(relaxing music) - [Bill] The Brain Injury Association of Michigan's annual conference in Lansing.

Here, you'll find companies that provide caregivers.

- I think our roster now is about a hundred, - It has gone up.

- About 120 people on the payroll.

- [Bill] Inspire Home Care, offering nurses, therapists, caregivers, helping people with brain injuries and the elderly, in business 16 years.

- 2008, we had a bad economy crash and I was in advertising at the time.

Lorine was in home care, but I was laid off.

Lorine was out of a job and nobody was hiring, really.

- [Bill] Lorine and John Beattie went all in with their home care business, the growth industry with Michigan's aging population.

They joined the care economy, now in the trillions of dollars nationwide.

With so many elderly and the disabled, many from auto accidents, it brings caregivers and providers here, networking and improving their skills.

- Having resources here and having exhibitors here so people can pick up bits and pieces of information that will help them provide better care is really what this is about.

- Just the catastrophic industry of auto accident victims alone with traumatic brain injuries and spinal cord injuries is about a billion dollars a year in total.

That's just in what the MCCA, the catastrophic fund, spends.

- [Bill] You're just talking in Michigan.

- Just in Michigan.

- Compared to my previous career, advertising, I used to think I was doing good in the world by selling cars.

And this is, it's a different level of reward.

You feel like you're at least making a difference in somebody's life, you know?

- [Bill] Bob Mlynarek got his start in the industry too, after the 2008 downturn.

In Macomb County, he and fellow Harrison Township firefighters, Mike Barnard and Jason Growth, ran a side business, remodeling basements.

When that went bust, Jason discovered home care.

- [Bob] It seemed like an up and coming industry.

And a few nights later, after Jason came up with this idea, Mike and I were on the ambulance, working for the fire department, and we got a call at like three in the morning for a elderly female that was disoriented, didn't know where she was, confused.

So the daughter came and said, "I don't know what to do.

I can't take care of her.

You know, we can't afford to put her into a nursing home.

I want her to stay at home.

I need somebody to come in and help take care of her."

And me and Mike looked at each other and we said, "Well, this is our business."

From there, we never looked back.

- [Bill] First Call Home Healthcare now serves 50 patients across the state, with an in-home staff of as many as 150 caregivers.

How many folks do you have to deal with on a given day?

- Depends.

Sometimes 20, sometimes 30.

It just depends on how the day is going.

- All right.

Are we ready?

All right.

- [Bob] Every week, we get together at the beginning of the week and we go over each case with our nurses, with our care coordinators and our schedulers and we say, okay, what's happening with this case?

- And this is a straight nursing case, insulin, management.

We have different levels of caregivers, and then some cases, our actual nurse cases where we need to have a nurse in the home for those 12 hour shifts that we do.

- [Bill] The issues, medical, logistical, And then there's the personal chemistry between caregivers and patients.

- She went out to two appointments.

She really likes her.

- [Bob] Good.

- [Speaker] Yeah.

- She did really good.

- I hear what they may not like, what they may like, what they think should improve, and then I bring it back here.

And then as a team, we discuss that to make it better for the people in the field.

- [Bill] Many first call patients are catastrophic, auto accident survivors with caregivers always by their side.

The office staff here, out the door on site from time to time.

- Sometimes I am in Sterling Heights.

Sometimes I may have to drive an hour and a half to Northville for patients.

Sometime I may have to go to Grand Rapids and train caregivers.

- [Bill] First Call's Rhonda Prescott is checking in with caregiver Patricia Burks and patient Guy Hedrick at an assistant living facility in McComb Township.

- Guy had an automobile accident, back in 2015, and since then, he's had some mobility issues.

- [Bill] When Hedrick takes a step, Burks is there with him.

- No changes, right?

- The cure plans?

No, no changes.

I mean like, you know, they changed like a medication.

He's doing real good on that.

- So our caregiver, Patricia, does four 12 hour shifts and then we have 24 hour care.

So we have 12 hour shifts around the clock, every day of the week.

He's always got somebody here.

- [Bill] Burks has been a caregiver for 25 years, nearly a decade with First Call.

Industry wide, finding and keeping staff can be hard.

So much turnover, the numbers can be head turning.

- Nationwide, there's a very, very high turnover rate, in the 70 percents, and we've gotten that down to be 50 to 55%, which is amazing for the caregiving industry.

- I would like to set up an interview with you if you could give me a call back and give- - [Bill] Recruiting more caregivers seems never-ending in the home care business.

Well, the big issue is compensation though, isn't it?

- Right, mhm.

- [Bill] And where's the world on all of that?

- It has drastically increased since 2020, since COVID, by almost $10 an hour for nursing staff.

We've also greatly increased our benefits package in the last five years.

Home care as an industry did not typically offer a lot of benefits for staff.

That has changed.

- [Bill] There are more patients out there First Call would like to help.

People more recently severely injured in auto accidents who saw medical coverage change because of a revision in Michigan's no fault insurance law.

With that change, companies like First Call say they can't afford to provide that care, but First Call keeps moving forward.

- [Bob] Especially after COVID, when the use of the internet and Zoom and Google Meet has allowed us to recruit and even train staff virtually, it's gotten a lot easier to service clients all over the state.

When we started out, we were the business owners, we were the recruiters, we were the trainers, we were everything.

We've hired smart people and that we thought that was the best way to do it, and then managed that, and we've grown quite a bit in the last 15 years.