 And welcome to Business in Hawaii with Reg Baker. We're a show that broadcasts every Thursday from 2 to 2.30 from the studios in the Think Tech studios in Bioneer Plaza in downtown Hololulu. We focus on successful stories of businesses and individuals in Hawaii. As most of us have heard, Hawaii is a difficult place to do business. We're ranked probably one of the worst states in the country. However, we also have a lot of successes. We have a lot of companies and individuals that have made it work. This show emphasizes and talks about those individuals and companies and shares some of the secrets on how they made it all work. Today, we've got a returning guest, Matt Delaney, who is the CEO and president of the Hawaii Group. And we also have one of his subsidiary presidents and CEOs, Terry B, who heads up the health care side of what he's got going on. And we've all heard about how busy it is in health care right now. A lot of noise is going on, a lot of movement. And they're trying to make some sense and take maybe advantage of the opportunity a little bit. So Terry, Matt, welcome to the show. Thank you. Nice to be here. Thanks for having us. Good to have you. It's a pleasure. Matt, you've been on the show before. We know a little bit about the Hawaii Group. We know how big it is and that you're back in the seat again and you're making things happen just real quickly, just for the audience, for people that maybe had not heard. Tell us a little bit about Hawaii Group. Sure, thanks, Rich. The Hawaii Group really provides various back office support, whether it's accounting, staffing, recruiting. For a long time, we did the human resources and payroll. In our latest venture, about three and a half years ago, as we ventured into the health care market. And maybe later, I'll talk about how we got into that. But it's such a growing industry right now. And it really ties in with the staffing that we do, because we do all industries. And health care is such a big need here. And more recently, we started in home care. Home care. So, Terry, is this both of your wealth in health care and the home care side? You're heading up both of those? Yes. Our companies are called High Nursing and High Home Care. Very good. Now, before we get too far into those details, tell us a little bit about yourself. How long have you been in Hawaii? I've been in Hawaii since 2000, in August of 2000. So that will make 17 years this year. Very good. 17 years. And you come from somewhere on the mainland? Yeah, I'm a Philly girl. So 20 years Philadelphia, and you can't take the Philly out of me no matter where I'm at. 20 years Philadelphia is where I started my education. And then I finished in California. I lived there for 20 years, raised my family there. So I got my degree from Long Beach State, my RNVSN. And I worked primarily in hospitals, administration, on the floor, ICU, ER. And then went over to home care sites. So I have about 35 years of hospital home care administration experience. Super. And you took all of that talent, all that knowledge, and you moved here in 2000? I did. And what brought you to Hawaii? Oh, my husband had a change of career, so we moved here. And I was very fortunate. My very first job here was at Mid-Pacific Institute as a school nurse. And I headed up 1,500 children. And we coordinated all their health care. There were children in the dorms. All by yourself? Yeah. That must have been a big job. It was an awesome experience. I got to meet my friends and my kids and also help all these kids that came here from out of the country to go to Mid-Pacific Institute. And how did you and Matt get together? It was a blessing. I had just left the previous position. And I believe Matt was having lunch with a friend of mine. And she just happened to mention that I was looking to expand my career and find a position I could use all of the 30 years of experience. And we really just had, we melded together and we were able to start the high nursing side and then start the home care side. And high nursing came to be first. And so how long has high nursing been around? Since December of 2012. And with high nursing, we placed nurses in the hospitals and facilities. And we do temporary nursing, temp to higher nursing, and also per diem nursing in the hospitals. Very good. Matt, is this something you had planned on doing all along or did this kind of just develop? It's an interesting story. But with the other businesses under the Hawaii group, we took care of a good friend of mine's business, which was island nurses. And it was the right fit. And we did all the accounting and payroll and HR. And he unfortunately got really sick with multiple myeloma. And he'd have to go to the mainland for three months at a time for treatment. And during that time, he asked if we could basically run his company. And we already had H.I. employment, which does the staffing and recruiting. So it was a logical fit to do now health care staffing. And he came back. And he unfortunately passed away at age 36. And so his company went to his mother. She was from the East Coast. And turns out his basically dying wishes were to have me run the company and keep his legacy going. So that's a