Episode 11: Home Care Nursing With Call Light

This transcript was generated automatically. Its accuracy may vary.
Cara Lunsford
    Oh, hey, nurses. Welcome to the Nurse Dot podcast, giving nurses validation resources and hope. One episode at a time. Oh, today on Nurse Dot podcast.
Courtney Hogenson
    Most even nurses and doctors have no idea how limited home health and hospice is. It's great when you have it, but I think what most people don't realize is that it's very limited in the scope and duration of what's covered. You know, as a home health nurse, most of those nurses are going in for a short visit and then it runs out.
Cara Lunsford
    Joining us today, Courtney Hodgkinson, a registered nurse whose frontline experiences have propelled her to create solutions that redefine patient care. Not only does she have years of experience under her belt attending to patients needs in high pressure environments, but she's also the dynamic founder of Corelight, an app that promises to revolutionize the way people receive care in their home.
    Bridging the gap between hospital and Home Health. I'm your host, Kara Lunsford, registered nurse and VP of community at Nurse NASSCOM.
    Oh, hello, Courtney Huggins. And how are you?
Courtney Hogenson
    I'm good. How are.
Cara Lunsford
    You? Well, Courtney, you and I, people are going to start to think that I just bring my friends on here. But that's not true. I just know a lot of people. You know, I have actually known for many years, and we've worked in the same industry for a while. And I'm just really excited that I get to do this podcast episode with you because I was kind of around when you first had this idea like.
Courtney Hogenson
    Lately.
Cara Lunsford
    And we're like tossing it around and I'm like, This is awesome. This is a great idea. You should definitely run with this. We've both worked in concierge nursing for a very long time, so we understand the pain points there. So I'm going to just hand it over to you to do an intro of yourself. You know who you are, how long you've been a nurse, and then we'll jump into your entrepreneurial journey.
Courtney Hogenson
    You know, I became a nurse right around age 30. It was my second or third career or so. And I think it's one of those careers that finds you, you know, you don't really choose it. It chooses you. And so it's just something that's always been in my blood and my DNA. My family's all been a bunch of caretakers.
    So eventually I think I was always going to end up as a nurse. But I went back to school, became a nurse. I was at UCLA in the cardiothoracic ICU because I thought, well, if I want to keep going in school, I need to be in this type of unit. If I want to become a nurse practitioner or if I want to become a nurse anesthetist.
    And so I think I just kind of kept those those doors open and I just kept seeing what was coming up and what would happen. And within two years of working in that unit, I got that entrepreneurial bug that you know so much about. And I just said, I need to start a business, some sort of health care space, something where as a nurse, I can help people.
    And so I first thing I did 2012, I started Hewlett Homecare. It was a homecare agency, non-medical caregivers helping people in their homes. And it was great. It was the first business I ever started. I learned a lot. And I also found out about care management. I didn't know what care management was as a nurse. It's like being a patient advocate, you know, being the boots on the ground, being the patient quarterback.
    So I found out about care management and I had about ten care management clients, and it was the most rewarding work I ever did care, Just being able to advocate for someone and be the expert on these people.
Cara Lunsford
    It's so important.
Courtney Hogenson
    It was so great. And then I went, I need you. I'm thinking like this is around. When I started Hewlett Home Nursing with Kelly, another nurse care manager who was in the concierge, feel like you and I just kept encountering patients and clients that needed nurses. They wanted them in their homes. 24 seven. Short term. Long term, they just needed more than what home health would provide, and they needed more than they could get anywhere.
    And so I just kept putting these teams of nurses together. Got to the point where I said, I need to be doing this myself, because when you're sending people into your patient's homes, it's a very vulnerable environment, very intimate. It's not like the hospital. And so you just have to be really careful about personalities and all the things that go into taking care of someone in their own home.
    So Heal at Home nursing happened in 2018. I think that's when you and I crossed paths and I just said, Oh, she we we've been working together for so long, I almost don't even know.
Cara Lunsford
    You know, it's a it's a weird field. The whole private duty concierge nursing world. We all know each other. We all work for different companies. And then I was the director of nursing for Privé. So we kind of like when we couldn't take a patient, I started going, Well, I've I've heard of Heal at Home, you know, Have you checked them out?
    Because I think it's really important to collaborate and say, you know what, sorry, we just don't have the bandwidth. We can't provide the kind of care we would want to provide. So here's some other players in the industry who are doing really good work, and you feel like you can stand behind the referral because that's really important. You know, you don't want to refer someone to, you know, a company that doesn't have a great reputation.
