Prospering in Tough Times

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Six Action Steps You Can Take to Grow Your Home Health Business During Difficult Economic Times

May 28, 2008

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In this issue...

-- Prospering in Tough Times

-- Six Action Steps You Can Take to Grow Your Home Health Business During Difficult Economic Times

-- The Top Ten Techniques of Highly Effective Home Care Marketers

-- Train Your Sales People to Make More Calls During Difficult Times

-- There's Still Time to Register for The Academy for Private Duty Home Care in Maryland

-- About the Author

-- Permission to Reproduce

Welcome,

. . . to Stephen Tweed's Leading Home Care Report, the premier online newsletter for CEOs and executives of America's leading home health care agencies. (For strategies and insights on how to grow your Private Duty non-medical home care business, we invite you to subscribe to Private Duty Today, our newsletter for non-medical home care.)

Prospering in Tough Times

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How's the economy affecting your home health care business? What's happening to your cash flow and receivables as a result of the new PPS going into place in January? How are gasoline prices impacting the willingness of your field staff to take cases a long way from home?

Over the last two months I've been speaking at a number of state home care association meetings, as well as the NPDA national conference and several corporate meetings. Attendance at conferences has been down. I continue to hear murmurings from conference participants that their business is not as strong as it was last year. I'm hearing from some home health agency CFO's that their cash flow has been affected by PPS, and from some who are seeing lower revenue per episode under the new reimbursement system.

What are you seeing? How are you reacting to what you are seeing? What are you doing to grow your business in spite of more difficult economic conditions?

I remember distinctly when my work in the home health industry really took off. It was right after another period of economic uncertainty in late 1989 and early 1990. The industry had gone through a period of turmoil as a result of HCFA challenging the home bound status of patients and denying all of the visits for those patients. Many agencies were devastated by the results. However, the outcome of the Staggers lawsuit turned things around, and the early '90s was an amazing period of growth in home health care.

I see some real parallels now. We have just come through the best seven year economic period in the history of home health care. More home health agencies made more money in the past six or seven years than in any time in our history. And now we're feeling a little bump in the road as PPS slows down payment, gasoline prices and other economic factors affect our employees, and consumers are watching their spending.

Let's look at six specific things you can do during this period to keep you business prospering and growing:

Six Action Steps You Can Take to Grow Your Home Health Business During Difficult Economic Times

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1. Adjust Your Attitude

The first thing for you to do as a leader is check your attitude. What are you thinking and feeling about the current state of your business? More importantly, what are you saying out loud to your team?

If you are only looking at the problems, and much of your conversation is focused on how difficult things are, then you may be setting yourself and your team members up for a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you keep thinking and talking about how bad things are, things will certainly get worse.

I'm convinced that much of the economic difficulty in our country right now has been made worse by the news media focusing on the problems and calling to our attention all of the challenges we face. Remember, what we focus on expands. If we focus on the negatives, the negatives tend to expand and cloud our vision. If we focus on the positives, they expand, minimizing the negatives and clearing the way for growing your business.

So, adjust your attitude. "Yes, we are facing some challenges, but we have succeeded during much more difficult times in the past, and we'll do just fine now."

2. Get Back to Basics

Now is the time to look at all of your internal processes and procedures and make sure you are doing the basics well. Good economic times tend to make for sloppy execution. When things get more difficult, it's time to go back and look at the basics to make sure you are executing with excellence.

A huge opportunity is to look at every process involved in admitting and seeing patients, providing care, and billing payers. Especially Medicare. Start with the person who answers the telephone, and examine every process until the check is in the bank. I'm sure you'll find some opportunities to improve performance.

3. Renew and Refocus Your Sales Efforts

Tough economic times are when you really need to refocus your sales efforts. Bringing in new patients and increasing revenue is a big factor in getting through difficult times. Positive cash flow solves many other problems.

Meet with your sales and marketing team. Look at how they are allocating their resources and applying their skills. There is plenty of evidence that proves the companies that increase their sales and marketing efforts during slow economic times reap a long term reward. Companies that cut back their sales and marketing efforts during a slow economy fall further behind their competitors.

Now might be a good time to provide some additional sales training.

4. Manage the Mix of Your Business

We've been hearing a lot lately from our clients who are working actively to manage the mix of their business. First, they are looking for opportunities to increase business from payers such as managed care or Medicaid who don't pay as well, and increase their mix from Medicare.

Second, they are looking for opportunities to improve their Medicare mix by bringing in patients that generate higher revenue per episode.

Back in January, we conducted a teleseminar series on Sales & Marketing Strategies for PPS Performance. You may want to go back and order a set of CDs from that teleseminar series to learn more about how your sales and marketing team can improve your payer mix.