real compliment. Yeah, so officially on December 1st, 2012, we bought the company from his mother. And it was just such a great opportunity for us to highlight. Scott was a nurse himself. He loved Hawaii. He took such great care of the patients that he got to treat. And so it wasn't initially planned, but it made sense for us to take it over. And why I really liked it, too, was my wife was a nurse. She worked at both Capilani and Queens. And it was a way that I could now relate to her. I'd come home from work and always talk business and shop. And she was very patient and listened. And when she'd come home and talk about health care stuff, I'd go in one ear and out the other. And this way, I really felt like I could really talk her language, too. Right. Now you had something really meaty to talk about. Yes. That's good. And was it about this time that you met Terry? Yeah, so we had an H.I. nursing going. And a few months later, as she said, total local style friend of a friend. And I wanted to expand and met Terry. And as she said, we hit it off right at the beginning. And it's grown to, again, as most of our businesses have beyond my wildest imagination. And there's still just so much growth. And it's really nice to get feedback from, especially the families, that we take such great care of their kids. And to get the feedback, it just brings tears to your eyes. Right, so explain a little bit to me, Terry, how this works. You've got H.I. nursing and H.I. home care. Let's talk about nursing for a little bit. What is that? What does that business do? The H.I. nursing? Yes. H.I. nursing. So a queen's medical center, different hospitals, have a shortage of nurses. So we provide to them temporary nursing staff, 12-hour shifts, sometimes contracts up to a year, sometimes 12 weeks. And then sometimes they say, we really like that nurse. We want to hire that nurse. So we really become a clearinghouse for the hospitals. And we really fill a gap for the hospitals, facilities, nursing homes, doctor's offices. So that is what we call the facility staffing, or health care staffing site. You basically have to have two pipelines going. One is getting the people that you can use to fill the positions. And then the other one is finding the positions that you can place the people in. Correct. And how do you go about doing that? We have an amazing recruiter. And we do a lot of recruiting. Word of mouth, job fairs, going and talking to. We really do a lot of advertising on Craigslist. But really word of mouth, one by one, nurses will say we would like to work for high nursing or for high home care. And we provide really great benefits. And we have a great environment to work at. So word of mouth is always the best. You want someone talking about you in a positive way. And then people like to have a sense of where they belong when they work. You have to be comfortable. Yes. And enjoy who you work for. Right. And so you've got good people coming in. And then you've got to go out and find where to place them. Correct. And that's where the connections with some of the facilities are and whatnot. So we actually have contracts with the different facilities and different nursing homes and clinics. And so we get contracts, and then they will call us when they have a need. Very good. But that sounds like it's kind of a constant churning. You've got to always be looking for good people in good places. We live in a very unique state with our military population. They're here for three years. And then they go some point out of place. They rotate out. We live in the middle of the ocean. So we can't pluck somebody out of the ocean. So it's constantly recruiting from the mainland, from Canada, from countries that will be able to work here in this state. So it's constantly recruiting, constantly having our name out there to bring nurses in. Well, you mentioned Canada. Does that mean that you go to the mainland and look for people as well? Yes, we do. We do a lot of recruiting from the mainland. And how do you do that? Do you fly out there and do the same thing as you do here? We either will fly out or just through advertising on the mainland. And a lot of it is word of mouth with other nurses that are already here. Or nurses that come here as travel nurses and they want to extend their stay. Tell me, what's a travel nurse? A travel nurse is someone that comes to another state or comes to a facility through a travel company. And they get their different benefits while they're here and they're here on contract. So they're here on a temporary basis. Many times that contract is not renewed. So they can come to us through high nursing or on the home care side to continue living here in Hawaii because they love living here. Are there, and I'm just curious about this, is there professionals that actually do travel nurse type engagements and travel around the country? There are nurses that just love doing that. Interesting. Yes. Usually they're single and they're not married yet. So they can fly around. And they have amazing experiences. I can imagine. Yes. That's a neat way to go visit a place, live there for a while, get some good experience. Absolutely. Yeah, that's very interesting. Do