    And then I actually worked on cases for you.
Courtney Hogenson
    Patients loved you when they were lucky enough to get you some of the some of the stories. I just think like, Oh, only care would understand that.
Cara Lunsford
    And then you did what most people never do. But you and I have this in common. You were acquired.
Courtney Hogenson
    Yeah, it's a lot. And we did it around the same time, which was so interesting.
Cara Lunsford
    Yeah.
Courtney Hogenson
    I feel like, you know, I had all these ideas about where I wanted here at home nursing to go, and I saw what you were doing with Holly Blue, and I was like, Oh, she gets that big picture, all these things. And then we got an offer for Hewlett Home Nursing. And I'll be honest, I wasn't ready to sell at the time.
    It was not I wasn't I didn't feel like I had hit, you know, the pinnacle of what we could do with it. Yeah, but it ended up working out as it does. You sometimes have to kind of surrender and say, I'm just going to trust that things are going to work out. And they really did. So now that I left Hewlett Home Nursing and we were acquired, you know, I stayed on long enough so that I could make sure the nurses were okay.
    The transition was okay, the patients were okay. And then about a year later, I left and now I'm really focusing on quality, which is what I really wanted to do.
Cara Lunsford
    Yeah.
Courtney Hogenson
    And it's creating a safe space where people can hire nurses, they can find nurses, you know, for short term, long term in their home. You know, we're really trying to fill in those gaps where home health doesn't cover it, hospice doesn't cover it, home care doesn't cover it, you know, So we're trying to make it more efficient, affordable, safe.
Cara Lunsford
    Accessible.
Courtney Hogenson
    Accessible because it shouldn't just be for rich connected people.
Cara Lunsford
    And that that's what I really loved about the model from the very beginning, because I think what you and I have in common is about wanting to utilize technology in a way that promotes connection. So for me it was about connecting nurses and for you it's really about connecting those who are in need of services with those who can provide those services.
Courtney Hogenson
    Yeah.
Cara Lunsford
    And kind of really bridging that gap because I think what you and I and many other people in health care have noticed is that there are these gaps that as a patient you can very easily fall into. Yeah. What I think is really great about what you're doing is providing that accessibility, making it more available in terms of socioeconomically.
    Right. You and I have always worked with kind of an elite group of people that can really afford a certain level of care. And I think that that's what's always been really hard, is that you want to feel like everyone can afford this kind of care.
Courtney Hogenson
    Yeah, Yeah.
Cara Lunsford
    And so talk a little bit more about the foundation of call and tell us a little bit more about the mission, The vision and where you are right now would be really cool to hear.
    Yeah. So with call it really, really the mission is to help people connect to nurses and clinicians that are already close to them, probably in proximity, you know, so that they can hire them and pay them and rate them and review them and recommend them for any type of job that they may want to hire them for. I mean, it could just be a short term thing where they're going to check on their patient once a day.
    Or it could be, you know, they're getting discharged from the hospital and they need a little bit more support for that first week. You know, it could be a post-op thing. It could be a long term case where they need a team of people. But really what college trying to do is we don't want to be the list of private duty nursing.
    You want to know who's showing up at your house, You want to choose that person. You don't want to just, you know, have this window of time, Oh, there's going to be a nurse. I'm not sure who it's going to be. They're going to be there between eight and 12. Don't know if you're going to get the same one next time.
    You know, we really want to use technology so that people can have choices and really choose their own team of people that are coming into their homes and vice versa. We really want the nurses to be able to choose who they want to work with.
Cara Lunsford
    Yep, that it's it's so important to have a good match.
Courtney Hogenson
    Yeah.
Cara Lunsford
    Right. There's all these apps out there, you know, whether it's a dating app or I recently discovered the app called Wag, which is a dog walking app.
Courtney Hogenson
    Okay. Yeah.
Cara Lunsford
    And what they all have in common is that personal matching, right? It's like find the right fit.
Courtney Hogenson
    Yeah.
Cara Lunsford
    Find the person that is geographically close by who has a certain amount of availability that maybe this is their full time job. They walk dogs for a living, so you're not going to have that situation where they're going to be like, Well, I'm actually working my full time job and I'm only available to do dog walking between the hours of three and six or something like that.
    You know, you're like, well, you know, that's not going to work for me. Yeah. So it is about it's about the details, right? It's in the details. And I think that that's what you're really focused on is the quality of the connection of the match. Yeah. Because what we've learned in concierge nursing is just how important that relationship is, because you build that relationship and you could be an awesome nurse.
    It does not mean that you are the right fit for this family or for this weekend or.
