For professionals
For the people who do intake.
Area Agency on Aging intake staff, discharge planners, social workers, care managers. Anyone who sits across from a family that has just been told someone is coming home, or that someone cannot stay where they are. Tugboat was built by a family caregiver, eight years in with three loved ones, and these two tools are the part of it that belongs in your chair.
Two tools, free, anonymous, nothing saved
The Resource Finder
Enter a ZIP and what the family is facing. It returns a short list of the right organizations, and the Medicare-certified home health agencies serving that ZIP, read straight from the public record, with what to ask when you call. It covers 12,454 home health agencies in every state, a count from CMS Care Compare, dataset 6jpm-sxkc, pulled August 20, 2026. Never an invented number.
The Tech Plan
Ten short questions, then a plan built around the family’s budget, with real products and real prices, checked against verified prices rather than vendor claims. What to start with, what to skip, and what it really costs.
Both are free and anonymous. Nothing entered is saved, and there is no signup.
With a family in the room
Run it together. Ask the questions out loud and tap the answers with the family, in the room or on the phone.
Print the sheet. Every result has a button that reads Print this for the family. It prints the result only, with the date, and for the Finder the ZIP and the need.
Hand it over. The family leaves with the names, the numbers and what to ask, on paper.
Nothing entered is saved anywhere.
The discharge list
When a discharge is the reason the family is in front of you, the guide When the hospital says it’s time to go is the short version of what to ask the discharge planner and what to have in place before they come home. The list John sends families before a discharge is drawn from it.
What Tugboat is not
Tugboat is not a store. No affiliate links, and nothing a family enters is captured or kept. The tools sell nothing to the family. Membership exists, it is optional, it is for the family only, and it is never asked of the professional.
If it would help to see both tools run once, John will walk an intake team through them on one call. Get in touch.