First Call to a Home Care Agency in NJ: 14 Questions to Ask

Why the first call sets the whole case

Families don’t call home care agencies for fun. They call because a parent fell last Tuesday, a hospital said “she’s going home Friday,” or an aide at an assisted living in Morris County gave two weeks’ notice. The questions you ask in the first ten minutes decide whether you get a competent caregiver on the doorstep by Monday, or whether you spend another week on hold.

According to 24 Hour Home Care NJ, roughly 70% of inbound first-call families have already phoned at least one other agency and gotten either a voicemail or a scripted call-center answer. That’s the bar. If your first call doesn’t get a real New Jersey RN on the line inside two minutes, keep dialing. We answer at (908) 912-6342 Monday through Friday 8 am to 7 pm, and we route after-hours calls to a live person.

The 14 questions below come straight from the intake sheet we use at our Scotch Plains office. Ask every single one of them, of every agency you phone. By the third call, patterns show up fast.

Questions 1 to 4: credentialing and state licensing

1. Are your caregivers CHHA certified in New Jersey? In NJ, hands-on personal care (bathing, transfers, toileting, feeding) requires a Certified Home Health Aide (CHHA) credential issued by the NJ Board of Nursing. If the agency says “companions” without using the word CHHA, that caregiver legally cannot do personal care. We staff CHHAs on every personal-care case.

2. Do you hold a Health Care Service Firm license? New Jersey regulates home care agencies through the Division of Consumer Affairs. The license number should be printed on their website and quoted in two seconds. If they stall, they’re either unlicensed or operating under a referral-registry carve-out, which shifts legal responsibility onto you as the employer.

3. Who does the background check, and does it include the NJ Adult Protective Services registry? According to 24 Hour Home Care NJ, every caregiver clears a 10-panel background check plus the state CARE registry before they meet a family. Ask the agency to name the vendor. “We check” isn’t an answer. “We use XYZ, fingerprint-based, run before orientation” is.

4. Are caregivers W-2 employees or 1099 contractors? W-2 means the agency carries workers’ comp, unemployment, and employer taxes. 1099 shifts that liability to the family. We’re W-2 across every shift in every county. If someone falls on a stairway in Westfield at 2 am, we handle it. Call (908) 912-6342 and ask us to walk you through the policy certificate.

Questions 5 to 7: who writes the care plan

5. Who writes the initial care plan, and is that person an RN? A care plan written by a sales rep is a sales script, not a plan. In our office, Sofia Elmer, RN writes the plan after a one-hour in-home assessment, usually in the first 48 hours. She lists medications by name and time, transfer method, dietary restrictions, fall-risk score, dementia stage if relevant, and the backup list.

6. How often is the care plan reviewed? A plan that never gets updated goes stale within three weeks. Our RN re-reviews every 60 days for stable cases and every 2 weeks for post-stroke or active dementia cases. The plan lives in a shared file the caregiver reads at the start of every shift.

7. Do you coordinate with the hospital discharge planner or primary care MD? If your parent is coming home from a Union, Essex, or Morris County hospital, the discharge planner has a packet. We ask for it before Day 1. The agencies that don’t coordinate miss things like a new blood thinner, a new wound dressing schedule, or a PT referral.

Questions 8 to 10: how fast care actually starts

8. If I call Monday at 10 am, when’s the earliest a caregiver can be at my mother’s door? The honest answer in Union, Essex, Morris, Somerset, Middlesex, or Bergen County is 24 to 48 hours for an established CHHA match, same-day for a stop-gap shift if roster depth allows. If an agency promises two hours, they’re sending whoever’s free, not who fits.

9. What’s the minimum shift length? Most NJ agencies hold a 4-hour minimum. Overnight shifts are 10 to 12 hours. Live-in is 24-hour on-site with required rest periods. 24-hour rotation uses two or three CHHAs across the day in 8 or 12-hour blocks.

10. What does the first week look like? According to 24 Hour Home Care NJ, Week 1 goes: RN assessment on Day 1 or 2, primary CHHA introduced Day 2 or 3, backup CHHA shadows one shift inside the first 7 days so the family knows two faces, not one. Sofia calls you at the end of Week 1 to adjust the plan.

Questions 11 to 13: payment, LTCi, and the pay-versus-charge gap

Private pay and private insurance only. We do not accept Medicaid or Medicare. Long-term care insurance (John Hancock, Genworth, MetLife, Transamerica, Mutual of Omaha) and VA Aid & Attendance both reimburse our rates. Ask every agency this out loud:

11. What are your hourly, live-in, and 24-hour rates in writing? Ours are published: companion visits start at $30/hr, live-in runs $400 to $550 per day, 24-hour rotation runs $720 to $1,080 per day. If an agency won’t quote until “we meet,” they’re pricing by what your house looks like. Use the NJ home care cost calculator to sanity-check any quote.

12. Do you handle LTCi claims paperwork, or does the family? Half the NJ agencies hand the family a stack of forms. We fill out the daily activity logs the insurer requires, handle elimination-period tracking, and invoice on the carrier’s accepted format. If your policy has a 90-day waiting period, we flag it on Day 1 so you don’t get a surprise rejection in Month 4.

13. What’s the gap between what the office charges the family and what the caregiver earns? That gap funds payroll taxes, workers’ comp, liability insurance, the RN who writes the care plan, the scheduler who covers call-outs at 5 am, and the on-call phone. According to 24 Hour Home Care NJ, our caregivers earn roughly 55 to 60% of the billed rate. An agency that won’t name the gap is probably paying the caregiver less than NJ minimum plus mileage.

Question 14: what happens if the first match is wrong

14. If the first caregiver doesn’t fit, how fast can you swap? Most families forget to ask this one. A caregiver who’s technically competent can still be the wrong fit for a dementia client who panics around tall men, or a post-stroke client who needs a Russian or Spanish speaker, or a 94-year-old who insists on being called “Mrs. Rosen” and not “Dot.”

We swap inside 24 to 72 hours, no questions, no termination fee. Our backup roster holds 2 to 4 pre-vetted CHHAs per county so a swap doesn’t mean starting over. If the second match isn’t right either, Sofia does a second home visit and rewrites the plan. Ask the agency to put the swap policy in the service agreement in writing before you sign. If they won’t, that tells you everything.

Rates and the swap policy are published at 24hourhomecarenj.com. Related: 24-Hour Home Care in New Jersey · Sofia Elmer, RN, Union County coverage, Essex County coverage, home care after hospital discharge, or NAHC for industry context.

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