Courtney Hogenson
    That team of nurses.
Cara Lunsford
    Right? Yeah. That you don't fit well within that team only because your strengths lie in a certain area. So maybe you're a fantastic like case manager, right? You're really good at Kismet, but from a team perspective, not so great in the team because you're more of a leader. You want to lead the care management side of things, so you're playing to people's strengths.
    And and so tell me a little bit about how does the technology work that you can learn as much as you need to learn about the nurse and also about the the person who's in need of the nursing.
Courtney Hogenson
    So what we try to do is, you know, when I was first hiring a babysitter for my son, who's now seven, and I'm like, Oh my gosh, that was so long ago when I first thought of this thing. I went to one of those sites like urban centers that are city, you know, all those they have ratings and reviews.
    And you can see, you know, how many times someone has a repeat booking and there's all this data that they collect. And it's very simple, but you're like, oh, okay, well, this makes sense. This person has 75 five star ratings. That's pretty good. And you know, when you need care, sometimes you need it quickly, you know, because even if you already have a network of caregivers or nurses or things like that, cars don't start, kids get sick, life happens and then you need backup.
    So it's like we need to be able to have a safety net, really. And Corelight is like, Hey, you push a call. Someone nearby is going to see that and they're going to come and help you. I mean, you want it to be people that have accountability, but it's so important when you're letting someone into your home, into such an intimate environment, you want to make sure you can trust that person because you don't even know if the the patient may have cognitive impairment.
    They may have mobility issues. They're all sorts of things. And so it really needs to go both ways, I think, though. And so I like having ratings and reviews for the care seeker as well, because sometimes it's not the patient, it's actually someone who's organizing the care, as you know. Yeah, it's important for the clinicians and the nurses to know that they can trust that person to write.
    And you know, we verify their government issued ID, we make sure this person is who they say they are When it comes to the clinicians, you know, we have these great databases like nurses that call the other nurses dot com Oh yeah.
Cara Lunsford
    That there and you are s y s yes the nurses it's like the nurse system nurses.
Courtney Hogenson
    You can verify everyone's licenses, you can see what states they're able to practice and you can make sure that they're licensed unencumbered and you know, you can track that stuff in real time. And it's you want to know that this person is who they say they are. You know, it's yes, accountability is just huge.
Cara Lunsford
    Right? That's that's definitely if I if if I'm a client. Right. Like the one of the number one things like are you a licensed practitioner? What is your license. Probably understanding like scope of work. Do you do you do any of that? Like what is the scope of practice?
Courtney Hogenson
    Yeah, I would say depending on where they are, what location they are, they have to always stay within their scope of practice. The biggest thing is if there's a doctor order, if there is already something that's existing like a medication order, you know, those types that those things are already in existence. A nurse can carry out those orders under, you know, the scope of their practice and with their own abilities and competency competencies that really we're not writing orders, we're not making things up.
    We don't just do something because a patient wants, hey, do put some uranium. And that idea, you know, like you just you don't do that stuff.
Cara Lunsford
    So some uranium, that.
Courtney Hogenson
    Was your example. Uranium, you know, that's the new thing. But I'm just saying people are like, oh, a nurse can do anything. And it's like, no one goes through license.
Cara Lunsford
    Yeah, they're definitely not going to keep their license if they put uranium in your arm. Yeah. Like that's a that's a major. No, no.
Courtney Hogenson
    Yeah. That's.
Cara Lunsford
    I just love you.
Courtney Hogenson
    Nurses can do a lot of stuff, but also nurses know what they can't do. And you know, you're, you're really paying for it. Look, I would say most of the cases in the home care, they don't necessarily need a nurse, maybe not even an R and or an LPN, but people understand and recognize, you know, they've got this knowledge, this expertise.
    They're able to like, assess the full picture and see things. And nurses can triage. You know, you can see the big picture and it's like, wouldn't you rather have an r n a team of friends looking after a loved one if it was no issue where you could have that? Heck yeah. I would want a team of friends looking after my loved one.
Cara Lunsford
    Yeah, I think that one of the huge benefits to that is a I think the advocacy part, the health literacy side of things. Yeah. Because nurses are educators. Yes, they are. Yes, they are teachers. And so one of the best things that we can do is make nurses more available to the general public, because when you go to a doctor's appointment, when you are dealing with something where normally what would you do?
    Maybe you'd go to the Internet and you would look it up and then you would understand 20% of what you were reading and you would make up the rest of it in your head and then and diagnose yourself.
Courtney Hogenson
    Yeah.