you use a lot of the military talent that we have here? We love the military nurses, yes. We actually do a lot of advertising in the military, magazines and papers. The nurses are awesome. They're dedicated. They're loyal. We love using military personnel and always welcome RNs, LPNs, Home Health Aids, CNAs, and Companions too. There seem to be a renewed focus on the military these days to try to help them out a little bit and provide some opportunity for them, particularly the ones that are transitioning out. What's interesting, a little statistic, for the entire country, we got one of the lowest retention rates anywhere. And these numbers may be a little bit off, but I've heard that when military transition out into the civilian workforce on the mainland, the military usually has about a 20%, 25% retainage of people staying at the last duty station. We're down around 3%. And the cost of living is one of those factors and being separated from the rest of the family is another. But that's still a percentage that we could probably work at and try to reach out and keep more people here. Correct. We also take care of many children and adults that are in the military. And they are patients of ours in the homes. So we really, really enjoy working with the military families. So we have contracts with TRICARE to work with these families in the homes, usually with skilled nursing, for families that have menopause fragile children or adults. And this is a service through TRICARE that active duty personnel don't have. It's dependence. This is active duty, and it could be retired. Really? So it's a health care benefit if they have menopause fragile children, or also if something happened while they were serving, and they need to be taken care of. Very interesting. See, there's all kinds of things going on out there in the health care world that a lot of people just don't realize. That's true. It's a very exciting time in the health care industry. And I know you've got this other company, too, that's home care. And what I'd like to do is go into that a little bit right after we come back from break. But real quick question, Matt, do you find the military to be a good source of employees for the other companies that you have? Absolutely. You know, in H.I. employment, H.I. accounting, some of our best employees are the spouses. And they're dedicated. They're committed. They work really hard. They're upfront. We know they're only here for three or four years. Sometimes we can commit some to stay longer. And their spouse wants to stay as well. But great, great workers. Very good. But being a vet, it's really nice to hear this. Because back in the 70s, when I was coming out, it was a different story. So it's good to see that things have changed quite a bit. But we're going to go on break right now. This is business in Hawaii with Reg Baker. We're here today talking with the Y Group and their health care arm. We're going to be finding out all about the home health care here shortly. But we'll be back in about 60 seconds. I'm Tim Appachella, host for Moving Hawaii Forward, a show dedicated to transportation issues and traffic. We identify those areas where we do have problems in the state. But also, the show is dedicated to trying to find solutions, not just detail our problems. So join me every other Tuesday on Moving Hawaii Forward. I'm Tim Appachella. Thank you. I'm a framer. With my dear, that's the flow. What are you doing? OK, cool. Research says reading from birth accelerates the baby's brain development. And you're doing that now? Oh, yeah. This is the starting line. Push. Read aloud 15 minutes. Every child, every parent, every day. Welcome back. This is business in Hawaii with Reg Baker. We broadcast live every Thursday from 2 to 2.30. And we highlight successful stories of businesses and individuals in Hawaii. Today, we have a guest that's been on the show before. Matt Delaney from the Hawaii Group. And this time, he's brought his subsidiary president on the health care side to talk a little bit about the health care industry here in Hawaii. We learned a little bit about HI nursing in the first half. Now we're going to go into a little bit of the HI home care in the second half. Terry, explain to me a little bit about home care. What is that? Home care is really the trend for the future. Everybody wants to keep their family members home. Really, nobody wants to send their mom to a nursing home or a group home. And our goal is to provide safe and quality care for families that want to keep their loved ones at home. And we can provide RNs, LPNs, home health aides, companions, to families either at private duty, whether paying out of their pocket, or we can access if they have the insurance, like Medicaid, Quest, long-term care insurance. So really what we're doing is providing family relief so they can possibly go to work and keep working and taking care of their children and knowing that they have someone taking care of their mother at home. What's really interesting is that so many different people benefit from this. That's in the home. I mean, you said home relief. And that can be very special because not only are you taking care of the patient