I hope you’re all having a good summer - it’s hard to believe it’s already coming to a close! It has been a busy time for the operations and product teams at Honor and I’m excited to share a few updates on our progress in improving service quality on the Care Platform. 

We continue to focus on building technology and testing new ways of working with a goal to positively impact some of the biggest challenges (defects) in our ability to consistently deliver high quality care to our clients. As a reminder, last year we evaluated what factors are most likely to lead to churn in a client’s first 30 days. Our first iteration identified 3 defects:

  • Consistency - the number of Care Pros on a client’s schedule relative to their total hours.

  • Visit cancellations - visits canceled due to staffing reasons (inferred, includes a client “declining care” when no Care Pro or a new Care Pro was assigned).

  • Unique Honor Reps (UHR) - the number of unique individuals a client or their Account Owner interacts with via phone or text.

After developing new metrics for evaluating Care Pro performance, we were able to quantify the impact from a 4th defect - Care Pro Performance, which considers both Care Pro reliability and in-home care quality. The relative impact of each of these defects on the likelihood of client churn is captured in the graphic below. As you’d expect, these factors compound with one another, resulting in a 4x likelihood of churn for the client who experiences all 4 defects. Our goal is to maximize the number of clients who experience zero defects – or the “perfect experience.” 

Armed with key insights and lessons learned from some of the pilots we have shared about previously, we are excited to have implemented a number of these new ways of working in all Care Platform markets over the past few months. 

  • Market Planner: smart scheduling for greater consistency

    Market Planner uses an algorithm to create schedules for an entire market at once, optimizing for Care Pro consistency. Leveraging Market Planner, the average excess Care Pro score in July was 1.6, compared to 1.8 in January and 1.9 in July 2023. By the end of this year, we expect to improve this score to 1.5 (better than the majority of traditional network owners) and our ongoing goal is to strive towards ~1, which is our 'best-in-class' benchmark (achievable, but rarely attained -- and never attained at meaningful scale.  At least-- not yet!). We will continue to iterate on this functionality based on learnings, including v2 which is already in development and scheduled to be launched this fall.

  • Client coordination: reducing interactions with unique Honor reps for an improved client experience 

    Client coordination puts our Client Managers at the center of the client’s relationship, reducing the number of contacts clients interact with during weekday business hours, prioritizing new and at-risk clients, and improving our coordination with the local office to be more proactive in our client engagement. Since rolling out client coordination, Unique Honor reps for new clients has improved on average across all markets by 20. As importantly, we’ve received encouraging feedback from you and many of our clients that this new way of working is having a positive impact on their experience.  

  • Care Pro performance: standardizing metrics for reliability and quality
    Late last year we introduced the Care Pro Reliability score, which evaluates Care Pros on attendance and timeliness relative to their schedule and tenure. Since introducing this metric and activating swift performance management when Care Pros fall below an acceptable level, % of Start of Care (SOC) visits staffed with our “best” Care Pros (High Reliability and High Care Quality) has increased by 15% since January, and the overall 72-hour call-off rate has decreased by almost 40%. We continue to focus on elevating the quality of our workforce, and have since introduced a second standardized performance metric focused on in-home quality. The Care Quality score captures information such as a Care Pro’s client relationship history, owner and client feedback, and client favorites, and enables us to systematically evaluate and manage our workforce on both reliability and care quality. 

I want to note that this update focuses specifically on recent progress impacting 3 of the 4 care quality defects represented in the graphic above. While not specifically highlighted in this update, visit cancellations continues to be an area of focus for our operations team and benefits from improvements to the other defects (for example, a reduction in call-off rates by our Care Pros should lead to a reduction in visit cancellations). We look forward to sharing more information about our work in this area in future updates. 

For those who enjoy taking a deeper dive into the details of these initiatives, keep reading! 

What’s next?

Our primary focus for the remainder of the year will be on further developing our Care Pro workforce through improved hiring, onboarding and training, engagement, and performance management. We have recently kicked off two pilots in support of this focus: 

  • Care Pro quality: We launched a pilot in Pittsburgh focused on the new hire experience, specifically from orientation through the first 90 days. By emphasizing high-touch engagement and proactive performance management, the goal of the pilot is to increase the number of new Care Pros that are high performing, working consistent schedules, and retained at 90 days. While there’s still more to learn, initial observations from this pilot are positive! 

  • Care Pro hiring: While we’ve seen improvements in terms of hiring volume and velocity over the past year, we are still not universally meeting our hiring goals for either volume or quality. To address this, we have invested additional product and operational resources focused on Care Pro hiring. This is our number one area of focus for Q3, and you can expect to hear much more about it in the coming months. 

Additionally and as noted above, we will introduce a number of enhancements to Market Planner and Client Coordination as we continue to learn from these recent launches. 

I look forward to seeing all of you and sharing more about each of these initiatives and the latest progress on our most recent pilots at LINK September 25-26  (quick reminder to register if you haven’t yet done so!). Enjoy the rest of your summer.

Best,
Rebekah