Palco Program Spotlight- Ohio

Less than a year ago, Palco partnered with the Council on Aging of Southwestern Ohio to serve as the Financial Management Services (FMS) vendor for the Elderly Services Program (ESP). The Elderly Services Program helps older adults from Butler, Clinton, Hamilton, and Warren counties – Cincinnati to Oxford, Mason to Wilmington, and everywhere in between – remain safe and independent in their homes by providing in-home care services like personal care, housekeeping, meals, transportation, and more. The Elderly Services Program supplements the informal or natural supports many seniors already receive from family and friends while also preventing unnecessary nursing home placement.

The majority of the clients enrolled in the Elderly Services Program are females aged 70+ who live alone and who may not meet the physical requirements to receive care in a nursing home, nor are they able to privately pay for in-home assistance on their own. With this program, ESP clients or their authorized representative have the autonomy to hire a Home Health Aide to assist the client with their in-home needs so long as the applicant can pass the required background checks and meet other employment requirements.

In June 2022, Palco successfully transitioned 560 ESP clients from the existing FMS vendor to Palco. Since then, we have conducted numerous trainings both virtual and in-person for Care Managers, getting them comfortable with our online enrollment software. COA assigned dedicated staff to assist clients with the online enrollment, recognizing that online enrollment is the quickest and easiest way to complete all the necessary enrollment paperwork. With the surge in enrollment, Palco also recognized a need to dedicate additional resources, and in eight months, we’ve seen program enrollment increase to approximately 760 participants. Along with an increase in program participants, we have also seen an increase in the number of aides for whom we process payroll. The number of self-directing aides has increased from 645 to 880.

Collaboration breeds innovation, and we couldn’t be happier partnering with the Council on Aging of Southwestern Ohio and home52, a subsidiary of Council on Aging, to expand opportunities for older adults to participate in the self-directed service delivery model. Through the launch of the mobile app AddnAide, home52 is creating a safe, secure environment to connect individuals who provide care with those who need it. AddnAide gives older adults and individuals interested in caregiving a platform to create personalized profiles to improve the matching process. Profiles highlight the client’s care needs, the potential aide’s caregiving skills and their schedule preferences, allowing clients to make informed decisions on the potential aides they would like to connect with, interview, and ultimately hire.  

Through our partnership, Palco built custom integrations with the AddnAide application to ensure a seamless approach to enrollment and time capture that is efficient for users. When a Client in need of care matches with a prospective Aide (caregiver) on the app, Palco’s enrollment system is triggered, launching the enrollment for that Aide and generating automatic notifications to expedite the process. Once enrolled, and the Aide is utilizing the system for time capture, Palco’s time management platform, Connect, is fully integrated to extract shift data and move it directly into the payroll process queue.

To learn more about our system integration capabilities and how you can partner with Palco to take advantage of our suite of system tools, email partnerships@palcofirst.com.

If you are located in southwest Ohio and want to learn more about accessing the Elderly Services Program, visit https://www.help4seniors.org/

by Victoria Evans
Senior Director of Client Engagement