Cara Lunsford
    And then maybe start treating yourself based on the diagnosis you gave yourself and where as when you have that nurse available to you, you can bounce things off of them. You can start to understand more about your health, which actually gives you more freedom. I imagine that if someone in my family needed some sort of health care availability in their home, like something, you know, a nurse available in their home, that that would probably do a few things.
    It would improve their health literacy so they'd start to understand more about their health condition because they'd have someone there who's teaching them. Yeah. And being able to spend more than 5 minutes. Right. And then and that's not you know, that's not anything against the nurses that are at the bedside in the hospital. Look, they just don't have time.
    They're short staffed today. The ratios are off the they've got too many other expectations of them. So there's just is not feasible for them to do the amount of discharge planning and education that they want to be able to do in the hospital. So being able to have that in your home in an unrestricted kind of way is just such a benefit.
    Right?
Courtney Hogenson
    Well, and someone who knows your baseline and knows what's normal for you, what your wishes are, what your goals are, someone who has actually been in your home and knows that you have three flights of stairs or you have, you know, all these different things, that there's no way you would know that in the hospital if you're leaving the operating room or you're leaving the E.R. You know, you have someone trying to schedule a discharge and they only know what you tell them.
    They don't know what it's like at the home. And think of all the things that can go wrong between discharge and home in that first week when you're supposed to be back at the doctor. Did the medications get picked up? Is the home safe? Is there food in the fridge? Are they taking their meds? Yeah. Are they having side effects?
    Is there there's so many things that could go on.
Cara Lunsford
    Yep. So I I've worked in the acute care space. I've worked in the hospital, as have you. I've worked in traditional home health, just where, you know, this is Medicare and Medicaid and, and yeah, insurance based home health, where someone's discharged from the hospital, they need a certain amount of care in the home and a certain amount of visits from the nurse.
    And you're probably doing, you know, maybe some pick lined dressing changes or you're doing labs or you're doing I.V. therapy of some kind, whether that's antibiotics or TPN. Yeah, wound care is a big one. But I've also done private duty, so I feel like I have this really holistic view of what each of those things allows and provides for the patient.
Courtney Hogenson
    Yeah.
Cara Lunsford
    And what I saw when I was doing concierge, private, private nursing was that I really was the bridge. Sometimes that person had a home health nurse. They also were having to go into the clinic or they're going into the hospital. The home health nurse was not communicating with the people in the hospital and the hospital was not communicating with the home health nurse.
    There is no connection between the systems, so it's not like they can read a note that happened in the clinic that the home health nurse can read a note that happened in the clinic and that the clinic nurse can read a note from the home health. No, that does not happen, although it probably should. And that's a nod to Epic.
Courtney Hogenson
    Hey it get it together.
Cara Lunsford
    I don't know.
Courtney Hogenson
    Integrating.
Cara Lunsford
    Just saying my want to link those things together since you're taking over the world in terms of charts. So that that's where I really think that the private duty nurse comes in right is because we go to those appointments.
Courtney Hogenson
    Yeah.
Cara Lunsford
    With the patient you've been to many of them. I've been to many of them. You're bringing the information from the home to the clinic or into the hospital. We've sat at the bedside and in acute care spaces too, like as private duty nurses and the type of care that you that we get to witness and see. It really, it made me feel so good.
    But at the same time, I felt so sad.
Courtney Hogenson
    Yeah.
Cara Lunsford
    For what everyone else was not getting.
Courtney Hogenson
    I see that I agree with you. Yeah. And I think most even nurses and doctors have no idea how limited home health and hospice is. It's great when you have it. It's great. And I always think people say, Oh, I wish I had had that sooner. I wish I had started that sooner. But I think what most people don't realize is that it's very limited in the scope and duration of what's covered and what you get that's covered by insurance or Medicare.
    You know, as a home health nurse, most of those nurses are going in for short visits for a few weeks at a time. And then it runs out. So really what we're trying to do in concierge and private duty nursing is bridge those gaps, provide these teams of nurses who know the ends in the out of the system, who know the language, who know how things work.
    And, you know, I just think of when you go to a doctor's appointment, no matter who you are, wouldn't it be great to have an unbiased medical professional there taking notes for you, you know, asking questions? It just it's hard to take in all that information when it's just you and your medical professional. But it's like if you have someone with you, a nurse or someone like that, you end up having so much more, so many more options, so much more information.
    And yeah, like you said, the literacy and also, you know, it's like the patient's actually taking their medications, you know, doing what they're supposed to be doing. Like you get so much more when you have someone reinforcing it, saying, this is why you take that medication, this is why you do this, or, you know, and they can ask them questions because how many patients feel comfortable asking the doctor a lot of questions?
