As home health organizations scale, patient engagement becomes harder, not easier. More patients, more branches, more calls, and more moments where something can go wrong between visits.

Pinnacle Home Care, the largest Florida-based home health provider serving 10,000+ active patients, faced this exact challenge. Leadership wanted to maintain quality, visibility, and responsiveness across their census without adding operational overhead or fragmenting care.

They partnered with CareBestie to rethink how patient conversations happen across after-hours, business hours, and patient satisfaction touchpoints.

The Starting Point: Scale Without Visibility

Before CareBestie, Pinnacle relied on a traditional model:

• An outsourced call center for after-hours coverage

• On-call nurses available for escalation

• Limited insight into what patients were calling about, how often, or why

The system worked operationally, but from a leadership perspective, it was largely opaque.

Key challenges emerged as Pinnacle grew:

• After-hours interactions were a black box
  Calls were handled, but leadership had little transparency into patterns, urgency, or recurring issues.
  
  

• Cost pressure increased with scale
  Traditional call center models did not scale efficiently with census growth.
  
  

• Patient engagement outside visits was inconsistent
  There was limited proactive outreach between clinician visits to surface issues early or understand patient experience.

Rethinking Patient Engagement Across the Episode

Pinnacle did not want to replace staff or clinical teams. Instead, the goal was to augment operations and introduce a more modern engagement layer across patient touchpoints.

CareBestie was deployed as a non-clinical patient engagement layer supporting three core workflows:

1. After-Hours Patient Calls

CareBestie handles inbound after-hours calls, captures structured insights, and escalates to Pinnacle’s on-call nurses when clinical input is required.

2. Business-Hours Support

During business hours, CareBestie augments call center agents and administrators, helping handle patient inquiries and reduce operational load.

3. Patient Satisfaction & Experience Calls

CareBestie proactively reaches out to patients after visits to understand:

• Satisfaction with care

• Communication gaps

• Early signs of confusion or dissatisfaction

This allows Pinnacle to address issues earlier, before they escalate.

Implementation: Fast and Lightweight

Despite operating at scale, implementation was straightforward.

• Time to go live: ~20 days

• IT involvement: Minimal

• EMR integration: Not required initially

• Setup included:

  • Branded caller ID aligned with Pinnacle

  • Clear escalation rules per branch

  • Alignment with existing on-call nurse workflows

Importantly, there was no internal resistance from operations or clinical teams.

What Changed in Practice

Once live, CareBestie quickly became a source of real-time visibility into patient needs across the census.

After-Hours Impact

• ~1,000 calls per month

• ~2,250 minutes handled monthly

• 30% of after-hours calls flagged as urgent

• 23% escalated to live Pinnacle staff

Instead of reacting blindly, Pinnacle now had insight into what patients were experiencing when offices were closed.

Beyond After-Hours

Patient satisfaction and experience calls surfaced:

• Early dissatisfaction

• Communication breakdowns

• Confusion around care plans or next steps

This enabled earlier interventions and more consistent patient experiences across branches.

Cost & Efficiency

CareBestie also changed the economics of patient engagement.

• Before CareBestie: ~$7,500 per month for after-hours coverage

• With CareBestie: ~$0.50 PMPM across census

The result was significant cost savings, while expanding coverage and improving operational insight.

A New Engagement Layer, Not a Replacement

CareBestie does not replace Pinnacle’s teams. It augments call center staff, administrators, and on-call nurses, creating a consistent engagement layer across after-hours, business hours, and post-visit touchpoints.

For Pinnacle, this meant:

• More patient touchpoints

• Better visibility across the census

• Lower operational cost

• Greater confidence to scale

Why This Matters for Home Health Leaders

As patient volumes grow and margins tighten, visibility between visits becomes critical. Pinnacle’s experience shows that modern patient engagement does not require more staff, it requires better infrastructure.

CareBestie enables agencies to scale patient engagement across the full episode of care, without sacrificing quality or control.

Leadership Perspective

“CareBestie delivered quickly and operated exactly as designed. What stood out was not just performance, but the operational clarity it created. For the first time, we had a structured, always-on patient touchpoint layer that gave us real insight into what was happening across our census.”

“This is not about replacing teams. It’s about adding a new layer of patient engagement that helps agencies understand when and where human intervention is actually needed. That fundamentally changes how you deploy staff at scale.”

Sean Spellberg, CEO, Pinnacle Home Care