Top Rated Home Care Agencies, San Diego
How to choose a caregiver agency and avoid misleading ratings.
If you do a web search for San Diego Home Care agencies (which you likely have if you’re here), you’ll find a typical results page with paid ads at the top and a mishmash of companies or directories below.
Most of the page one results will have star reviews next to them and Yelp, which probably came up on page one, will list what appear to be favorite caregiver agencies within the text body of their link.
But like anything you search for on the web, ratings and rankings are not indicative of quality. Page rankings are indicative of only how much money an agency has spent on their website, paid ads and searchability.
Companies that have a lot of reviews are not necessarily better than those that have few reviews. Why?
Allow me to speak from experience. Home Care of La Jolla has been in business since 2002 providing home care and caregivers throughout all of San Diego. For the first decade and a half of being in business we received thank you letters and hand written commendation from many of our clients- but always on their own accord.
We never asked our clients to review us because it seemed inappropriate to trouble those we served when the focus should be on their loved one and quality of care we provide.
Many of the best agencies operated in the same manner, choosing service and respect over bothering our clients to take their time and write a review on our behalf.
Around 2015 that manner of operating- with class, respect and dignity- became a handicap for agencies like ours as franchise agencies began to proliferate.
Franchise agencies focus their dollars on advertising and web presence rather than quality caregivers, training and high-paid office staff and care managers.
Those of us that were slow or less than willing to direct our resources away from client care were left to catch up. At Home Care of La Jolla we began to ask clients for reviews in a manner we felt respected their time and many responded.
Franchise agencies still outrank us. That is because they are able to aggregate reviews from their various offices under each location. But those reviews are misleading because of this fact and also because of costly review technology built into their websites which filter negative reviews and point only positive reviews to places like Yelp and Google.
In conclusion, if you are seeking a quality home care agency in San Diego rely less on reviews and more on calls you make to the individual caregiver agencies. Speaking with people that will be your point of contact and responsible for providing those that care for your loved one should give you the best measure of the quality of the agency.
If you find comfort with one or more agencies take advantage of their free in-home assessment or go to their office. An agency has a poor office environment is probably not a good agency. How an agency treats their employees and the workspace they provide them is directly related to the quality of care you can expect.