    They don't have time to do it. They're afraid to do it. But at least for the nurse, a lot of.
Cara Lunsford
    Patients feel really intimidated when they're in a clinical setting. Yeah, and rightfully so. They don't know. You don't know what you don't know, Right. So being able to feel like you have a nurse who's there to sometimes say the things that you don't feel comfortable saying. Yeah, they're afraid to be vulnerable sometimes. And so being able to step in and and advocate in that way is amazing.
    I think that it's pretty clear that there's a lot of advantages on the consumer side of this. Yeah, right. Tons of advantages. And of course it is still an out-of-pocket costs, but I think you're trying to make it much more affordable than having to go through an agency where agencies are going to have to take their cut. Right?
    Yeah. But one of the things I wanted you to talk about from a nurse perspective, and I feel a lot of ways about this, is that nurses need to be in an environment where they feel like they can really do the work that they want to do. And so talk a little bit about kind of why you did this, not just for the patients, but why you did it for the nurses.
Courtney Hogenson
    Yeah, I think, you know, from experience I've seen a lot of nurses are just they're leaving the bedside, they're burnt out. The system is not really taking care of them. And many ways, you know, for some people I say 12 hour shifts are probably great. Not for me, not anymore. You know, maybe when I was younger, not a mom didn't have all these things.
    A 12 hour shift was great or night shifts, but it comes a point where maybe that's no longer suitable for my lifestyle, my family. But then you've got all these nurses that still want to serve. They still want to help. They still want to do something They don't just necessarily want to do what's been done in the past.
    Just work in the hospital, just work in the clinic. So really what we're trying to do is provide more options because we know nurses can do so much. I mean, the the scope of our knowledge, expertise, the things that I have done personally, like legal nurse consulting care, plans for court, I mean, just some of the stuff that you're just like, Well, yeah, that makes sense.
    Nurses can do that. Nurses should be able to make their own schedules. They should be able to work around their lives, you know, not have not have to work nights, holidays, weekends if they don't want to. If they want to, by all means. But, you know, with call, we're really allowing nurses to book jobs based around their availability and their lives and their needs so that they can have a work life balance that I don't think is really possible in the old system where you're working.
    I don't understand how people do three or four, 12 hour shifts a week. I don't think it's safe.
Cara Lunsford
    It's because it's because we've been doing well. You and I have a different perspective because we've been in it for a long time. And when you've been there for a long time, the way you see things is is is a little muddied, I guess. I don't know if I have the right word, but it's it's not that we become necessarily jaded, although I do think that there's a little bit of that, too.
    Yeah. I think that what we were able to do when we were 30.
Courtney Hogenson
    Yeah.
Cara Lunsford
    Or for me, I was in my late twenties, but also it was a second career for me. Yeah. So the stuff I was able to do at 27 and the stuff I'm able to do today at 44 is just different. I have I have a child now. I, you know, I used to be able to work the night shift and my biggest concern was am I going to have to sleep through the trash guy coming in?
    That was my biggest concern. Like, is my dog going to bark at the trash guy and is the trash guy going to come through and make this loud noise and wake me up just an hour or two after I've fallen asleep? And those were really my biggest concerns because I had no one else to think about except for myself.
Courtney Hogenson
    Yeah, back in the day.
Cara Lunsford
    Back in the day. And then life happens and things become more complicated and you want different things and you prioritize different things. And so, yeah, I think there's people out there that are like, I can do the grind, I can totally do the grind, I can do the three twelves, I can do the four twelves, I can do travel nursing and travel all over the place and learn new things every, you know, 13 weeks.
Courtney Hogenson
    We love those nurses. We need those.
Cara Lunsford
    People, right? We need those people. But for the other people who maybe need to explore something different or need a break or want to just work one or two twelves and do something else the other day. Yeah, I think this is a great option.
Courtney Hogenson
    A lot of nurses can use this as a side hustle or a bridge, you know, to decide if they want to do something different. You know, I know a lot of nurses who will hang on to their full time jobs so they have their benefits and they'll just do a couple couple of jobs or visits on the side.
    And then there's other nurses that do this full time. This is they're on a case, a 24 seven case with a team of and, you know, other four or five nurses and they all rotate for 24 seven coverage. And they're a team though, like they used to work together. And, you know, it may take time to build those teams.
