Synergy HomeCare Review

Synergy HomeCare Review

An older person may need help with ordinary daily tasks long before they, or the ones they love, are prepared for the move to an assisted living facility or nursing home. For many in this situation, home care agencies are a godsend: they help the older person through the normal activities that they may have trouble with in order to preserve their ability to live independently. Over the past 13 years, Synergy HomeCare has expanded to become one of the leading home care companies in the US, and has maintained consistent quality even while expanding.

Company Background

Founded in 1999 in Arizona, Synergy now operates around 350 locations in the United States with a few offices in other countries. These locations operate as independently owned franchises, with the central company providing standards and other support. Synergy also provides ongoing specialized education for its employees, and has a fairly rigorous caregiver screening system.

Because its standards for caregiver hiring and training are consistent across franchises, we took a look at how these frontline employees rated their company by sampling online employee reviews on sites like Glassdoor and Indeed. In these forums, Synergy employees gave ratings that put the company about average in terms of employee satisfaction, with the majority of caregivers saying that they’re prepared to recommend Synergy as an employer, though they do offer the standard complaints that their schedules can be erratic and the pay lower than they’d like.

Services and Offerings

Daily Living

As its main offering, Synergy provides in-home care that focuses on helping seniors in their ordinary daily activities, including meal planning and preparation, help with taking medication, grooming and hygiene, everyday errands, and transportation. For those needing more intensive care, Synergy also offers all the services that fall under the heading of personal care, including toileting, feeding, and help with exercise and mobility.

Beyond Simple Care

Synergy also goes beyond the ordinary care offerings of most home care companies to offer help with gardening, a broad assortment of transportation services, home organization, and help with accessing the benefits the client has earned through insurance premiums or service as a veteran.

Live-in, Overnight, and 24-hour Care

Synergy offices are ready to provide extended support, including providing live-in care (where the caregiver is in residence in the home), 24-hour care for those who need it, and overnight care for caregivers who need to rest at night after providing care during the day.

Companionship

Synergy trains its caregivers to provide social stimulation in addition to addressing a client’s physical needs, and caregivers can facilitate social activities, engage in friendly conversation, encourage the senior to exercise, and promote healthy mental activity. This social support can even extend to planning social events and accompanying clients to important family functions.

Caregiver Training for Family and Others

Synergy’s front line workers also provide training for family and others who provide care for the senior, teaching those around the client to help with daily tasks more quickly and efficiently.

Managed Care Services

Not everyone is lucky enough to live close to a friend or relative who needs care. And for those in that situation who feel a responsibility to manage that care, keeping track of doctor’s appointments and all the other things related to the senior’s health can be a challenge. Synergy offers a specially tailored service to help friends and relatives manage long-distance care for their loved one.

Medical Alert Systems

Many seniors or their families approach home care thinking that their loved one needs around-the-clock care to be fully secure, but more and more seniors are finding that medical alert systems can give them and their loved ones the peace of mind they’re after. Synergy offers a medical alert system, and the system is free to clients.

Word on the Street

Most home care agencies operate as franchises, so wherever you are, it’s essential to take care approaching your local office, asking for local references, and, ideally, for former or current clients you can talk to, before making a decision. That said, there are several online forums for posting reviews of home care companies, and they give us a glimpse into consistency and quality across locations. Even when we took pains to select a geographically representative sample of reviewers, Synergy did quite well, earning a weighted average rating of 4.8 out of 5 with the following standing out among the reviews we sampled:

Appreciation for Caregivers

Overall, clients and family members had glowing praise to offer for Synergy’s front line employees, with many clients reporting that their regular attendants had built lasting relationships with the people they cared for, and that the care they received was of high quality.

Appreciation for Owners

Several commenters also mentioned that they felt the franchise owners showed a lot of care for their clients, even though they didn’t interact with them as much, another good sign for the quality of Synergy’s workforce.

Trust and Dependability

The bottom line for anyone looking for home care is whether they can depend on their provider to show up on time and provide friendly, professional care. Synergy did especially well in this respect, with online reviewers offering relatively few reports even of the more common problems in the industry, such as scheduling issues and administrative mix-ups.

Cost

Just as with consumer reviews, we took pains to get information on hourly rates from a cross-section of locations: costs of home care can vary widely from region to region, and we strive to compare each location with the local median rates as published in the Genworth Cost of Care Study. On this score, Synergy’s locations tended to come out a little above the median, and overall they charged a little more per hour than their competitors in the same or similar markets.

The Bottom Line

Synergy HomeCare offers most of the standard services that seniors need in order to thrive outside of an assisted living facility or other institution, and despite having only begun to expand rapidly in the last few years, they’ve built up an impressive record of customer satisfaction, with many online reviewers praising Synergy’s franchise owners and front line employees. If your area is served by a Synergy office, and you’re hoping to find in-home help for yourself or for a loved one, Synergy is definitely worth a look.