Right At Home Review

Our Verdict

Not everyone’s experience of aging is the same, and for many, other conditions may have more of an effect on their independence than the aging process itself. By offering services tailored to a variety of medical conditions, Right at Home is well positioned to provide help for those who are facing health challenges. And with other services on offer, including help for those suffering from Alzheimer’s, those recently released from the hospital, and a separate transportation service, Right at Home is worth contacting if they serve your area.

Services Offered

Right at Home Review

As the aging process begins to threaten seniors’ independence, many choose to leave home and enter some sort of senior housing. But a significant (and growing) number of seniors are choosing to stay in their homes and in the neighborhoods and communities they know and love.

Home care companies like Right at Home provide assistance for seniors who might otherwise lose their independence, and Right at Home also provides these services for those suffering from a wide variety of chronic diseases and injuries.

Company Background

The Omaha-based Right at Home was founded in 1995, and has been expanding through franchising since 2000. It now has nearly 500 locations throughout the world with about 400 in the US. Because each location is independently owned and operated, the quality at one branch may not reflect the quality at another, but Right at Home’s central offices do provide some essential services, including supplying training materials and establishing security and safety procedures. Thus it can be useful to get an inside look at several different locations at once by looking at employee review sites like Glassdoor and Indeed.

From this vantage point, Right at Home falls just about in line with its competitors in the industry, with just about half of employees at the Glassdoor employee review site saying that they would recommend the company to their peers engaged in a job search.

Services and Offerings

Companion Care

Right at Home offers pretty much all of the lower-level services that fall under the heading of companion care, including basic companionship, medication reminders, light housekeeping and laundry, and meal planning and preparation in addition to transportation for errands and medical appointments. Some locations can, in addition, offer help with organizing the household for seniors who feel challenged in that regard.

Higher-Level Care

Right at Home also provides more intensive personal care services such as feeding and toileting, mobility assistance, and help with hygiene, and can provide guidance and assistance to those who are maintaining a physical therapy regimen at home as well as for those recovering from injury or an operation.

Transportation Services

Right at Home provides its clients with transportation help even when a caregiver is not at the home, connecting seniors with drivers who can take them to medical appointments, regular social obligations, and other important errands within the area served by the local office.

Specialized Care Programs

As mentioned earlier, the aging process is often complicated by other conditions, and Right at Home gives its caregivers specialized training so that they can assist clients suffering from the following conditions:

• Cancer
• Parkinson’s and diabetes
• Arthritis and osteoarthritis
• Heart disease, hypertension, and stroke
• Mental health, traumatic brain injuries, and spinal cord injuries

Word on the Street

These days, it can be useful to go online and research a company before you do business with them, and home care companies are no exception. But since most local offices are independently owned and operated, it can be difficult to find enough reviews to get a reliable picture of the quality of care provided by a single office. For that reason we collected over 100 online reviews selected from a cross section of locations across the country to get an overview of clients’ experiences with the company. We found that Right at Home came in about on par with its competition, receiving an overall weighted rating of 4.3 out of 5 stars. We also found the following trends among consumer reviews of individual franchises:

Caregivers Came In For Praise

Across the home care industry, clients consistently praise their caregivers for their compassion, and Right at Home’s frontline employees are no exception. Clients routinely praised their caregivers for their compassion and companionship, and many also remarked on their caregivers’ competence and skill.

Office Staff Were Also Appreciated

Clients also praised the competence and compassion of the office staff. And there were also relatively few reports of problems with punctuality or no-shows of personnel, which is something that many home care agencies have a problem with.

Trust And Dependability

For those who need home care, reliability is paramount. Clients want to be sure that their caregivers are punctual and responsible, and for the most part, online reviewers found that the people they worked with from Right at Home could be relied on to show up on time and perform their duties, though some clients did complain about fairly frequent turnover among the caregivers they worked with.

Cost

In looking at costs, it’s important to keep in mind that Right at Home operates as a franchise, and local offices have discretion to charge hourly rates in keeping with the local competition and in line with the type of care a client receives. That said, it can be useful to look at rates from a sample of locations operating under a single brand to get a sense of how other local offices may approach pricing.

After surveying locations and comparing their rates with the average local rates as published in the Genworth Cost of Care study, we found that Right at Home’s pricing is right in line with its local competitors. The company does require a minimum visit length (ranging from 2-3 hours, depending on location), though this minimum does not apply to the company’s transportation services, once again putting the company in the middle of the pack of its competitors in the industry.