The senior care industry is known for taking its time in adopting new technologies.
With the majority of home care agencies being small, family-run businesses, there has been little innovation in how caregivers are hired, retained, and matched with seniors in need, resulting in a system that is not only expensive for families but also unsustainable for caregivers, leading to high turnover rates and inconsistent quality of care.
Senior care has always struggled with workforce retention. Traditional home care agencies can get costly, but pay uncompetitive wages to caregivers, which is why so many families struggle to find a consistent caregiver for their loved ones.
Entrepreneur Jamie Gong witnessed the shortcomings of senior care first-hand when her grandmother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. With her mother as the primary caregiver, Jamie helped whenever she could, witnessing the physical, emotional, and financial toll caregiving takes on families.
She set out to solve the issues in the industry with Care Hero, a platform that connects families directly with caregivers to make care more stable and affordable. Powered by AI, Care Hero matches families with caregivers based on skills, experience, and availability, aiming for a better fit from the start. It also allows caregivers to choose shifts and works that fit their own schedule and preferences while automating payments and scheduling, enabling both families and caregivers to focus on what matters most — providing quality care.
Take a closer look at Jamie Gong’s work with Care Hero and how she’s using AI to create a better system for caregivers, families, and the seniors who rely on them.
Jamie’s early work
Before launching Care Hero, Jamie already had plenty of experience across several different sectors. She started her professional career at Bain & Co., advising companies on how to optimize business strategies, before joining HarbourVest Partners, a private equity firm managing $138 billion in assets, where she helped deploy over $450 million in investments.
She was also involved in an early-stage startup as the founder of a direct-to-consumer frozen food line, which she grew to $5 million in sales within 18 months while leading a 35-person team. This experience gave her key insight into building a brand from the ground up, from product development to customer acquisition and team management.
These skills became critical when she turned her focus to a more personal challenge: fixing the broken home care system.
The challenges of the traditional senior care model
Determined to better understand the senior care industry, she explored the business model behind home care while earning her MBA at Harvard Business School. After conducting over 200 interviews with families, caregivers, and industry experts, and working closely with home care agencies, care managers, and a local senior living facility for over one year, she uncovered a system that was doing more harm than good for both families and caregivers.
She found that some traditional home care agencies underpay their caregivers, charging families $45 to $60 per hour yet only paying workers an average of $16. Caregivers also have little control over their schedules, income, and which families they work with, leading to burnout and an industry-wide turnover rate of 80%.
This creates a cycle of instability for families as well, as agencies offer little transparency in how caregivers are assigned and frequent turnover means they must repeatedly adjust to new caregivers — disrupting the continuity and quality of care.
Jamie realized there had to be a better way — one that would make care more reliable for families while giving caregivers greater stability and control.
To bring her vision to life, she secured support from top accelerator programs, including the Harvard Innovation Lab Alumni Accelerator, the Massachusetts Digital Health Sandbox Program, and the Tampa Bay Wave Tech|X Accelerator. These programs provided the resources and validation she needed to build what would become Care Hero.
Care Hero: a more efficient, AI-driven senior care experience
Launched in 2024, Care Hero is a platform that aims to streamline the common issues associated with traditional care models by adopting an innovative use of technology, particularly AI, to offer a more personalized matching experience between families and caregivers.
At its core, Care Hero uses an AI-driven system to simplify the caregiver search process. Families that sign up for the platform receive recommended caregiver profiles based on factors like specialized skills, availability, and specific care needs — replacing the guesswork of agency-driven assignments. This approach not only helps families receive high-quality, tailored care but also improves caregiver retention by fostering better long-term matches.
Care Hero also gives caregivers greater autonomy and flexibility, allowing them to choose the work and shifts that match their hours and pay rate expectations. This model allows caregivers to manage their work on their own terms while fostering better relationships between both parties.
Care Hero is also leveraging AI to accelerate the caregiver onboarding, vetting, interviewing, and credentialing process, and provide more personalized support and communication for the families. For an industry with an 80% turnover rate, speedy onboarding of high-quality staff is important.
To further simplify logistics, Care Hero automates administrative tasks like payroll, invoicing, and time tracking, and also streamlines payments for families using long-term care insurance.
The result is a model that’s not only said to be more accessible (often helping families get care at little to no out-of-pocket spending) but that also creates stable, well-paying opportunities for caregivers.
“Through better matching and directly connecting families to their caregivers, we help families get peace of mind regarding their loved ones while empowering more stable employment and unlocking more earning opportunities for the caregivers,” Jamie explains.
The future of Care Hero
Since its launch, Care Hero has steadily expanded its reach, recently securing partnerships with leading healthcare providers to serve up to 400 families in Massachusetts, 500 in Texas, and 500 in Florida under Medicare’s new GUIDE model for dementia care. Eventually, the goal is to develop partnerships with health plans to help them close critical care gaps for their members.
But Jamie envisions the platform as more than just a caregiving service — she sees it evolving into a comprehensive support system that helps seniors stay independent and engaged. She hopes to expand the platform beyond home care to help seniors arrange essential services like transportation to medical appointments, home modifications for aging in place, and access to physical and occupational therapy — creating a more complete support system for seniors. Jamie also plans to invest in specialized training programs and financial tools that help caregivers build long-term, sustainable careers.
“The direct care workforce expects to add more than 1 million people over the next decade,” she concludes, “and Care Hero wants to be able to empower this quickly growing workforce with better job opportunities and promising careers.”
Jamie Gong’s work is reshaping senior care by addressing the needs of both families and caregivers. For a more affordable, caregiver-friendly alternative to traditional senior care, explore how Care Hero can help you and your loved ones today.
Disclaimer:
This article is for informational purposes only and does not substitute for professional medical advice. If you are seeking medical advice, diagnosis or treatment, please consult a medical professional or healthcare provider.
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