and their needs and making sure that they're safe and secure, but you're also providing relief to the other family members. They could also be very stressful too. It can be very stressful because if you need to still work and your mom has Alzheimer's, you can't leave her home. But you can't stop working because you have three teenagers that you're trying to get to and pay for college. So we provide a real need to give stress relief. We call it respite care, just relief and sound of mind and peace of mind knowing that you have someone in the home that's qualified. And that is a big relief for a lot of different people and allows them to stay employed and work. And sometimes there could be multiple generations in the family and that provides a very dynamic environment. And so you've got to have a pretty special person coming in to be inserted into that and to be able to deal with all of these different issues. And it's not just your skills. Like you said, you have to be able to blend in with that family, understand the social dynamics, know when to step back, know when to step in, be able to get along. It's like really being married with someone. You have to be a little bit compatible. You can't just send a body over to somebody's home because it's an invasion of their privacy and they really need to feel comfortable with their caregiver. Well, and the personality's involved. It's not just the patient. So I mean, there's the children, there's the other sibling. There's a lot of different personalities there. So how do you find these people? We have amazing recruiters, a word of mouth. We do have some great benefits. So we make sure that their skill set is up to par and we provide in services and training. So it's really a daily recruiting effort because we do have such a shortage of nurses. For Hawaii, especially pediatric nurses and specialty geriatric nurses. I guess each patient or each environment is gonna have a little different level of needs. And so you've gotta fit the person and their credentials into the type of need that the patient's looking for. If you're an adult that needs dressing changes from an IV or wound care dressing changes, that would be different than a little baby who has a tube to help them breathe and events later in a feeding tube. So our nurses are very specialized. Many are pediatric nurses or adult nurses. Some are both. So we do work very hard to fit the right nurse with the family. Now, do you have people that would be available, I guess in shifts that are 24 hours a day for people who need that? Absolutely. We have to provide 24 hours, seven days a week. We have someone working after hours to help continue staffing seven days a week. We have supervisors on call so you can access us at any time and talk to an RN about the situation. So it isn't a nine to five business home care never sleeps at those height, the hospital care. So we're working on holidays and Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve and all times. Now I know, Matt, you've got obviously some very talented managers and staff working for you, but it sounds like you've got a huge operation that's 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days. How do you do this? Now it's all about finding good people and as you can see, Terry's really passionate about what we do and the rest of the team is too. We've got such a great team and so one of the things we really actually try and do is give great benefit packages. Most people in healthcare do it because they want to and they feel great about it and they're taking care of the need. We also at the same time are trying to do things, especially on the staffing side, 401ks, bonuses, referrals, so that it encourages, because not only do we want to be the choice for the family or the hospital, but we want to be the first choice for the nurse or the medical professional and our biggest compliment is when we have a nurse come over from a competitor right before we came here, Terry and I met with somebody and they heard all the great things that we do and how we take care of our patients and that's the biggest compliment we can get. Yeah, this makes so much sense because after you put all the time and effort in finding the people, recruiting the people, onboarding them, getting them vetted and ramped up and ready to be placed, you need to keep them happy. They need to stick around for a while and I've heard stories about a lot of high turnover but that's expensive and very disruptive to the customers and the company. Right, and nowadays, there's a high turnover. There's no job, you hear there's no job loyalty, so really what distinguishes us from another agency is our customer service, our benefits. Everyone wants to feel like they belong to where they work, a sense of belonging and proud of who they work for. And that's where our goal is to provide really great service to our nurses and to our clients. It's very important today to be able to have that comfort, particularly when you're inviting people into your home. Absolutely. You want to accept them as almost a member of the family. And you need to be able to trust them. So we do extensive background checks, finger printing. We do a lot