Should Home Care Build, Buy, or Partner with Care Management (Steve Barlam)

“Care managers turn chaos into clarity—bridging what families want with what their loved ones truly need.” Steve Barlam, a 40+ year geriatric care management leader, former ALCA president, and CEO of JFS Care, shares lessons from building one of the most integrated care management–led home care models in the country. He breaks down the critical differences between home care management and aging life care management, and why clarity in terminology and scope are essential for both families and providers. We unpack the business realities of adding care management—from recruiting the right talent to navigating pricing, market demand, and referral dynamics. Steve also explains how care management can both drive home care growth and coexist with external partners when done thoughtfully. He offers a forward-looking perspective on the industry, adapting to technology, coaching families, and the urgent need to scale care management to meet the growing demand.

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min

Mar 24, 2026

Should Home Care Build, Buy, or Partner with Care Management (Steve Barlam)

Miriam Allred (00:11)
Hey everyone, welcome back to the Home Care Strategy Lab. I'm your host, Miriam Allred. It's great to be back with everyone. Hope you're having a great week. I am joined today in the lab by Steve Barlam, the CEO at JFS Care and also the immediate past president at ALCA, the Aging Life Care Association. Steve, the pleasure is all mine. Thank you for being here.

Steven Barlam (00:31)
What a treat. Thank you so much, Miriam.

Miriam Allred (00:34)
We have rubbed shoulders the last couple of years at conferences and I've talked to a couple of mutual connections over the last couple of weeks and so figured it is long overdue to interview you more formally. ⁓ you probably know as many if not more people in this industry than even I do. But for those that might be listening to this that don't know you, would you go ahead and introduce yourself briefly?

Steven Barlam (00:56)
Sure, sure. ⁓ I am a social worker. I graduated from Cal Berkeley and post-graduation, I went to work right away for a nonprofit organization, Jewish Family Service at the time. My whole career has been in care management and geriatric care management. I have been working for 41 years, unbelievable. ⁓

starting off in nonprofit after that starting a small boutique private practice in care management on the west side of Los Angeles. And then I was approached by Venture Capital and they wanted to create a model that would be high quantity and high quality. They felt that home care was a high quantity business but didn't always have

the most quality, highest quality, and they knew that care management was a very high quality business, but didn't really have a lot of the quantity that they needed to make it worthwhile their investment. So it intrigued me. I jumped aboard and I worked with a company that I helped co-found called LivHome for over 20 years.

⁓ grew that from one location to 17 locations in multiple states. And then I was approached by Jewish Family Service again six years ago saying, would you help us to create a model of care management led home care? And that was intriguing to me to come back to where I started and

I have been extremely happy in this journey.

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Miriam Allred (02:54)
You strike me as one of a kind, Steve. Do you meet many other people that have had a journey even parallel to yours being in geriatric care management for this long?

Steven Barlam (03:02)
Now, now it's sort of an interesting, it's an interesting journey.

Miriam Allred (03:09)
And you're a pioneer in that you have seen 40 years of care management and there aren't very many people that can say that. And also the integration of care management and home care, which is what we're going to talk about. But before we do talk a little bit more about Jewish Jewish Family Services, JFS care and that organization is unique in a lot of different ways, but just kind of high level the business model, the structure, whatever you'd like to share.

Steven Barlam (03:32)
Yeah, sure. So JFS Care is a separate division of Jewish Family Service Los Angeles. We're a nonprofit organization and half of our client base that we serve are Holocaust survivors and through other grants and other programs of the neediest of the needy, while half of our clients are very high net worth individuals.

So it's an interesting mix ⁓ to be serving and we offer three distinct services. We offer traditional home care through a traditional home care model. ⁓ And we also provide geriatric care management, private geriatric care management. And lastly, we provide a thoughtful engagement program that's really focused on

marking times in meaningful ways for our clients and really focusing not just on the physical care, but the psychosocial, the social connectedness and engaging with our clients. So those are our three service lines. Yeah.

Miriam Allred (04:46)
I always like to ask what was the evolution of introducing those service lines? Was it care management, then home care, then this engagement, or did you launch with all three of them? What was kind of the order of operations of the three?

Steven Barlam (04:56)
Interesting.

So I came into the company and they were at about a $4 million run rate ⁓ of home care. And we've grown it two and a half times ⁓ in the last few years. And we added care management first. That was sort of my first charge because I realized the importance and I come from a model.

My, you know, the company that I helped co-found was this integrated model of care management and home care. So I'm a firm believer in how that can really work to the value of the clients ⁓ and the business. And then we most recently, this last year started the Thoughtful Engagement Program, which is based on a model out of Arizona, dear friend, Crystal Littlejohn.

⁓ her practice and we got a license to use that model and expand upon it. So we're doing that.

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