Right at Home has teamed up with the National Minority Health Association (NMHA) and its COVID-19 vaccination reward program, Flex for Checks.
“It’s a really great holistic program that we are pretty excited about,” Kerin Zuger, chief of strategic growth at Right at Home, told Home Health Care News.
Right at Home has more than 500 home care offices across the U.S., in addition to a footprint in seven other countries. While Right at Home is largely known as a home care franchiser, it also operates multiple corporate-owned locations.
Flex for Checks is a community-based program that the NMHA developed as part of an $11.1 million grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration. The goal of the program is to increase vaccination confidence and rates in underserved communities.
Through the program, unvaccinated caregivers are able to receive monetary rewards for getting vaccinated. Specifically, caregivers are eligible to receive $75 per shot and $25 after.
Additionally, participating home-based care providers are eligible to receive $25 for any individual they encourage to register and get vaccinated.
“We’re supporting our franchisees in setting up vaccination clinics so that they can go out and support non-Right at Home employees, or community members,” Zuger said. “You can set up a booth and then you get an incentive for anybody that comes to get registered or vaccinated. The franchise owners can feed that money back into their business to help continue to incentivize caregivers.”
Currently, between 57% and 66% of Right at Home’s caregivers are vaccinated. As a result of the company’s partnership with NMHA, Right at Home is working on setting a goal similar to AccentCare’s recent pledge of 5,000 shots.
“How fun would it be to challenge other home care organizations across the country,” Zuger said. “Maybe we will drop that challenge and go, ‘AccentCare is going to hit 5,000 shots. We’re going to do 6,000.’ And then we challenge another home care company to do 7,000. It’s about our entire industry and getting the word out there.”
Similar to the National Association for Home Care & Hospice (NAHC), which also recently partnered with the NMHA association, Right at Home has ramped up its vaccination efforts amid the continued spread of the Delta variant.
“It’s unfortunate because we did sort of feel like there was a light at the end of the tunnel,” Zuger said. “[The Delta variant] has affected the comfort level in the home. It has affected senior communities where we do a ton of work and support. It has affected the confidence of the caregivers.”
Like many of Right at Home’s industry peers, the company has chosen to encourage and incentivize its staff to get vaccinated rather than implementing mandates as a part of the organization’s policy.
Along these lines, Right at Home’s partnership with NMHA has been a resource when it comes to keeping the company’s staff educated about the vaccine.
“The National Minority Health Association offers free training and access to health care professionals that are unbiased and not part of Right at Home,” Zuger said. “If you have questions, if you’re trying to weed through myths and truths, you can reach out and talk to them. That’s what we’re trying to do right now. Let’s get the facts out and make sure that the experts are heard.”
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