrangement to caregivers because scheduling is the top 3 pain point that caregivers experience. Here’s a quote from a caregiver that Home Care Pulse shared in that article: “If they hire you for full time, then they need to accommodate that. I left another job because they said they would give me a guaranteed 40 hours, but I haven’t been getting that.”
From a compliance standpoint, this pain point for W2 caregivers comes in handy for your contractors, and subsequently, your business model.
Home care registry software programs, like Ally, are helpful tools in displaying shifts available to caregivers so they can pick and choose who they want to work with. Caregiver and client face sheets make it easy to position your registry as a referral-based business model in a HIPAA-compliant manner.
It also makes your caregivers’ lives easier, knowing who they will see before they show up to the house. And vice versa for clients.
EVV has been implemented nationwide, and this geofencing enables caregivers to clock in when they are ready to start work, instead of being bound to a schedule that you create. And that’s a no-no from compliance.
Caregiver onboarding on their terms
When you have an interested caregiver who would like to find work through your registry, it’s best to keep them around for as long as they’d like. It’s also a huge pain point in the home care agency world, getting caregivers past the 90-day mark is difficult, and it starts all the way back to on-boarding.
Home care agencies often don’t have an onboarding program, or if they do have one, it’s often disorganized.
The issue with onboarding for registries, though, is that you don’t want it to be confused or misconstrued as training. Instead, putting the onboarding onus on potential caregivers makes it easier to differentiate them as contractors rather than employees.
Enabling caregivers to enter their own demographic data, choose their pay rates with each client, and set their availability gives them total control over their work. Instead of you, making compliance a breeze.
Registry compliance made simpler
The caregiver registry space is no stranger to compliance and regulations, and we’re here to make it easy.
Moreover, compliance means:
- Ensuring that caregivers set and negotiate rates with clients directly
- Giving caregivers autonomy over their availability and schedule
- Having caregivers onboard themselves and input their information on their own terms
Though compliance may already be top-of-mind for you, if you have any questions or concerns about checking the boxes for your state and local area, be sure to connect with our partner, Polsinelli. We recently did a webinar with them on running multiple models of care, check out the recording here for more.
