The Future Leaders Awards program is brought to you in partnership with PointClickCare. The program is designed to recognize up-and-coming industry members who are shaping the next decade of senior housing, skilled nursing, home health, and hospice care. To see this year’s Future Leaders, visit https://futureleaders.agingmedia.com/.
Jenna Urban, VP of business transformation at the Chicago-based Help at Home, has been named a 2022 Future Leader by Home Health Care News.
To become a Future Leader, an individual is nominated by their peers. The candidate must be a high-performing employee who is 40 years old or younger, a passionate worker who knows how to put vision into action, and an advocate for seniors and the committed professionals who ensure their well-being.
Urban sat down with HHCN to chat about where home-based care technology must improve, what she’s learned since joining the home care industry and why caregiver-client fits shouldn’t be overlooked.
What drew you to this industry?
I was at my last organization for a little over seven years and spent quite a bit of time in procurement and marketing. I was with some health care clients and really looking to get into a more purpose-driven organization.
The former chief growth and development officer reached out to me about leading the transformation office at Help at Home and it just felt like the right time to make the move.
What’s your biggest lesson learned since starting to work in this industry?
Your heart really has to be in it. Our caregivers are really the core of what we do. It’s just amazing to see the amount of heart and grit that they put into taking care of the clients.
And I think it’s really important for those of us who aren’t on the front lines to make sure that they’re at the center and that they’re taken care of. I think that’s a really big learning.
If you could change one thing with an eye toward the future of home-based care, what would it be?
I’d say the biggest thing we’ve struggled with is just connecting all of the technology platforms. I think that there’s a really large opportunity to have more tech enablement within the industry.
There’s a lot of good individual tech players, but there’s not a whole lot of connection between them. And I think most of them have have really good platforms that can provide a lot of innovation to home-based care organizations, but they need to be able to connect with one another.
What do you foresee as being different about the home-based care industry looking ahead to 2023?
I think it’s again the technology – and having more innovation around technology.
The second is about how we can better take care of caregivers and specifically ensure that there’s client and caregiver matching. I think industry-wide, a lot of players could do a better job at ensuring that we’re matching the right caregivers with clients and making sure that that’s a long-term fit.
In a word, how would you describe the future of home-based care?
Innovative.
What quality must all future leaders possess?
They lead with purpose.
If you could give advice to yourself looking back to your first day in the industry, what would it be and why?
To make sure that caregivers are at the center of everything that you do. They are the heartbeat of the organization. We wouldn’t be where we are without our caregivers.
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