    But imagine if you could, you know, work with the team of nurses that you want to work with and work in a way that you want in the patient's home where they want to be. It's such a different scenario when you have someone who wants you to be there. You're like, These patients want to stay at home, so they're they're hiring you to help them do that.
    And so you choose each other. And this sort of way, you're not just assigned to each other like you are in a hospital. You get to choose, Hey, I'm going to be on your team. I'm going to be a part of this. And the compliance, it just it goes up so much when you have a patient who is involved in their own care planning and their every day, you know, when you actually give them a little bit of autonomy.
    Yeah, well, actually follow, you know, what they need to do. They will really confirm rights to stay in their home where they want to be.
Cara Lunsford
    Yeah. So walk me through really quick stuff, because right now I'm thinking there's all these nurses, they're listening to the podcast. They're like, Oh my gosh, like, that sounds like my kind of jam. Like I'm doing. I'm doing that.
Courtney Hogenson
    Yeah.
Cara Lunsford
    Walk them through the process. Walk them through like they go to your website.
Courtney Hogenson
    Yep. You go to the website call icon. And as a clinician you go on there, you register, you put in. You know, I would put Courtney Hope and said, I'm an R.N., I put in, you know, all my different things. And then we check references, we check your license, we make sure, you know, you have the current license and you're okay to practice in whatever state you want to be.
    And so then once we check all of that, then we have you create a profile. So it's sort of like a dating profile, but it's not for dating. And, you know, it's you could put your nurse headshot, you can do a video like, Hi, my name's Courtney, this is why I do nursing, blah, blah, blah. And you know, you have your resume, you have your experience, your special skills, because, you know, there are certain things that you don't want me starting IVs on anyone anymore.
    I was an ICU nurse, so I never had to start IVs and then I'm out of practice for my V, So that's not something you want me to be doing on you. But, you know, you would put sort of what your specialties are, what you are. Are you looking for part time or you're looking for full time? Are you looking for visits?
    Are you looking for around the clock? And so you really get to put out there what you're looking for. And then when a job comes up, you know, a care seeker goes on there and says, I've got this job. You can say, Hey, I'm interested in that or I'm not. And you know, all these different nurses come up as an option and you can kind of, you know, go, go.
    But sometimes it takes one nurse, sometimes it takes four nurses, sometimes it takes a team of nurses. So it's good to have the ability to post a job and then have nurses kind of say, Hey, I'm interested in that. Let's talk more.
Cara Lunsford
    Yeah, that's that's amazing. I love that so much. And really the value that you bring, the fact that you're a nurse, you've created this, but you have lived this life. Yeah. And you're going to think of things that nobody else is going to think of, right? You're going to think of things like, Are you afraid of dogs? You know, Are you okay with pets?
    Because that's a real thing. I mean, there are nurses who are terrified of dogs. They will not work in a home where there's a dog.
Courtney Hogenson
    Yeah.
Cara Lunsford
    And so you obviously want to make sure that that's there in their profile.
Courtney Hogenson
    Well, and I say in the job posting, it's important to put, you know, pets in the home. What kind because some people are allergic to cats you know, like you just never know what it is. And so I also say, you know, is this a smoking home? Because for some people that's a deal breaker. They can't be around.
Cara Lunsford
    They have asthma. They don't they just don't want to be exposed to secondhand smoke. I similarly been in homes where there's just a chain smoker in the home, and at the end of the day, I can barely breathe. I'm like, you know what? It's just not worth it. It doesn't matter how much money you're willing to pay me.
    I'm not going to compromise my own health in that way. And that's okay. I mean, and it's okay for the consumer to know that, too, because they might need to say, I really want this care. I'm willing to smoke outside or I'm willing to ask someone in my family to smoke outside so that I can have the care that I need.
    So boundaries, boundaries are important.
Courtney Hogenson
    And then there's personalities. Maybe. Maybe you want a Chatty Cathy. Maybe you want someone who is not going to hover. Maybe you want someone who's going to give you space. Everyone's so different. So it really depends on what their needs are and what their gifts are and who's available, who's nearby.
Cara Lunsford
    Yeah, all.
Courtney Hogenson
    Those.
Cara Lunsford
    Things. I used to say that being a private duty nurse really requires you to be a chameleon because as you go in. And and it's it's not a one size fits all. I'm super chatty, but there are times when I walk in, I assess the environment, I feel it out. I use my intuition, which is super important in these environments.
Courtney Hogenson
    Yeah.
Cara Lunsford
    Go. Okay. How is everyone else behaving? You know, also, like, does that when I walk in the door, I always look to see if like the shoes are next to the door. So I take my shoes off.
