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Home health agencies and in-home care providers face significant insurance exposures — employee injuries during patient care, professional liability for care decisions, and the liability of operating in patient homes. Wellington Partners specializes in home care insurance across California.
Providing care in a patient's home creates exposures that differ significantly from facility-based care.
Wellington Partners builds comprehensive insurance programs for California home health agencies and in-home care providers.
California home care agencies are licensed by the California Department of Social Services (CDSS) and must maintain specific insurance.
This is the classification distinction that causes the most trouble in California home health and nursing operations, because the codes look adjacent but behave nothing alike. 8827(1) Home Care Services covers non-medical home care — companionship, bathing, meal preparation, light housekeeping. 8827(2) Nursing Care applies where licensed nursing services are delivered. 8829(1) Skilled Nursing Facilities and 8829(2) Convalescent Nursing Facilities apply to facility-based care rather than care delivered in the client's home.
Agencies that started in non-medical home care and gradually added skilled services often never revisit their classification. The result is a payroll split that no longer reflects what the workforce actually does. If your caregivers perform tasks that cross into licensed nursing, expect an auditor to notice — and to apply the higher-rated code to that payroll retroactively.
Carriers evaluating a home care agency spend as much time on the driving as on the caregiving. Your staff travel between client homes all day, frequently in their own vehicles, often on tight schedules. That produces two distinct problems.
The first is workers' compensation. An injury sustained while traveling between clients is generally compensable, because that travel is in the course of employment. Agencies with high visit density in urban traffic carry real frequency exposure that has nothing to do with patient handling.
The second is liability. When an employee drives their own car on your business, your agency can be held responsible for what happens. Personal auto policies commonly exclude business use, which leaves the agency exposed at exactly the moment it matters. Non-owned and hired auto coverage addresses this, and it is one of the most frequently missing pieces we find on home care accounts brought to us from other brokers.
Some California agencies still engage caregivers as independent contractors, or operate as registries that place caregivers with clients. Under AB 5's ABC test, that structure faces real scrutiny — particularly the requirement that the worker perform services outside the usual course of the hiring entity's business, which is difficult to satisfy when a home care agency engages home caregivers.
The insurance consequence is direct. If those caregivers are later treated as employees, their compensation becomes subject to workers' compensation retroactively, and your audit will reflect it. If you use a contractor or registry model, this is worth reviewing with counsel before your next renewal rather than after an audit or a claim forces the question.
Home care agencies need professional liability covering the care delivered, general liability, and non-owned and hired auto as discussed above. Most also need abuse and molestation coverage, which many client contracts and referral sources now require outright. Because your staff work unsupervised inside client homes, employee dishonesty and third-party crime coverage is worth carrying as well — a theft allegation against a caregiver is a common claim in this class, and it is not covered by a standard liability policy.
Wellington Partners builds complete insurance programs — better pricing when you bundle.
Primary GL for home care and healthcare operations.
CA WC for caregivers and healthcare staff.
Protect against employment claims from caregiving staff.
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