Miriam Allred (00:10)
Hey everyone, welcome back to the Home Care Strategy Lab. I'm your host, Miriam Allred. Hope everyone's having a great week. It's great to be back with you. I'm super excited for today's episode. We've got Nick Provost, the Director of Client and Community Relations at Gratitude Home Care located in New Jersey. Nick, welcome to the lab.
Nick Provost (00:28)
Big fan. Thank you for having me. Big fan.
Miriam Allred (00:30)
Big fan, time to get you in the hot seat. You and I have just recently connected and I've been super impressed with you and love the passion and excitement that I've just gauged from you in a short period of time and also your story's incredible and what you're doing is awesome and so naturally wanted to have you on the show. So let's start with a good old fashioned introduction. I think most people listening probably don't know you. You're maybe a new face and a new voice to a lot of people.
But tell your story, talk about your background. How did you get into home care?
Nick Provost (01:01)
So ⁓ I was actually, home care was a family business. My grandmother in the 80s, part time she taught a home health aid class. And over the years, the classes got bigger and bigger and bigger. And my mother who was also a nurse recognized this and my father quit his job.
being a CPA and my mom left the local hospital and they created a home care company in 1984. Fast forward, my first job in home care was I was 17 years old. I just got my license and I was transporting home health aids from their home to the homes of our patients.
This was before Uber and Lyft. I don't miss those days at all, but you learn a lot. You learn a lot. And I grew up in a home with home health aides caring for my grandmother, my great grandmother. And after I graduated college, it was only natural to go into the family business. at 23 years old, I...
joined on and I was mostly in marketing and social media, which was getting really big. you know, I did a good amount of private pay business development. And then I kind of had to just get into operations. You know, I, were a Medicaid mostly agency, six locations throughout the state of New Jersey and.
We needed all hands on deck. at 25, I was managing the six locations and we were doing great. Then ⁓ my father got sick and we got a great offer. And I said, dad, everything's gonna be fine. You enjoy your retirement down the Jersey shore and trust me, he is. ⁓ So I've been navigating my way through the home care industry since then and ⁓ COVID hit, ⁓ fell out of love with the industry and I was managing a small home care company, not far from here. And a little over two years ago, I met the owner of Gratitude Home Care. Her name is Yela Maretik and
She had a smaller operation, family, homegrown business. was everything that I was used to. ⁓ you know, Yella is a visionary. She works hard. She does not cut corners. And we connected instantly. And I loved everything that she was doing and I loved her vision.
And when she asked me to come on to be basically, so it's director of client and community relations, it's business development. So when she asked me, had been a long time. I was used to speaking with families. did intakes, loved it. But, the networking aspect and, the daily grind was something that was unfamiliar.
She asked me to come on, she thought I'd be perfect for the role. And I loved what she was doing and I never had a chance. It was a match. when I signed on, we spent two months in a conference room, going over accounts, going over the business.
where we can find the clientele that we're looking for. And she did like a soft introduction to this world of home care that I never really knew. And then when she knew I was ready, she just said, you know, Nick, go be yourself and this is all gonna pay off. So fast forward to now.
I can't thank her enough for saying what she saw in me and here we are, Miriam.
Miriam Allred (05:29)
Great, great story. When you say she showed you a side of home care that you didn't know, what are you referring to exactly?
Nick Provost (05:36)
Well, you know, lot of our patients are in assisted living. You know, they need that extra one-on-one care. Before I sign on with gratitude, if someone mentioned assisted living, I'd be like, you your loved one's not in the home? That's terrible. How could you pull that? You know, I just, and then I started seeing a lot of these assisted livings they have...
pools and bars and happy hour and it's like, where do I sign up? You know, so I get it, I get it. But, ⁓ you know, assisted living is assisted. It's not one-on-one and ⁓ people are aging in place and they need that extra attention. So that was a side of home care I did not know. so it's not just home care, it's wherever these people in need call home.
So we'll go wherever they are.
Miriam Allred (06:34)
And that's a part of gratitude's service is placement then. I'm assuming that's what you're referring to. So yeah, maybe break down a little bit of like the demographic of gratitude because that will be helpful for the conversation, the service lines, the payers.
Nick Provost (06:39)
Yes.
Well, it's not. Yeah, so it's not the placement aspect. These are actually people in assisted living that need that one-on-one with a home health aid. So we also do placement and that service line came from, know, this mainly happens with our patients in the home with dementia and being in the home.
It wasn't, it's not stimulating their mind. They get to a certain point where their quality of life just isn't as high as it should be. And these families really trust us and we, and that's everything we strive for, but we have had to have the hard conversations that your loved one isn't, the best place for them is not in the home with a home health aid anymore. And
We think they'd be better off in a memory care. And then we said, why not get into that aspect where we are going to place them in the places we know. We have patients in a lot of these communities. We know a lot of the people in these communities. Let's help them get to what's appropriate for them and their preferences geographically.
That's why we added on the place.
Miriam Allred (08:09)
This is already really good insights. I don't know about you. I'm just thinking when I explain home care to people, I almost pit home care against assisted living, skilled nursing facilities. It's almost like us versus them. And it sounds like that was your philosophy before meeting the owner of Gratitude was home care is home care. We don't do that other stuff. And there's a reason why we're different and there's a reason why this is better. But it sounds like your thinking has like matured and evolved in that.
It really is what the individual needs and wants and that's best for them. And even as a home care company, we can partner with or it sounds like you all provide those services in these assisted livings. And so there's a lot of different ways to like piece that together. That's best fit for the individual. How did it sounds like the owner helped you kind of like bring you into this mindset. And it sounds like you going to the assisted livings helped you grasp the value of them. But how
I think that was difficult for you. Like how did you work through that and how did you warm up to all of these concepts and how they fit together?
Nick Provost (09:14)
For me, there's a lot of there's a lot of juggling that these assisted livings have to do and You know a lot of people are paying top dollar to be in these communities So when it's recommended that they get one-on-one care, they're they're not happy a lot of the families are like what am I paying for all this for but when I saw
a couple of the assisted livings in the area, you know, some of these places are massive and, and, and as people are aging in place, they're not getting around as well anymore. You know, they're not as independent anymore. And like I said, this is assisted living. It's not one-on-one. So
We're actually helping with the independence. Our caregivers are helping them be more independent in these communities because they just don't have the staff ratio all the time to get people where they need to be, make sure that they're down for their meals, make sure they're getting to activities, you know, if they're not as mobile. So when I started seeing how much it really helped and
the connections and the relationships that we were building with a lot of similar people with the same mindsets as us. My mindset switched. It was pretty early on. And I mean, seeing some of these places, they're amazing.