Courtney Hogenson
    Yeah.
Cara Lunsford
    You know, it's. It's like you immediately you have to learn how to assimilate very, very quickly.
Courtney Hogenson
    Yeah.
Cara Lunsford
    But it's so helpful if you know, ahead of time, I would have loved to have an app like this, to have a platform like this where at least I would have known ahead of time like, Hey, we're a no shoes household. Hey, you know, we observe certain religious holidays. We you know, maybe they're Orthodox Jewish. You want to know that, you know, on Friday, Saturday, like, okay, well, there's not going to be any electronics and there's going to be yeah, it's going to be difficult to contact them.
    They're going to be using their phones and stuff like that. It's so awesome to know a lot of that stuff ahead of time because it sets you up for success. And obviously everyone wants to feel successful when they walk in the home. You don't want to feel like the first thing you did was walk in with your shoes and then all of a sudden you're like, Huh.
Courtney Hogenson
    Yeah. Well, and also sometimes they don't want the nurses to look like nurses. They want them to blend in a little bit. So they may actually ask you to not wear scrubs yet. So you just never know what their needs are. And you just have to be adaptable and you have to be you have to be able to just go with the flow.
    And I think nurses are so good at that because they're we're so used to dealing with changing environments, lots of personalities, sometimes big egos.
Cara Lunsford
    Do you do you prompt the consumer on some things that they should? It sounds like you do tell them some things like, Hey, let us know if you have pets in the home. Let us know what some of your preferences are.
Courtney Hogenson
    So right now we're really kind of doing more hand-holding because, as you know, most consumers have no idea how this works, what's covered, what's not covered. So really, we do more of a concierge hand-holding situation where we'll help them do the job posting. We'll help then, you know, sometimes they don't know what they need because they've never had that before.
    And they may think they need a nurse. And and you're able to tell them, well, you could have a nurse. Absolutely. But really all you need is, you know, P.T. or Otere, what have you. So sometimes it's if they haven't been in those shoes before, they don't know what they don't know. And you really have to kind of guide them and say, this is how this works, you know, and and then give them that information and let them decide what they want to do with it.
Cara Lunsford
    So this is a nice little combination of having a tech platform which helps with the matching and a lot of that and probably the scheduling of things, but also having a service. It sounds like you guys are also providing a service as well, which is, which is really nice because I do think that sometimes I mean, it is always great when you have a piece of technology that seems so intuitive that you're you're almost like, Oh my God, I don't even need to talk to a person.
    This is amazing. But I think in situations like this where there's health involved and, and vulnerability and stuff like that, that having that extra service is.
Courtney Hogenson
    Really able to ask questions because, you know, in health care, there are a lot of questions. Yep. You don't know everything. You can never know everything.
Cara Lunsford
    Yeah, absolutely. So right now you are you're currently operating.
Courtney Hogenson
    We're currently operating. We launched in October.
Cara Lunsford
    So exciting. I'm just so happy for you because I just watched you through this, this arc and it's it's been a real privilege to be able to kind of watch you from a distance and see all the success that you're having and really to also help you in a way by bringing this to more nurses so that they can hear about it on this podcast and we can share it, you know, on our social and stuff like that.
    So it's it's just really exciting to be able to help you nurture this even more.
Courtney Hogenson
    I feel like you've been with me, like by my side through the whole thing. Even though we live in different states now and all the things like I feel like we were baby nurses together and we're just figuring it out. And I just look at all the different things we've done together and where you've gone and where I've gone.
    And I'm just like, It's so amazing how we end up full circle and I'm like, Oh, we're back together again.
Cara Lunsford
    Yeah, we are. Here we are Courtney and Cara. It's the Courtney and Cara show.
Courtney Hogenson
    It takes, it takes nurses to fix a lot of big problems. And, you know, you're a voice for nurses and for just for people. You're an amazing advocate and amazing nurse and awesome human being. So, I mean, I'm so happy to get to know you and to love you and just see what you're done, what you're going to do next.
    I'm so excited.
Cara Lunsford
    Well, thank you. Thank you so much. That's so I well, the feeling is mutual, my friend. And and I can't wait to to see how college just explodes across the country. Are you. One last question before we go. I did want to make sure are are you are you nationwide or are you focusing on a certain region right now?
Courtney Hogenson
    We plan to be nationwide. Now we're focusing on a couple little areas. I wasn't planning on starting in Tennessee, but we had a former client who was moving from Los Angeles to Tennessee, and their family needed round the clock nursing for a loved one. And when the family reached out to me and said, Courtney, we still have four of the six nurses that you and Kelly helped us hire all those years ago.
