(Courtesy of Orah) With 42% of all U.S. COVID-19 deaths taking place in nursing homes and assisted living facilities, families are nervous searching for better options for keeping their elderly loved ones aging in place (Forbes). Orah, a reimbursable home care quality management tool, is playing the crucial role of ensuring care accountability in the home where clinical teams and socially distant families are��absent.
Founded by a mother-daughter team, Judy and Rose Spiegel, the founding duo is a perfect blend of generations, industries and perspectives to tackle Orah’s mission of transparent high-quality home care. Judy has years experience as a certified dementia practitioner and realized that there were broken channels of communication between the patient, caregiver and families. Her daughter Rose worked at Google and Cornerstone Capital Group, an ESG focused investment bank, and saw tremendous room for home care quality to improve by leveraging technology.
“Facilities have the advantage of offering clinical teams who oversee the standards of care, an impossible feat for families to accomplish in their elder’s home,” explained Rose. “The home care agency standard of sending a registered nurse to perform patient assessments every 30 to 60 days just doesn’t cut it, especially now that the elderly are more vulnerable than ever and families are socially distancing from their elderly loved ones. Orah is the missing puzzle piece, and we recently launched two solutions to ensure that our elderly can live the highest standard of living in these dangerous and distanced times.”
Orah for Agencies is a reimbursable tool that differentiates home care agencies by empowering them to prove the care they promise without cutting into their profit margins. With Orah, agencies can oversee the quality of their delivered care in each of the homes they service, empowered to be proactive rather than reactive, attract top-quality caregivers, build caregiver loyalty and automate family updates on the Family App, all while generating a direct additional stream of revenue to the agencies. Orah sets agencies apart from the market standard.
However, when the pandemic hit, Orah wanted to help as many families as they could and decided to launch Orah For Families. “During COVID, families responsible for overseeing the care of a loved one from afar were craving to not only be with their loved one but to be reassured they were safe and receiving the required care regardless of whether the family was using a home care agency,” said Judy. “We knew our technology improves agency quality care and we wanted to help families directly as well.”
With Orah for Families, families themselves can now oversee the quality care provided anytime and anywhere with Orah’s Caregiver and Family Apps. Orah guides the family representative through a short, simple process to create a care plan or schedule of the tasks that are of utmost concern and importance. Links with the caregiver and family apps are sent to the assigned family and caregiver phones with all of the patient information pre-populated from our set-up process. The family member doesn’t have to input one piece of information. After following the security protocol, the caregiver app schedule can be accessed and easily used. Now the caregiver and family members can be on the same page.
When tasks are being completed a swipe of the task will take the app to a photo or video feature. After the caregiver swipes the task, clicks the form of media, a green bar for completion or red bar if incomplete will appear. The photos/videos are sent to the assigned family representative(s) and can only be accessed through the secure family app. Each scheduled completed task will have the attached photo/video showing the task being completed in real time.
The saying “‘a picture says a million words’ is so true,” said Michelle, a family member who uses Orah For Families. “With Orah, my caregiver is organized with a schedule. I’m able to see Mom is taking her medications, eating well, doing her exercises, going outside with her mask on—it’s amazing! I know when each task was actually done. I know my siblings are all updated. I bring my Family App to the doctors to show them albums of my mom’s wound care, alertness etc. I know any information inputted on Orah is safe on their HIPAA-compliant apps. And most importantly, I know with certainty that Mom is safe even when I can’t be with her. You won’t be able to go back to just hopefully assuming Mom is safe after you have the peace of mind using Orah.”
“Our greatest joy is to hear how families are so grateful for being able to know their parent is actually active, happy and safe. We’ve been told by the caregivers how much they love the caregiver app! They explain how it’s a simple way to keep patient recordings, keep the family in the loop, show the family what their mom did during the day so they have a topic of conversation to share at the end of the day,” said Judy.
Both tools are reimbursable by long term care insurance. Orah is also in the process of becoming reimbursable with CMS.
Orah’s investors include the founder of People Care, New York’s third-largest home care agency, two nursing home care owners, a long term care facility owner and a medical billing company, as well as an Aging 2.0 director. Aside from their home care launch they are also recent partners with North Western Mutual, the largest long term care insurer in the U.S.
To learn more, please visit www.orah.care� or call 1-833-CARE-180 to learn more!