5. Increase Communication with Your Team

Slow economic times require increased communication. You need to spend more time letting your team members know what is happening. You need to be encouraging them, supporting them, and cheering them on.

The last thing you want to do is hibernate in your office with your senior team working on solutions and not communicating. It's important to work on solutions, but it's more important to keep your team members in the loop about what's going on, and what you're doing about it. Our research on home care leadership shows that the number two competencies of highly effective home care executives is "communicating expectations and directions."

6. Measure Progress Monthly

You've heard me say it a hundred times, so I'm not going to say it again here.

But it's still true.

So to make sure you are on top of the current economic situation, be sure you are collecting data and tracking results monthly. Back in 1990, I got a large number of new CEO clients for strategic planning. That's because their predecessors had been fired because they got caught off guard by the downturn in business from the HCFA denials, and their boards of directors didn't find out about it until they couldn't make payroll one Friday.

I have many long term clients today who I met during that period in 1990-1992. These are home health care CEOs who have survived and prospered for over 15 years because they learned the lessons of measuring their progress and tracking their results.

Now, it's more important than ever to measure your progress and reward your team members for their contribution to success.

The Top Ten Techniques of Highly Effective Home Care Marketers

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What are the most effective techniques to grow your home care business? What methods are used by the top home care marketing experts?

In 2004, Leading Home Care launched the first industry study of top marketing techniques. Since then, we've continued to monitor forces and trends affecting home care marketing.

For the latest information on how to grow your home care business during any economic times, you'll want to order a copy of our eBook; The Top Ten Techniques of Highly Effective Home Care Marketers.

Order your copy today!

Train Your Sales People to Make More Calls During Difficult Times

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As the marketplace slows, you need to work harder and smarter to keep your business growing. Now's the time to provide training for your sales team on how to make the approach to your top referral sources and high potential prospects.

Making the Approach: Advances Sales Training for Home Care Professionals, By Michael Giudicissi, is the single most effective tool you can use to train your home care sales team.

Order your copy today!

There's Still Time to Register for The Academy for Private Duty Home Care in Maryland

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Many of you who are leaders of Home Health Agencies also have a Private Duty Home Care business. If so, you're probably looking for new ideas and information to grow that business and increase its profitability.

If you're on the East Coast, you'll want to consider sending your Director of Private Duty to The Academy for Private Duty Home Care being held in Columbia, Maryland on Wednesday, June 4, 2008.

Sponsored by the Maryland-National Capital Homecare Association, this one-day program will cover sales and marketing strategies, and recruiting and retention techniques to grow your non-medical home care business.

Based on significant research that began in 2003, The Academy for Private Duty Home Care has been designed as a one-day institute expressly for CEOs and owners, administrators, sales and marketing staff, financial and personnel officers, and other senior staff of Private Duty Home Care companies. This is your opportunity to come together in an intimate, high-impact learning environment to share strategies, ideas, and insights on how to grow your business, multiply the performance of your team members, and increase your income.

Objectives:

As a result of this intimate, high-impact learning experience, leaders in Private Duty Home Care will be able to:

Put the Three Key Elements of a successful Private Duty Home Care business into practice.
Implement a focused sales & marketing plan to ensure a steady flow of clients.
Develop specific action plans for immediate and long term growth.
Find and keep the caregivers you need to grow your business and serve your clients.
Develop and Implement your Personal Private Duty Scorecard.

Plan now to attend:

June 4, 2008 - Columbia, Maryland
8:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m.

The Handelman Learning Center
The Beacon Institute, Inc.
10280 Old Columbia Road
Columbia, MD 21046

About the Author

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Stephen Tweed, CSP, is Chairman and CEO of Leading Home Care ... a Tweed Jeffries company. For over 25 years he has been a recognized leader in strategy and leadership development for home care companies and associations. He is the author or co-author of five books, four of which were written specifically for the home care industry. He has served on the boards of directors of three not-for-profit home care agencies, and has served as interim President & CEO of a $25 million homecare company.

Stephen is a past-President of the National Speakers Association, a 3500 member international society of experts who speak professionally. He is also the father of a 38 year-old son who is physically disabled and uses the services of home care on a daily basis.

Meet the entire Leading Home Care Team

Permission to Reproduce

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Permission is granted to healthcare publications, associations and companies to reproduce this article in your publication, or to distribute copies to your leaders, on the condition that you reproduce the credits and contact information as follows: "Reprinted with permission from Stephen Tweed's Leading Home Care Report. Copyright 2008 Stephen C. Tweed. To receive a FREE subscription to this newsletter, log on to www.leadinghomecare.com."

Contact Leading Home Care

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email: stephen@leadinghomecare.com

phone: 1-866-209-5101

web: http://www.leadinghomecare.com

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