    We would love if you were doing this in Tennessee. And I said, Oh, goodness, because I'm going to have to, huh? And so now we have this team of 4 to 6 nurses with them now. And it's it's been fantastic. And so we're just we're getting nurses from all these different areas, you know, So core was a really big part of where I started.
    And so I still have a lot of nurses that are reaching out to me. Do you know of any private duty jobs? You know, any concierge nursing job? So it kind of just depends on where the jobs are available. As you know, when a job comes up that a nurse once they come out of the woodwork. So it's like you know, we could have thousands of nurses on the platform, but it's got to be a job they want.
    And so when those jobs present themselves, those nurses just.
Cara Lunsford
    They flock to it.
Courtney Hogenson
    Yeah, we're always looking for great nurses no matter where they are. I just say there's probably someone who needs a nurse near you, wherever you are. Yeah, not you. You probably have a team of other nurses that you would like and recommend if you could do it.
    And one of the things I'm going to say is that if you're a nurse, you should definitely just be on call because it's going to expand and you just it's one of those things where it's when you a dual marketplace like that, where you're it's it's the chicken or the egg. Right. And and you're you have to kind of grow both the supply and the demand and you're trying to grow them both simultaneously.
    And it's very difficult. I always think about what the early stages of Lyft and Uber must have been like, Like all these people out there, you know, in their cars going, Is someone going to ask me for a ride? Like, you know, is this going to happen? And then suddenly there's like someone in the car and now in or somebody going, okay, I'm going to call for a car, but is there going to be a car?
    Like is someone actually going to be around me? So I, I think it takes time to do it right. It takes time. And I think what you're doing is smart focusing and maybe some certain regions because I'm sure that that's what Lyft and Uber did, you know, in the early years. And then it's just going to it's going to expand organically.
    But if you're a nurse, why not sign up? Just sign up because you never know when it's going to end up in your area.
Courtney Hogenson
    Because nothing you know, if you have the qualifications, if you have good references, if you have all those things, you are more likely to be hired and you can use it as your payment platform where you strike. And so the nurses are able to invoice clients and get paid within days so they don't have to come up with their own systems and create, you know, all sorts of things to to get paid.
    And there's an accountability thing. So if the care seekers have not paid within so many days, it can no longer post a job. You know, like we want to make sure the nurses are getting paid and we want to make sure that, yeah, everyone's being honest and accountable.
Cara Lunsford
    I love that sometimes it's hard for nurses to charge for their time too, so it's nice when there's, yeah, they need to. But nurses don't always value the work that they do. So I think it's nice that you've you've incorporated that into the platform is.
Courtney Hogenson
    What I tell nurses is look people say how much is that. I say it's however much we can find a nurse to do it for because some nurses are willing to do a certain job, others are not. And so it's just depends who is available, who will do it and at what price, because I'm sure you give away lots of advice and things and you're fine with it, but then other times, you know, you want to be able to pay your bills and use your time wisely.
    Absolutely.
Cara Lunsford
    Absolutely. Well, this has been such a wonderful interview. If people didn't hear already, go to call dot com. That's three L's in the middle.
Courtney Hogenson
    Make sure you.
Cara Lunsford
    Have all three L's in them.
Courtney Hogenson
    With the hyphen c l l hyphen ligo hd.
Cara Lunsford
    Yeah. Which makes it so much easier to read when you don't have three L's crammed together. Yeah. So. So make sure that you check it out if you're a nurse because who doesn't want just a little extra, you know, side hustle or something, you know? And it really does allow you to, I think, do the work that you're really passionate about and that you want to do as a nurse.
    And and I do think that that is about sustainability within this profession, right? It's like two find those places where you can do that type of work because it does keep you. It keeps you going and it keeps you, Yeah. Lit up and thriving. So thank you so much, Courtney.
Courtney Hogenson
    Thank you. It's so good to see you. I missed your face.
Cara Lunsford
    I missed your face, too. Until next time, my friend. If you're a nurse or.
Courtney Hogenson
    A nursing.
Cara Lunsford
    Student who enjoyed this episode, don't forget to join us on the nurse dot com app where you can find the nurse dot discussion group, a place where we dissect each episode in detail and delve deeper into today's topics. Nurse Dot is a nurse dot com original podcast series, production music and sound editing by Dawn Lunsford, Production Coordination by Ryan Wade, Additional editing by John Wells.
    Thank you to all the listeners for tuning in to the Nurse Dot podcast. Until next time, keep spreading the love and the care.