of making sure that this person's gonna be okay in your home type of thing, so even driving checks, you know, DMV checks. We do extensive background checking, criminal background check, national background checks because you know many people come here from other states to escape something, so we want to ensure that whoever we're sending to your family member is safe. And on top of all that, you've also, they're all bonded. Yes, they are. So that's important too. It's very important. You can go out in the middle, you can go on an advertise and find someone off the street. But if something happens and that caregiver is injured or something gets stolen, they have no recourse. Going through a home care agency, we take all the responsibility and we make sure that we pay their health insurance and we pay all that professional liability insurance and we ensure that our nurses are licensed and all credentialed properly. So it's an extra level of peace of mind. It is. I applaud you for taking that extra step. Could you give us a scenario of what your typical type of customer would be? I mean, what are the things that you need to look for that would tell you that you need some help? Let's say a person of your age, right? You look absolutely great and healthy and fit. Thank you. But you may have a mom or a dad that's just becoming really elderly. So you would pick up the phone and call 356-HELP. It's a very easy number. 356-HELP, that's it. Anytime of the day, you will get someone answering your call. You can call me. I will answer my phone at two o'clock in the morning because we want to make sure that you always have someone that will answer the phone. And then I will be asking you questions about your mom's health, what's she doing, what's the home situation is like, et cetera. And then we would send a supervisor and our supervisor out to do an assessment and sit down with the family and come up with a customized care plan for your family's needs, taking into account the environment, how many people are in the home, what you really need and then come up with a plan that everybody's in agreement with. And then we would have you sign an agreement and that would be called private pay. And I guess that's part of the key is that they're all in agreement with. So this is kind of like a dialogue that takes place and you can come out and make your recommendations but then you'll get the feedback and then maybe tweak it a little bit. Absolutely. And also we want to make sure that our nurses are being supervised. So at no cost to you and your mom, our nurse will come out on a regular basis and do an assessment and talk with the family and supervise that nurse. So we handle all of the monitoring and making sure that everything is good in the home. Now we're in a final minute or so of the show. I know it went very quick and we got a lot more to talk about. But what do you see as some of the challenges ahead of you? Healthcare, of course, is in the news every day. We need to be flexible and be able to roll with the punches. I think really, especially in Hawaii, we are so far away from anyone else. The nurses, doctors, hospitals, insurance companies, we all need to be working together and coordinating our benefits. So we can ensure that our families in Hawaii get all the care that they need and have access to. Easier said than done sometimes. It's a collaborative effort, but there are some great people at the Helmand, Hawaii and that are really working to have coordination of benefits for all of our families. I think one of the big steps in that direction is to have some form of integrated electronic medical records that everybody can take a look at. A dream come true, right? It's a big risk. It's a big one. But you need to open up a technology company to start addressing that issue. Right. That might be next. Yeah. Matt, I'll ask you the same question. We've got about 30 seconds left, but what do you see as some of the bigger challenges for the Hawaii group going forward? You know, the biggest challenge is finding good talent in all of our different companies and divisions. But what I really like about the healthcare is, you know, I've battled cancer twice and been in and out of hospitals for most of my life. And I know what it's like to be a patient. So I'm always trying to put myself in the patient or the client's shoes. And so what Terry's really good at is we really want to provide the best quality healthcare with a smile and with dignity, because it's not easy sometimes, especially when you're dealing with a medical fragile kid. It's just not comfortable sometimes. So our job is to make it as comfortable as possible. And Terry and her team have just done a great job of that. Congratulations to both of you. Hawaii certainly needs that type of service. So hope you guys are going to stick around for a long time. We are. All right. But thank you for being on the show. Thank you so much. This is Business in Hawaii with Reg Baker. We broadcast live every Thursday from 2 to 2.30. We have guests like Terry and Matt on the show to talk about their companies and how successful they are and how they're making it work here in Hawaii. So until next week, aloha. Aloha.